A Book of Ghosts: 33
Author: Various authors
Date: 1830-12-31T15:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Ghost Stories; Supernatural Fiction; Horror
Description: A century of ghost stories: a collection of thirteen tales, classic and otherwise, by various authors. ~ ~ ~ ~ Compiled by ECM.
Publisher: MobileRead.com
Rights: Public domain where copyright is “Life+70” or less, and in the USA.

A BOOK OF GHOSTS
– 33 –

THINGS THAT GO BUMP
IN THE NIGHT

MobileRead Edition
2022

A century of ghost stories: a collection of thirteen tales, classic and otherwise, by various authors.
Compiled by ECM.

Contents were originally published 1831 ~ 1933. This book is in the public domain where copyright is “Life+70” or less, and in the USA.

CONTENTS:

- The Sleepless Woman  –1831
by William Jerdan
(1782–1869)

- The Living Apparition
–1846
by G.P.R. James
(1799–1860)

- The Open Door  –1882
by Margaret Oliphant
(1828–1897)

- Colonel Halifax’s Ghost Story  –1887
by Sabine Baring-Gould
(1834–1924)

- The Withered Arm  –1888
byThomas Hardy
(1840–1928)

- The Ebony Frame  –1891
by Edith Nesbit
(1858–1924)

- The Actual Apparition  –1895
by Wirt Girarre
pseudonym of
William Oliver Greener
(1862–1935)

- August Heat  –1910
by William F. Harvey
(1885–1937)

- The Pipers of Mallory  –1917
by Theo. Douglas
pseudonym of
[Mrs.] Henrietta D. Everett
(1851–1923)

- The Beast with Five Fingers  –1919
by William F. Harvey
(1885–1937)

- The Ghost at the Blue Dragon  –1921
by William James Wintle
(1861–1934)

- Whispering Leaves  –1923
by Ellen Glasgow
(1873–1945)

- The Staircase  –1933
by Sir Hugh Walpole
(1884–1941)

THE SLEEPLESS WOMAN

William Jerdan

1831

“Blessed be he that invented sleep, for it covers a man all over like a mantle.”

Sanch Panza, passim.

CHAPTER I

Heavily set in massive brass, whose rich and ingenious carving was tarnished and dull, a ponderous lamp swung from a ceiling blackened by its smoke. Everything in the room spoke of time, but of time that had known no change. Knights, whose armor was, at the latest, of two centuries back — ladies, in dresses from which their descendants started in dismay — looked out from the discoloured tapestry; and the floor, dark with age, added to the gloom. Beside the hearth, whose fire, from the rain beating down the huge chimney, burned every moment dimmer, sat two old domestics. The man in a scarlet gown, and a belt, from which hung a heavy bunch of keys, was the seneschal; and opposite was his wife, in a brown silk dress, and a string of ebony beads, which she was busily employed in counting. Between them was a small antique oak table, where a flask and two bell-mouthed glasses appeared temptations which, it must be owned, somewhat interrupted the telling of the beads. In the centre of the chamber stood an immense hearse-like bed; the purple velvet curtains swept to the ground, and at each corner dropped a large plume of black ostrich-feathers. On this bed lay a withered old man, apparently in the last extremity of age, and very close upon the border of death. His spare form was hidden in an ample black robe, fastened round the waist with a white girdle, on which were graved strange characters in red; and on his breast was a white square, covered with stars and signs wrought in gold. The old man’s face was ghastly pale, and rendered yet paler by the contrast of his black skull-cap, which was drawn down even to his grey and shagged eyebrows. But the features were restless; and the small keen eyes, though fast losing their brightness, were full of anxiety. The wind shook the tall narrow windows, and howled in the old trees of the avenue; at every fresh gust the baron’s impatience seemed to increase — for what we are telling relates to the Baron de Launaye.

“’Tis a rough night,” muttered he; “but Adolphe is as rough a rider — and a dangerous road; but I am the first De Launaye who ever drew bridle for that. And then my summons — it was sure to reach him; ay, though alone, in the midnight bower of the mistress whose name and his suspicion had never coupled together even in a dream — even though consciousness were drowned in the crimson flowing of the wine — though sleeping as men sleep after battle, pillowed on the body of their deadliest enemy — , or that of their nearest and dearest friend — my summons would be borne on his inmost soul. But will he come, at the bidding of his dying uncle? — will Adolphe, he, the only human being whom I ever loved — will he or will he not come?”

The question was answered even at the moment it was breathed. The horn of the castle-gate was blown impatiently — the fall of the drawbridge was heard — a moment’s pause; and a light foot sprang up the oaken staircase with all the speed of haste and youth. The door opened and in rushed a young cavalier. The white plumes of his cap were drenched with wet — the diamond clasp that fastened them was dim with damp — but his bright auburn hair glistened with the raindrops. Hastily flinging his riding-cloak, heavy with moisture, to the ground, the stranger sprang to the bedside. A gleam of human love, of human joy, passed over the old man’s face, as tenderly and gently his nephew asked for his tidings, and expressed such hopes as affection hopes when hope there is none.

“Child of my love,” murmured the dying baron, “for whose sake only have I ever given one thought to the things of this earth, bear yet a moment with the feeble wretch who but a brief while will stand between you and the title of your ancestors and wealth. Many a prince of your mother’s house would think his kingdom overpaid if purchased by its half. You are young — I never was — my heart, even in boyhood, was old with premature knowledge. You have that beauty the want of which has made my life a curse — you have that strength of body the want of which has paralysed my strength of mind. I have doubted if happiness dwells on this evil earth — I will not doubt when I hope for yours. You will hear me called necromancer: out on the base fools who malign that which they understand not, and would bring down the lofty aim of science, the glorious dream of virtue, to their own level! You will hear me called miser: Adolphe, have you ever found me so?”

“My father — my more than father!” passionately exclaimed the young man, hiding his face on the pillow, as if ashamed of the violence of mortal grief, in the presence of one so soon to be immortal.

“Adolphe,” continued his uncle, “you have heard, though not from me — for I sought not to weigh down your ardent mind with all that has pressed upon me with the burden of hopelessness, and long has the knowledge been mine — that the fetters of clay are too heavy for the spirit. Your young hand was fitter for the lance than the crucible; and the bridle-rein would have been ill-exchanged for the lettered scroll. But something I know of that future, into which even the sage can look but dimly. Adolphe, the only question I asked was for thee! Alas! The vanity of such wisdom! It has told of danger that menaces, but not of the skill that avoids. My child, evil came into the world with woman, and in her is bound up the evil of your destiny. Vain as the glance they throw on the polished steel of their mirror — false as the vow they make for the pleasure of breaking — inconstant as the wind, which changes from point to point, and for whose change no philosophy hath ever discovered a cause: shun them, Adolphe, as you would disloyalty to your king, flight from your enemy, or falsehood to your friend.”

The old man’s voice became inaudible, and his head sank on Adolphe’s shoulder: — “Margharita, water — or, Jacques, give me the wine.” The youth tried to pour a few drops into the baron’s mouth. The dying man motioned back the glass, and looking in the cavalier’s face with a strong expression of affection and anxiety, muttered something of “woman” and “danger” — “bright,” “eyes,” “bright,” “beware” — these were his last broken words. He expired.

CHAPTER II

Contrary to the charitable expectations of his neighbours, the Baron de Launaye was buried with all the rites of the church; the holy water was sprinkled on the corpse, and the holy psalm was sung over the coffin. A marble tablet marked his grave; and there the moonlight slept as lovingly as it ever did on the sinless tomb of saint or martyr. The new Baron de Launaye lamented his uncle’s death in a very singular manner, for he was his heir — and the young and the rich have not much time for regret. But Adolphe (he was remarkable from a child for his memory) could not forget the kindness — and more than kindness — the love that his uncle had lavished on the little orphan, who, noble and penniless at the age of five years, was left dependent on his bounty. However, sorrow cannot — indeed nothing in this world can — last forever. Adolphe’s grief became first only sad; next, melancholy; thirdly, calm; and fourthly, settled down into a respectful remembrance, and a resolve to bear his uncle’s last words in mind. Indeed, the muttered, vague, and uncertain prediction quite haunted him.

“I am sure,” said he, in one of his many pondering moods, “I am sure my past experience confirms his words. I never got into a scrape but a woman was the cause. I had been in my outset at court, page to the Duke Forte d’Imhault, and gone with him on that splendid embassy to Russia, had he not been displeased with my awkwardness in fastening the duchess’s sandal.”

And he laughed as he said this: who in the world could ever guess why the loss of his appointment should make the young baron laugh!

“And then, who caused the duel between me and my Pylades, the Marquis de Lusignan, but that little jilt Mdll. Laure? However, my sword only grazed his arm: he wore an exquisite blue silk scarf, and we were better friends than ever. Oh, my uncle was right: women were born to be our torment.”

Still was this conviction impressed on his mind like a duty. Yet he could not help thinking that a few bright eyes would light up the old hall better than the huge brazen lamps which now served to make darkness visible. From thinking of the pleasantness of such an illumination, he began to think of its difficulties; and the difficulties of the project soon referred only to the place. One thought suggests another; and from thinking how many obstacles opposed the introduction of bright eyes and sweet smiles into the castle, he arrived at the conclusion, how easily they were to be obtained in other parts.

To say the truth, Paris became daily more familiar to his mind’s eye; and, as he justly observed, staying at the dull old castle could do his uncle no good, and he was quite sure it did himself none. Now, in spite of philanthropy, people are not very fond of doing good gratuitously; but, to be sure, such doctrines were not so much discussed in those days as in ours, though the practice was about the same. Sometimes he argued with himself, “It is well to be out of harm’s way;” — and the prediction and a cold shudder came together. But we are ready enough to dare the danger we do not know: and though a few years of Parisian life had placed the nephew’s early on a level with the uncle’s late experience, touching the evil inherent in womanhood, nevertheless Adolphe supposed their bad qualities might be borne, at all events, better than the dullness of the Château de Launaye.

One day riding with his bridle on his horse’s neck, mediating whether his next ride should not be direct to Paris, a most uncommon spectacle in that unfrequented part of the country attracted his attention. This was a large lumbering coach, drawn by six horses, whose rich harness and housings bore the crest in gold — a lynx rampant. A very natural curiosity (by-the-by, all curiosity is natural enough) made him look in at the window. Was there ever a face half so beautiful as that of the girl who, like himself, actuated by natural curiosity, looked out as he looked in? The black silk wimple was drawn over her head, but allowed a very red upper lip, an exquisite Grecian nose, and a most brilliant pair of eyes to be seen. Our young cavalier sat as if he had been stupefied. This is a very common effect of love at first. It goes off, however — so it did with Adolphe. His first act on recovering his senses was to gallop after the coach. He spurred on, and caught a second glance of the most radiant orbs that ever revolved in light. Large, soft, clear, and hazel, as those of a robin — they were bright and piercing as those of a falcon. Certainly de Launaye had never seen such eyes before, or at least none that ever took such an effect upon him.

He ate no dinner that day — walked by moonlight on the terrace — and the only thing which excited his attention was the seneschal’s information, that the Marquise de Surville and her granddaughter were come to stay some months at their château.

“They could not have done that in the late baron’s time — the Lord be good unto his soul!” And the old man forthwith commenced the history of some mysterious feud between the two families, in which the deceased Baron Godfred had finally remained victor.

To this tedious narrative of ancient enmities Adolphe was little inclined to listen. “A name and an estate are all our ancestors have a right to leave behind them. The saints preserve us from a legacy of their foes! Nothing could be worse — except their friends.”

The next morning the baron arranged his suit of sable with unusual care, though it must be confessed he always took care enough.

“Pray Heaven the marquise may be of my way of thinking respecting the quarrels of our forefathers! Some old ladies have terrible memories,” were Adolphe’s uppermost ideas as he rode over the drawbridge at the Château de Surville, which had been promptly lowered to his summons; — their only neighbour, he had thought it but courteous to offer his personal respects. How much more cheerful did the saloon, with its hangings in sea-green silk, worked in gold, seem than his own hall, encumbered with the dusty trophies of his ancestors. To be sure, the young baron was not at that moment a very fair judge; for the first thing that met him on his entrance was a glance from the same pair of large bright eyes which had been haunting him for the last four-and-twenty hours.

The grandmother was as stern a looking old gentlewoman as ever had knights in armor for ancestors: still, her eyes, also bright, clear, and piercing, somewhat resembled those of her granddaughter. On the rest of her face time had wrought “strange disfeatures.” She was silent; and, after the first compliments, resumed the volume she had been reading on the baron’s appearance. It was a small book, bound in black velvet, with gold clasps, richly wrought. Adolphe took it for granted it was her breviary; and inwardly concluded how respectable is that piety in an old woman which leaves the young one under her charge quite at liberty! The visitor’s whole attention was soon devoted to the oriel window where sat the beautiful Clotilde de Surville. The Baron de Launaye piqued himself on fastidious taste in women and horses: he had had some experience in both. But Clotilde was faultless. There she leaned, with the splendour of day full upon her face; it fell upon her pure complexion like joy upon the heart, and the sunbeams glittered amid the thick ringlets till every curl was edged with gold. Her dress alone seemed capable of improvement; but it is as well to leave something to the imagination, and there was ample food for Adolphe’s, in picturing the change that would be wrought upon Clotilde by a Parisian milliner. “This comes,” thought he, “of being brought up in an old German castle.”

For very shame he at last rose; when, with a grim change of countenance, meant for a smile, the marquise asked him to stay for dinner. It is a remark not the less true for being old (though nowadays opinions are all on the change), that love-making is a thing “to hear, and not to tell.” We shall therefore leave the progress of the wooing, and come to the denouement, which was the most proper possible, viz. marriage. Adolphe had been the most devoted of lovers, and Clotilde had given him a great deal of modest encouragement; that is, her bright eyes had often wandered in search of his, and the moment they had found them, had dropped to the ground; and whenever he entered the room, a blush had come into her cheek, like the light into the pearl, filling it with the sweet hues of the rose. Never did love-affair proceed more prosperously. The old seneschal was the only person who grumbled. He begged leave to remind the young baron that it was not showing proper respect to his ancestors not to take up their quarrels.

“But things are altered since the days when lances were attached to every legacy,” returned Adolphe.

“We are altering everything nowadays,” replied the old man; “I don’t see, however, that we are a bit the better off.”

“I, at all events, expect happiness,” replied his master, “in this change in my condition.”

“Ay, ay, so we all do before we are married: what we find after there is no use in saying, for two reasons; first, that you would not believe me; secondly, my wife might hear what I’m telling.”

“Ah!” exclaims the young baron, “the caution that marriage teaches! If it were only for the prudence I should acquire, it would be worth my while to marry.”

“Alas! Rashness never yet wanted a reason. My poor young master! The old marquise and her dark-eyed granddaughter have taken you in completely.”

“Taken me in!” ejaculated de Launaye angrily; “why you old fool, were this a mere match of interest I might thank my stars for such a lucky chance. Young, beautiful, high-born, and rich, Clotilde has but to appear at court and ensure a much higher alliance than mine. What motive could they have?”

“I don’t know; but when I don’t know people’s motives, I always suppose the worst,” replied the obstinate Dominique.

“Charitable,” laughed the master.

“And besides,” resumed the seneschal, “the old marquise plagued her husband into the grave; and I dare say her granddaughter means to do as much for you.”

“A novel reason, at all events, for taking a husband,” said de Launaye, “in order that you may plague him to death afterward.”

CHAPTER III

Well, the wedding-day arrived at last. De Launaye could have found some fault with his bride’s costume, but for her face. There was a stiffness in the rigid white satin, and the ruff was at least two inches too high — indeed he did not see any necessity for the ruff at all; they had been quite out some years at Paris. However, he said nothing, remembering that a former hint on the subject of dress had not been so successful as its merits deserved. He had insinuated, and that in a compliment too, a little lowering of the ruff before, as a mere act of justice to the ivory throat, when Clotilde had rejoined, answering in a tone which before marriage was gentle reproof (a few months after it would have sounded like reproach), that she hoped “the Baron de Launaye would prefer propriety in his wife to display.” The sense of the speech was forgotten in its sentiment; a very unusual occurrence by-the-by. However, the bride looked most beautiful; her clear, dark eyes swam in light — the liquid brilliancy of happiness — the brightness, but not the sadness of tears. The ceremony was over, the priest and the marquise had given their blessings; the latter also added some excellent advice, which was not listened to with all the attention it deserved. The young couple went to their own castle in a new and huge coach, every one of whose six horses wore white and silver favours. Neighbours they had none; but a grand feast was given to the domestics; and Dominique, at his master’s express orders, broached a pipe of Bordeaux. “I can’t make my vassals,” said de Launaye, “as happy as myself; but I can make them drunk, and that is something towards it.”

The day darkened into night; and here, according to all regular precedents in romance, hero and heroine ought to be left to themselves; but there never yet was a rule without an exception. However, to infringe upon established custom as little as possible, we will enter into no details of how pretty the bride looked in her nightcap, but proceed forthwith to the baron’s first sleep. He dreamed that the sun suddenly shone into his chamber. Dazzled by the glare he awoke, and found the bright eyes of his bride gazing tenderly on his face. Weary as he was, still he remembered how uncourteous it would be to lie sleeping while she was so wide awake, and he forthwith roused himself as well as he could. Many persons say they can’t sleep in an unfamiliar bed; perhaps this might be the case with his bride; and in new situations people should have all possible allowance made for them.

They rose early the following morning, the baroness bright-eyed and blooming as usual, the baron pale and abattu. They wandered through the castle; de Launaye told of his uncle’s prediction.

“How careful I must be of you,” said the bride, smiling; “I shall be quite jealous.”

Night came, and again Adolphe was wakened from his first sleep by Clotilde’s bright eyes. The third night arrived, and human nature could bear no more.

“Good God, my dearest!” exclaimed the husband, “do you never sleep?”

“Sleep!” replied Clotilde, opening her large bright eyes, till they were even twice their usual size and brightness. “Sleep! One of my noble race sleep! I never slept in my life.”

“She never sleeps!” ejaculated the baron, sinking back on his pillow in horror and exhaustion.

It had been settled that the young couple should forthwith visit Paris — thither they at once proceeded. The beauty of the baroness produced a most marvellous sensation even in that city of sensations. Nothing was heard of for a week but the enchanting eyes of the baroness de Launaye. A diamond necklace of a new pattern was invented in her honour, and called aux beaux yeux de Clotilde.

“Those eyes,” said a prince of the blood, whose taste in such matters had been cultivated by some years of continual practice, “those eyes of Mde. De Launaye will rob many of our gallants of their rest.”

“Very true,” briefly replied her husband.

Well, the baroness shone like a meteor in every scene, while the baron accompanied her, the spectre of his former self. Sallow, emaciated, everybody said he was going into a consumption. Still it was quite delightful to witness the devotedness of his wife — she could scarcely bear him a moment out of her sight.

At length they left Paris, accompanied by a gay party, for their château. But brilliant as were these quests, nothing distracted the baroness’s attention from her husband, whose declining health became every hour more alarming. One day, however, the young Chevalier de Ronsarde — he, the conqueror of a thousand hearts — the besieger of a thousand more — whose conversation was that happy mixture of flattery and scandal which is the beau ideal of dialogue — engrossed Mde. De Launaye’s attention; and her husband took the opportunity of slipping away unobserved. He hastened into a gloomy avenue — the cedars, black with time and age, met like night overhead, and far and dark did their shadows fall on the still and deep lake beside. Worn, haggard, with a timorous and hurried, yet light step, the young baron might have been taken for one of his own ancestors, permitted for a brief period to revisit his home on earth, but invested with the ghastliness and the gloom of the grave.

“She never sleeps!” exclaimed the miserable Adolphe — “she never sleeps! Day and night her large bright eyes eat like fire into my heart.” He paused, and rested for support against the trunk of one of the old cedars. “Oh, my uncle, why did not your prophecy, when it warned me against danger, tell me distinctly in what the danger consisted? To have a wife who never sleeps! Dark and quiet lake, how I envy the stillness of your depths — the shadows which rest upon your waves!”

At this moment a breath of wind blew a branch aside — a sunbeam fell upon the baron’s face; he took it for the eyes of his wife. Alas! his remedy lay temptingly before him — the still, the profound, the shadowy lake. De Launaye took one plunge — it was into eternity. Two days he was missing — the third his lifeless body floated on the heavy waters. The Baron de Launaye had committed suicide, and the bright-eyed baroness was left a disconsolate widow.

Such is the tale recorded in the annals of the house of de Launaye. Some believe it entirely, justly observing there is nothing too extraordinary to happen. Others (for there always will be people who affect to be wiser than their neighbours) say that the story is an ingenious allegory — and that the real secret of the Sleepless Lady was jealousy. Now, if a jealous wife can’t drive a man out of his mind and into a lake, we do not know what can!

The Club-book, Vol I (1831)

THE LIVING APPARITION

G.P.R. James

1846

“I am of an Italian family,” said my friend, “but my father and my grandfather were born in Germany; exceedingly good people in their way, but by no means very wealthy. My elder brother was being educated for a physician, and had just finished his course of study, when my father, having given me as good an education as he could in Nuremberg, thought it fit to send me to Hamburg, that I might pursue my studies there, and take advantage of any opportunity that might occur for advancing myself in life. My stock of all kinds was exceedingly small when I set out; my purse contained the closely-estimated expenses of my journey, and the allowance made for my maintenance during six months, which did not admit the slightest idea of luxury of any kind. I was grateful, however, for what was given, for I knew that my father could afford no more, and I had no hope of another ‘heller’ till my half year was out. I had my ordinary travelling dress, and my mother gave me six new shirts which she had spun with her own hands; besides these, my portmanteau contained one complete black suit, two pair of shoes, and a pair of silver buckles, which my father took off his own feet and bestowed them upon me with his benediction. My elder brother always loved me, and was kind to me; and when my going was first talked of, he regretted deeply that he had nothing to give me; but my little preparations occupied a fortnight, and during that time good luck befriended him and me, and he treated and killed his first patient. Thus he obtained the means of making me a sumptuous present for my journey, which consisted of a straight-cut blue mantle, with a square collar. Let me dwell upon the mantle, for it is important. It was in the Nuremberg fashion, which had gone out of vogue over all of Germany for at least thirty years, and when I first put it on, I felt very proud of it, thinking that I looked like one of the cavaliers in the great picture in the town hall. However, there was not another mantle like it in all Germany, except in Nuremberg — sky-blue, falling three inches below the knee, with a square-cut collar.

“I will pass over my journey to Hamburg, till my arrival in a little common inn, in the old part of town. Not having a penny to spare, I set out early the next morning to look out for a lodging, and saw several that would have suited myself very well, but which did not suit my finances. At length, seeing the wife of a grocer standing at the door, with a good-humoured countenance, in a narrow and dark street, containing some large, fine houses which had seen the splendours of former times, I walked up to her, and asked if she could recommend a lodging to a young man who was not over rich. After thinking for a moment, she pointed over the way, to a house with a decorated front, which had become as black as ink with age. The lower story was entirely occupied by an iron warehouse; but she said that up above on the first floor I should find Widow Gentner, who let one room, and who had, she believed, no lodger at the time. I thanked her many times for her civility, and walking across the street to the point she indicated, I looked up at the cornices and other ornaments which were displayed upon the facade. Dirty they were, beyond all doubt. A pair of stone ladies with baskets in their hands, which had probably been once as white as snow, now displayed long dripping lines of black upon their garments; their noses had disappeared, but the balls of the eyes were of the deepest brown, though above the centre appeared a white spot, which seemed to show the presence of a cataract. The fruit in the baskets, however, consisted apparently of black cherries, and a dingy cornucopia, which stood by the side of each, vomited forth swarthy fruit and flowers of a very uninviting quality. I gazed in surprise and admiration, and asked myself if it ever would be my fate to live in so fine a mansion.

“Taking courage, however, I inquired at the ironmonger’s which was the door of Widow Gentner, and of the three which opened into the lower part of the house, I was directed to the second. On the first floor I found a tidy little maid, who introduced me to the presence of her mistress, a quiet, dry old lady, who was seated in a room which had apparently formed part of a magnificent saloon — I say formed part, for it was evident that the size of the chamber had been much curtailed. On the ceiling, which was the most magnificent stucco work I ever saw, appeared various groups of angels and cherubs in high relief, as large as life, and seated amid clouds and bunches of flowers as big as feather-beds. But that ceiling betrayed the dismemberment of the room; for all along the side where ran this wall behind the good lady were seen angels’ legs without the heads and bodies, baskets of flowers cut in two, and cherubs with not above one-half of the members even, which sculptors have left them. This was soon explained: the widow informed me that she had divided her chamber into three, of which she reserved one for herself, another for her little maid, and let the third, which had a staircase to itself opening from the street. She had done so with a good wall, she said, to support the platform, so that if I wanted to see the room she had to let, I must go down again with her and mount the other stairs, as there was no door of communication. I admired her prudence, and accompanied her at once to a small room, arrived at by a small staircase with its own street-door; and there I found on the ceiling above my head the lost legs and wings of the angels on the other side, besides a very solid pair of cherubins of my own. It contained a little narrow bed, a table, a scanty proportion of chairs and other things necessary for the existence of a student; and though an unpleasant feeling of solitude crept over me as I thought of inhabiting an apartment so entirely cut off from all human proximity, yet as the widow’s rent was small, I closed the bargain at once, and soon was installed in my new abode. The good lady was very kind and attentive, and did all she could to make me comfortable, inquiring, among other things, what letters of introduction I had in Hamburg. I had but one which I considered of any value, which was addressed, with many of those flourishes which you know are common among us, to Mr. S., a famous man in his day, both as a philosopher and literary man, and who was also a man of sense in the world, and what is more than all, of a kind and benevolent heart. I went to deliver it that very day, and met with a most kind and friendly reception from a good-looking old gentleman, of perhaps sixty-three or four, who at once made me feel myself at home with him, treating me with that parental which inspires both respect and confidence. He asked several questions about my journey, where I lodged, how I intended to employ my time, and last, what was the state of my finances. I told him all exactly as it was, and when I rose to depart, he laid his hand on my arm with the most benevolent air in the world, saying, ‘You will dine with me tomorrow at twelve o’clock, and I shall expect to see you at dinner three days in the week as long as you stay. From eight to ten at night I am always at home, and whenever you have nothing else to do, come in and spend those hours with us.’ I will not pretend to say I was not quite well aware that the place thus granted me at his dinner-table was offered from a knowledge of the limited state of my finances; but pride in my case was out of the question, and I was exceedingly grateful for the act of kindness, which saved me a considerable sum in my housekeeping, and enabled me to indulge in a few little luxuries which I could not otherwise have commanded.

“It was the autumn of the year when I arrived at Hamburg, but the time passed very pleasantly. All the day I was engaged in my studies; at twelve o’clock I dined, either at my own chambers or at worthy Mr. S.’s, and almost every evening was spent at his house, where he failed not to regale me, either with a cup of fine coffee, or sometimes as a great treat, with a cup of tea, according to your English mode. In short, I became his nightly guest, and as the evening grew dark and sometimes foggy, I bought a little lantern to light myself through the long and lonely streets which I had to pass from his house to my own. On these occasions, too, as the weather grew intensely cold, my blue cloak with the square collar proved a most serviceable friend, and every night at ten o’clock I might be seen in precisely the same attire, with my black suit, in great part covered by the azure mantle, and the small lantern in my hand, finding my way homeward to my solitary abode. Mr. S. lived in the fine new part of the town, where he had a handsome house, with two maidservants and his coachman, but the latter slept at the stables. I lived, as I have said before, in the old part of the town, well nigh a mile distant; thus, in coming and going, I got exercise at night, if I did not in the day, and I mark it particularly, that I used to enjoy my walk to his house and back, and used to look forward to it with pleasure during my hours of study, in order that you may see, that on the occasions of which I am about to speak, I was affected by no fantastical melancholy.

“At length, one night in the winter of 17 — , after passing the evening at the house of Mr. S., where I had taken nothing but a cup of coffee and a slice of brown bread-and-butter, I took leave of my friend, put on my blue mantle with a square collar, lighted my lantern at the housemaid’s candle, and having safely shut the glass, set out on my walk home. It was about a quarter past ten, and the night was clear and very dark; the sky, indeed, was full of stars, which looked peculiarly bright as I gazed up at them, between the tall houses, as if from the bottom of a well, and I felt a sort of exhilarating freshness in the air that raised my spirits rather than otherwise. I walked along to the end of the first street with a light step, turned into the second, and was just entering the third, when I saw a figure some thirty or forty paces before me, standing in a corner as if waiting for someone. Although the streets, in the good old days of Hamburg, were generally by that time of night quite deserted, yet there was nothing extraordinary in my meeting one or two persons as I went home, so that I took little or no notice of this figure, till I had advanced to within about twenty paces, when it turned itself full toward me, and at the same time the light of the lantern fell directly upon it. Guess my surprise when I saw a being, so exactly like myself, that I could have imagined I was looking in a glass. There were the black legs, the shoes and silver buckles, the blue mantle with the square-cut collar, and the little lantern with the handle at the back, held just as I held mine. I stopped suddenly, and rubbed my eyes with my left hand; but the figure immediately turned round and walked away before me. At the same time my heart beat violently, and a sort of strange dreamy sensation of horror came over me, like that which takes possession of one sometimes when labouring under the nightmare. An instant’s reflection made me ashamed of what I felt, and saying to myself, ‘I’ll look a little closer at this gentleman,’ I walked on, hurrying my pace. The figure, however, quickened its steps in the same proportion. I did not like to run, but I was always a quick walker, and I hastened as fast as ever I could; but to no effect: the figure, without the least apparent effort, kept always at the same distance, and every moment I felt the sort of superstitious dread which had taken possession of me, increasing, and struggling against the efforts of resolution. Resolution conquered, however, and determined to see who this was that was so like me, without showing him too plainly that I was chasing him, I stopped at a corner where a street wound round, and entered again the one that I was pursuing at some distance, and then taking to my heels, I ran as hard as I could to get before my friend in the blue mantle. When I entered the other street again, though I must have gained two or three minutes at least, instead of seeing the figure coming from the side where I had left it, there it was, walking on deliberately in the direction I usually followed toward my own house. We were now within three streets of Widow Gentner’s, and though they were all of them narrow enough, I generally took those which were most open. There was lane, however, to the left, which, passing by the grocer’s I have mentioned, cut off at least a quarter of the way, and as I was now overpowered by feelings I cannot describe, I resolved to take the shortest path, and run as hard as I could, in order to get home and shut myself in before the figure in the blue mantle reached the spot. Off I set then down the narrow lane like lightning, but when I came to the grocer’s corner, my horror was complete, on beholding the lame figure walking along past the closed windows of the iron-shop, and I stopped with my heart beating as if it would have burst through my ribs. With eyes almost starting from my head and the light of the lantern turned full upon it, I gazed at its proceedings, when behold, it walked quietly up to my door, stopped, turned round toward the house, put the right hand in its pocket, and seemed feeling for my key. The key was produced, and stooping down, just as I should have done, after a little searching for the keyhole, the door was opened, the figure went in, and instantly the door closed again.

“If you had given me the empire of a world, I could not have made up my mind to go in after it, and setting off more like a madman than anything else, I returned to the house of Mr. S., with the intention of telling him what had occurred. The bell was answered quickly enough by the housemaid, who gazed at my wild and scared appearance with some surprise. She told me, however, that the old gentleman had gone to bed, and that she could not think of waking him on my account; and resolved not to go home, and yet not liking to walk the streets of Hamburg all night, I persuaded her with some difficulty to let me sit in the saloon till I could speak with Mr. S. in the morning. I will not detain you by describing how I passed the night; but when my friend came down the next day, I related to him all that had occurred, with many excuses for the liberty I had taken. He listened gravely, and his first question naturally was, if I were quite sure I had gone straight homeward, without entering any of those places where strong drinks were sold. I assured him most solemnly that the only thing that had entered my lips that night was the cup of coffee which I had taken at his house.

“‘The maid can tell you,’ I said, ‘that I had not been absent more than three quarters of an hour when I returned.’

“‘Well, my young friend,’ he replied, ‘I believe you fully; very strange things occasionally happen to us in life, and this seems one. However, we will have some breakfast, and then go and inquire into it.’

“After breakfast we set out and walked to my house, I pointing out by the way, all the different spots connected with my tale. When we reached the gloomy old mansion, with its decorated front, I was going direct to my door, but Mr. S. said, ‘Stay, we will first talk to your landlady for a minute.’ And we accordingly walked up to the rooms of Widow Gentner by the other door and the other staircase. The widow was very proud of the visit of so distinguished a person in the town as Mr. S., and answered his questions with due respect. The first was a very common one in that part of Germany, namely, whether she had slept well that night. She assured him she had, perfectly well; and he then proceeded with a somewhat impressive air, to inquire if nothing had occurred to disturb her, She then suddenly seemed to recollect herself, and answered: ‘Now you mention it, I recollect I was awoke about eleven o’clock, I think, by a noise on the other side of the wall; but thinking that Mr. Z had thrown over his table, or something of that kind, I turned on the other side, and went to sleep again.’

“No further information being to be obtained, we descended to the street, and taking out my keys, I opened the door, and we went in. My heart beat a little as we mounted the stairs, but resolving not to show any want of courage, I boldly unlocked the room door and threw it open. The sight that presented itself made me pause on the threshold, for there on my bed, where I should have been lying at the very moment of its fall, was the whole ceiling of that part of the room, angels’ legs, and cherubims’ wings, flower-baskets, and everything, and so great was the weight and force with which it had come down, that it had broken the solid bedstead underneath it. As I do not suppose my head is composed of much more strong materials, it is probable that it would have been cracked as well as the bed, and I heartily thank God for my preservation. All my good old friend ventured to say, however, was, ‘A most fortunate escape! Had you slept here last night, you would have been killed to a certainty.’ Though a doctor of philosophy, he did not risk any speculations upon the strange apparition which I had beheld the night before; but invited me to take up my abode in his house till my room could be put in order, never afterward mentioning the appearance of my double; and I have only to add that from that time to this, now between fifty and sixty years, I have never seen myself again except in a looking-glass.”

THE OPEN DOOR

Margaret Oliphant

1882

I took the house of Brentwood on my return from India in 18——, for the temporary accommodation of my family, until I could find a permanent home for them. It had many advantages which made it peculiarly appropriate. It was within reach of Edinburgh; and my boy Roland, whose education had been considerably neglected, could go in and out to school; which was thought to be better for him than either leaving home altogether or staying there always with a tutor. The first of these expedients would have seemed preferable to me; the second commended itself to his mother. The doctor, like a judicious man, took the midway between. “Put him on his pony, and let him ride into the High School every morning; it will do him all the good in the world,” Dr. Simson said; “and when it is bad weather, there is the train.” His mother accepted this solution of the difficulty more easily than I could have hoped; and our pale-faced boy, who had never known anything more invigorating than Simla, began to encounter the brisk breezes of the North in the subdued severity of the month of May. Before the time of the vacation in July we had the satisfaction of seeing him begin to acquire something of the brown and ruddy complexion of his schoolfellows. The English system did not commend itself to Scotland in these days. There was no little Eton at Fettes; nor do I think, if there had been, that a genteel exotic of that class would have tempted either my wife or me. The lad was doubly precious to us, being the only one left us of many; and he was fragile in body, we believed, and deeply sensitive in mind. To keep him at home, and yet to send him to school — to combine the advantages of the two systems — seemed to be everything that could be desired. The two girls also found at Brentwood everything they wanted. They were near enough to Edinburgh to have masters and lessons as many as they required for completing that never-ending education which the young people seem to require nowadays. Their mother married me when she was younger than Agatha; and I should like to see them improve upon their mother! I myself was then no more than twenty-five — an age at which I see the young fellows now groping about them, with no notion what they are going to do with their lives. However; I suppose every generation has a conceit of itself which elevates it, in its own opinion, above that which comes after it.

Brentwood stands on that fine and wealthy slope of country — one of the richest in Scotland — which lies between the Pentland Hills and the Firth. In clear weather you could see the blue gleam — like a bent bow, embracing the wealthy fields and scattered houses — of the great estuary on one side of you, and on the other the blue heights, not gigantic like those we had been used to, but just high enough for all the glories of the atmosphere, the play of clouds, and sweet reflections, which give to a hilly country an interest and a charm which nothing else can emulate. Edinburgh — with its two lesser heights — the Castle and the Calton Hill — its spires and towers piercing through the smoke, and Arthur’s Seat lying crouched behind, like a guardian no longer very needful, taking his repose beside the well-beloved charge, which is now, so to speak, able to take care of itself without him — lay at our right hand. From the lawn and drawing-room windows we could see all these varieties of landscape. The colour was sometimes a little chilly, but sometimes, also, as animated and full of vicissitude as a drama. I was never tired of it. Its colour and freshness revived the eyes which had grown weary of arid plains and blazing skies. It was always cheery, and fresh, and full of repose.

The village of Brentwood lay almost under the house, on the other side of the deep little ravine, down which a stream — which ought to have been a lovely, wild, and frolicsome little river — flowed between its rocks and trees. The river, like so many in that district, had, however, in its earlier life been sacrificed to trade, and was grimy with paper-making. But this did not affect our pleasure in it so much as I have known it to affect other streams. Perhaps our water was more rapid; perhaps less clogged with dirt and refuse. Our side of the dell was charmingly accidenté, and clothed with fine trees, through which various paths wound down to the river-side and to the village bridge which crossed the stream. The village lay in the hollow, and climbed, with very prosaic houses, the other side. Village architecture does not flourish in Scotland. The blue slates and the grey stone are sworn foes to the picturesque; and though I do not, for my own part, dislike the interior of an old-fashioned hewed and galleried church, with its little family settlements on all sides, the square box outside, with its bit of a spire like a handle to lift it by, is not an improvement to the landscape. Still a cluster of houses on differing elevations — with scraps of garden coming in between, a hedgerow with clothes laid out to dry, the opening of a street with its rural sociability, the women at their doors, the slow wagon lumbering along — gives a centre to the landscape. It was cheerful to look at, and convenient in a hundred ways. Within ourselves we had walks in plenty, the glen being always beautiful in all its phases, whether the woods were green in the spring or ruddy in the autumn. In the park which surrounded the house were the ruins of the former mansion of Brentwood — a much smaller and less important house than the solid Georgian edifice which we inhabited. The ruins were picturesque, however, and gave importance to the place. Even we, who were but temporary tenants, felt a vague pride in them, as if they somehow reflected a certain consequence upon ourselves. The old building had the remains of a tower — an indistinguishable mass of mason-work, over-grown with ivy; and the shells of walls attached to this were half filled up with soil. I had never examined it closely, I am ashamed to say. There was a large room, or what had been a large room, with the lower part of the windows still existing, on the principal floor, and underneath other windows, which were perfect, though half filled up with fallen soil, and waving with a wild growth of brambles and chance growths of all kinds. This was the oldest part of all. At a little distance were some very commonplace and disjointed fragments of building, one of them suggesting a certain pathos by its very commonness and the complete wreck which it showed. This was the end of a low gable, a bit of grey wall, all incrusted with lichens, in which was a common doorway. Probably it had been a servants’ entrance, a back door, or opening into what are called “the offices” in Scotland. No offices remained to be entered — pantry and kitchen had all been swept out of being; but there stood the doorway open and vacant, free to all the winds, to the rabbits, and every wild creature. It struck my eye, the first time I went to Brentwood, like a melancholy comment upon a life that was over. A door that led to nothing — closed once, perhaps, with anxious care, bolted and guarded, now void of any meaning. It impressed me, I remember, from the first; so perhaps it may be said that my mind was prepared to attach to it an importance which nothing justified.

The summer was a very happy period of repose for us all. The warmth of Indian suns was still in our veins. It seemed to us that we could never have enough of the greenness, the dewiness, the freshness of the northern landscape. Even its mists were pleasant to us, taking all the fever out of us, and pouring in vigour and refreshment. In autumn we followed the fashion of the time, and went away for change which we did not in the least require. It was when the family had settled down for the winter, when the days were short and dark, and the rigorous reign of frost upon us, that the incidents occurred which alone could justify me in intruding upon the world my private affairs. These incidents were, however, of so curious a character, that I hope my inevitable references to my own family and pressing personal interests will meet with a general pardon.

I was absent in London when these events began. In London an old Indian plunges back into the interests with which all his previous life has been associated, and meets old friends at every step. I had been circulating among some half-dozen of these — enjoying the return to my former life in shadow, though I had been so thankful in substance to throw it aside — and had missed some of my home letters, what with going down from Friday to Monday to old Benbow’s place in the country, and stopping on the way back to dine and sleep at Sellar’s and to take a look into Cross’s stables, which occupied another day. It is never safe to miss one’s letters. In this transitory life, as the Prayer-book says, how can one ever be certain what is going to happen? All was well at home. I knew exactly (I thought) what they would have to say to me: “The weather has been so fine, that Roland has not once gone by train, and he enjoys the ride beyond anything.” “Dear papa, be sure that you don’t forget anything, but bring us so-and-so, and so-and-so,” — a list as long as my arm. Dear girls and dearer mother! I would not for the world have forgotten their commissions, or lost their little letters, for all the Benbows and Crosses in the world.

But I was confident in my home-comfort and peacefulness. When I got back to my club, however, three or four letters were lying for one, upon some of which I noticed the “immediate,” “urgent,” which old-fashioned people and anxious people still believe will influence the post-office and quicken the speed of the mails. I was about to open one of these, when the club porter brought me two telegrams, one of which, he said, had arrived the night before. I opened, as was to be expected, the last first, and this was what I read: “Why don’t you come or answer? For God’s sake, come. He is much worse.” This was a thunderbolt to fall upon a man’s head who had one only son, and he the light of his eyes! The other telegram, which I opened with hands trembling so much that I lost time by my haste, was to much the same purport: “No better; doctor afraid of brain-fever. Calls for you day and night. Let nothing detain you.” The first thing I did was to look up the time-tables to see if there was any way of getting off sooner than by the night-train, though I knew well enough there was not; and then I read the letters, which furnished, alas! too clearly, all the details. They told me that the boy had been pale for some time, with a scared look. His mother had noticed it before I left home, but would not say anything to alarm me. This look had increased day by day: and soon it was observed that Roland came home at a wild gallop through the park, his pony panting and in foam, himself “as white as a sheet,” but with the perspiration streaming from his forehead. For a long time he had resisted all questioning, but at length had developed such strange changes of mood, showing a reluctance to go to school, a desire to be fetched in the carriage at night — which was a ridiculous piece of luxury — an unwillingness to go out into the grounds, and nervous start at every sound, that his mother had insisted upon an explanation. When the boy — our boy Roland, who had never known what fear was — began to talk to her of voices he had heard in the park, and shadows that had appeared to him among the ruins, my wife promptly put him to bed and sent for Dr. Simson, which, of course, was the only thing to do.

I hurried off that evening, as may be supposed, with an anxious heart. How I got through the hours before the starting of the train, I cannot tell. We must all be thankful for the quickness of the railway when in anxiety; but to have thrown myself into a post-chaise as soon as horses could be put to, would have been a relief. I got to Edinburgh very early in the blackness of the winter morning, and scarcely dared look the man in the face, at whom I gasped, “What news?” My wife had sent the brougham for me, which I concluded, before the man spoke, was a bad sign. His answer was that stereotyped answer which leaves the imagination so wildly free — “Just the same.” Just the same! What might that mean? The horses seemed to me to creep along the long dark country road. As we dashed through the park, I thought I heard someone moaning among the trees, and clenched my fist at him (whoever he might be) with fury. Why had the fool of a woman at the gate allowed anyone to come in to disturb the quiet of the place? If I had not been in such hot haste to get home, I think I should have stopped the carriage and got out to see what tramp it was that had made an entrance, and chosen my grounds, of all places in the world, — when my boy was ill! — to grumble and groan in. But I had no reason to complain of our slow pace here. The horses flew like lightning along the intervening path, and drew up at the door all panting, as if they had run a race. My wife stood waiting to receive me, with a pale face, and a candle in her hand, which made her look paler still as the wind blew the flame about. “He is sleeping,” she said in a whisper, as if her voice might wake him. And I replied, when I could find my voice, also in a whisper, as though the jingling of the horses’ furniture and the sound of their hoofs must not have been more dangerous. I stood on the steps with her a moment, almost afraid to go in, now that I was here; and it seemed to me that I saw without observing, if I may say so, that the horses were unwilling to turn round, though their stables lay that way, or that the men were unwilling. These things occurred to me afterwards, though at the moment I was not capable of anything but to ask questions and to hear of the condition of the boy.

I looked at him from the door of his room, for we were afraid to go near, lest we should disturb that blessed sleep. It looked like actual sleep, not the lethargy into which my wife told me he would sometimes fall. She told me everything in the next room, which communicated with his, rising now and then and going to the door of communication; and in this there was much that was very startling and confusing to the mind. It appeared that ever since the winter began — since it was early dark, and night had fallen before his return from school — he had been hearing voices among the ruins: at first only a groaning, he said, at which his pony was as much alarmed as he was, but by degrees a voice. The tears ran down my wife’s cheeks as she described to me how he would start up in the night and cry out, “Oh, mother, let me in! oh, mother, let me in!” with a pathos which rent her heart. And she sitting there all the time, only longing to do everything his heart could desire! But though she would try to soothe him, crying, “You are at home, my darling. I am here. Don’t you know me? Your mother is here!” he would only stare at her, and after a while spring up again with the same cry. At other times he would be quite reasonable, she said, asking eagerly when I was coming, but declaring that he must go with me as soon as I did so, “to let them in.” “The doctor thinks his nervous system must have received a shock,” my wife said. “Oh, Henry, can it be that we have pushed him on too much with his work — a delicate boy like Roland? And what is his work in comparison with his health? Even you would think little of honours or prizes if it hurt the boy’s health.” Even I! — as if I were an inhuman father sacrificing my child to my ambition. But I would not increase her trouble by taking any notice. After awhile they persuaded me to lie down, to rest, and to eat, none of which things had been possible since I received their letters. The mere fact of being on the spot, of course, in itself was a great thing; and when I knew that I could be called in a moment, as soon as he was awake and wanted me, I felt capable, even in the dark, chill morning twilight, to snatch an hour or two’s sleep. As it happened, I was so worn out with the strain of anxiety, and he so quieted and consoled by knowing I had come, that I was not disturbed till the afternoon, when the twilight had again settled down. There was just daylight enough to see his face when I went to him; and what a change in a fortnight! He was paler and more worn, I thought, than even in those dreadful days in the plains before we left India. His hair seemed to me to have grown long and lank; his eyes were like blazing lights projecting out of his white face. He got hold of my hand in a cold and tremulous clutch, and waved to everybody to go away. “Go away — even mother,” he said; “go away.” This went to her heart; for she did not like that even I should have more of the boy’s confidence than herself; but my wife has never been a woman to think of herself, and she left us alone. “Are they all gone?” he said eagerly. “They would not let me speak. The doctor treated me as if I were a fool. You know I am not a fool, papa.”

“Yes, yes, my boy, I know. But you are ill, and quiet is so necessary. You are not only not a fool, Roland, but you are reasonable and understand. When you are ill you must deny yourself; you must not do everything that you might do being well.”

He waved his thin hand with a sort of indignation. “Then, father, I am not ill,” he cried. “Oh, I thought when you came you would not stop me, — you would see the sense of it! What do you think is the matter with me, all of you? Simson is well enough; but he is only a doctor. What do you think is the matter with me? I am no more ill than you are. A doctor, of course, he thinks you are ill the moment he looks at you — that’s what he’s there for — and claps you into bed.”

“Which is the best place for you at present, my dear boy.”

“I made up my mind,” cried the little fellow, “that I would stand it till you came home. I said to myself, I won’t frighten mother and the girls. But now, father,” he cried, half jumping out of bed, “it’s not illness: it’s a secret.”

His eyes shone so wildly, his face was so swept with strong feeling, that my heart sank within me. It could be nothing but fever that did it, and fever had been so fatal. I got him into my arms to put him back into bed. “Roland,” I said, humouring the poor child, which I knew was the only way, “if you are going to tell me this secret to do any good, you know you must be quite quiet, and not excite yourself. If you excite yourself, I must not let you speak.”

“Yes, father,” said the boy. He was quiet directly, like a man, as if he quite understood. When I had laid him back on his pillow, he looked up at me with that grateful, sweet look with which children, when they are ill, break one’s heart, the water coming into his eyes in his weakness. “I was sure as soon as you were here you would know what to do,” he said.

“To be sure, my boy. Now keep quiet, and tell it all out like a man.” To think I was telling lies to my own child! for I did it only to humour him, thinking, poor little fellow, his brain was wrong.

“Yes, father. Father, there is someone in the park — someone that has been badly used.”

“Hush, my dear; you remember there is to be no excitement. Well, who is this somebody, and who has been ill-using him? We will soon put a stop to that.”

“All,” cried Roland, “but it is not so easy as you think. I don’t know who it is. It is just a cry. Oh, if you could hear it! It gets into my head in my sleep. I heard it clear as clear — and they think that I am dreaming, or raving perhaps,” the boy said, with a sort of disdainful smile.

This look of his perplexed me; it was less like fever than I thought. “Are you quite sure you have not dreamed it, Roland?” I said.

“Dreamed? — that!” He was springing up again when he suddenly bethought himself, and lay down flat, with the same sort of smile on his face. “The pony heard it, too,” he said. “She jumped as if she had been shot. If I had not grasped at the reins — for I was frightened, father—”

“No shame to you, my boy,” said I, though I scarcely knew why.

“If I hadn’t held to her like a leech, she’d have pitched me over her head, and never drew breath till we were at the door. Did the pony dream it?” he said, with a soft disdain, yet indulgence for my foolishness. Then he added slowly, “It was only a cry the first time, and all the time before you went away. I wouldn’t tell you, for it was so wretched to be frightened. I thought it might be a hare or a rabbit snared, and I went in the morning and looked; but there was nothing. It was after you went I heard it really first; and this is what he says.” He raised himself on his elbow close to me, and looked me in the face: “‘Oh, mother, let me in! oh, mother, let me in!’” As he said the words a mist came over his face, the mouth quivered, the soft features all melted and changed, and when he had ended these pitiful words, dissolved in a shower of heavy tears.

Was it a hallucination? Was it the fever of the brain? Was it the disordered fancy caused by great bodily weakness? How could I tell? I thought it wisest to accept it as if it were all true.

“This is very touching, Roland,” I said.

“Oh, if you had just heard it, father! I said to myself, if father heard it he would do something; but mamma, you know, she’s given over to Simson, and that fellow’s a doctor, and never thinks of anything but clapping you into bed.”

“We must not blame Simson for being a doctor, Roland.”

“No, no,” said my boy, with delightful toleration and indulgence; “oh, no; that’s the good of him; that’s what he’s for; I know that. But you — you are different; you are just father; and you’ll do something — directly, papa, directly — this very night.”

“Surely,” I said. “No doubt it is some little lost child.”

He gave me a sudden, swift look, investigating my face as though to see whether, after all, this was everything my eminence as “father” came to, — no more than that. Then he got hold of my shoulder, clutching it with his thin hand. “Look here,” he said, with a quiver in his voice; “suppose it wasn’t — living at all!”

“My dear boy, how then could you have heard it?” I said.

He turned away from me with a pettish exclamation, — “As if you didn’t know better than that!”

“Do you want to tell me it is a ghost?” I said.

Roland withdrew his hand; his countenance assumed an aspect of great dignity and gravity; a slight quiver remained about his lips. “Whatever it was — you always said we were not to call names. It was something — in trouble. Oh, father, in terrible trouble!”

“But, my boy,” I said (I was at my wits’ end), “if it was a child that was lost, or any poor human creature — but, Roland, what do you want me to do?”

“I should know if I was you,” said the child eagerly. “That is what I always said to myself — Father will know. Oh, papa, papa, to have to face it night after night, in such terrible, terrible trouble, and never to be able to do it any good! I don’t want to cry; it’s like a baby, I know; but what can I do else? Out there all by itself in the ruin, and nobody to help it! I can’t bear it! I can’t bear it!” cried my generous boy. And in his weakness he burst out, after many attempts to restrain it, into a great childish fit of sobbing and tears.

I do not know that I ever was in a greater perplexity, in my life; and afterwards, when I thought of it, there was something comic in it too. It is bad enough to find your child’s mind possessed with the conviction that he has seen — or heard — a ghost; but that he should require you to go instantly and help that ghost was the most bewildering experience that had ever come my way. I am a sober man myself, and not superstitious — at least any more than everybody is superstitious. Of course I do not believe in ghosts; but I don’t deny, any more than other people, that there are stories which I cannot pretend to understand. My blood got a sort of chill in my veins at the idea that Roland should be a ghost-seer; for that generally means a hysterical temperament and weak health, and all that men most hate and fear for their children. But that I should take up his ghost and right its wrongs, and save it from its trouble, was such a mission as was enough to confuse any man. I did my best to console my boy without giving any promise of this astonishing kind; but he was too sharp for me: he would have none of my caresses. With sobs breaking in at intervals upon his voice, and the rain-drops hanging on his eyelids, he yet returned to the charge.

“It will be there now! — it will be there all the night! Oh, think, papa, think if it was me! I can’t rest for thinking of it. Don’t!” he cried, putting away my hand — “don’t! You go and help it, and mother can take care of me.”

“But, Roland, what can I do?”

My boy opened his eyes, which were large with weakness and fever, and gave me a smile such, I think, as sick children only know the secret of. “I was sure you would know as soon as you came. I always said, Father will know. And mother,” he cried, with a softening of repose upon his face, his limbs relaxing, his form sinking with a luxurious ease in his bed — “mother can come and take care of me.”

I called her, and saw him turn to her with the complete dependence of a child; and then I went away and left them, as perplexed a man as any in Scotland. I must say, however, I had this consolation, that my mind was greatly eased about Roland. He might be under a hallucination; but his head was clear enough, and I did not think him so ill as everybody else did. The girls were astonished even at the ease with which I took it. “How do you think he is?” they said in a breath, coming round me, laying hold of me. “Not half so ill as I expected,” I said; “not very bad at all.” “Oh, papa, you are a darling!” cried Agatha, kissing me, and crying upon my shoulder; while little Jeanie, who was as pale as Roland, clasped both her arms round mine, and could not speak at all. I knew nothing about it, not half so much as Simson; but they believed in me: they had a feeling that all would go right now. God is very good to you when your children look to you like that. It makes one humble, not proud. I was not worthy of it; and then I recollected that I had to act the part of a father to Roland’s ghost, which made me almost laugh, though I might just as well have cried. It was the strangest mission that ever was entrusted to mortal man.

It was then I remembered suddenly the looks of the men when they turned to take the brougham to the stables in the dark that morning. They had not liked it, and the horses had not liked it. I remembered that even in my anxiety about Roland I had heard them tearing along the avenue back to the stables, and had made a memorandum mentally that I must speak of it. It seemed to me that the best thing I could do was to go to the stables now and make a few inquiries. It is impossible to fathom the minds of rustics; there might be some devilry of practical joking, for anything I knew; or they might have some interest in getting up a bad reputation for the Brentwood avenue.

It was getting dark by the time I went out, and nobody who knows the country will need to be told how black is the darkness of a November night under high laurel-bushes and yew-trees. I walked into the heart of the shrubberies two or three times, not seeing a step before me, till I came out upon the broader carriage-road, where the trees opened a little, and there was a faint grey glimmer of sky visible, under which the great limes and elms stood darkling like ghosts; but it grew black again as I approached the corner where the ruins lay. Both eyes and ears were on the alert, as may be supposed; but I could see nothing in the absolute gloom, and, so far as I can recollect, I heard nothing. Nevertheless there came a strong impression upon me that somebody was there. It is a sensation which most people have felt. I have seen when it has been strong enough to awake me out of sleep, the sense of someone looking at me. I suppose my imagination had been affected by Roland’s story; and the mystery of the darkness is always full of suggestions. I stamped my feet violently on the gravel to rouse myself, and called out sharply, “Who’s there?” Nobody answered, nor did I expect anyone to answer, but the impression had been made. I was so foolish that I did not like to look back, but went sideways, keeping an eye on the gloom behind.

It was with great relief that I spied the light in the stables, making a sort of oasis in the darkness. I walked very quickly into the midst of that lighted and cheerful place, and thought the clank of the groom’s pail one of the pleasantest sounds I had ever heard. The coachman was the head of this little colony, and it was to his house I went to pursue my investigations. He was a native of the district, and had taken care of the place in the absence of the family for years; it was impossible but that he must know everything that was going on, and all the traditions of the place. The men, I could see, eyed me anxiously when I thus appeared at such an hour among them, and followed me with their eyes to Jarvis’s house, where he lived alone with his old wife, their children being all married and out in the world. Mrs. Jarvis met me with anxious questions. How was the poor young gentleman? But the others knew, I could see by their faces, that not even this was the foremost thing in my mind.

•    •    •

“Noises? — oh ay, there’ll be noises, — the wind in the trees, and the water soughing down the glen. As for tramps, Cornel, no, there’s little o’ that kind o’ cattle about here; and Merran at the gate’s a careful body.” Jarvis moved about with some embarrassment from one leg to another as he spoke. He kept in the shade, and did not look at me more than he could help. Evidently his mind was perturbed, and he had reasons for keeping his own counsel. His wife sat by, giving him a quick look now and then, but saying nothing. The kitchen was very snug and warm and bright — as different as could be from the chill and mystery of the night outside.

“I think you are trifling with me, Jarvis,” I said.

“Triflin’, Cornel? No me. What would I trifle for? If the deevil himsel was in the auld hoose, I have no interest in ’t one way or another—”

“Sandy, hold your peace!” cried his wife imperatively.

“And what am I to hold my peace for, wi’ the Cornel standing there asking a’ thae questions? I’m saying, if the deevil himsel—”

“And I’m telling ye hold your peace!” cried the woman, in great excitement. “Dark November weather and lang nichts, and us that ken a’ we ken. How daur ye name — a name that shouldna be spoken?” She threw down her stocking and got up, also in great agitation. “I tellt ye you never could keep it. It’s no a thing that will hide, and the haill toun [whole town] kens as weel as you or me. Tell the Cornel straight out — or see, I’ll do it. I dinna hold wi’ your secrets, and a secret that the haill toun kens!” She snapped her fingers with an air of large disdain. As for Jarvis, ruddy and big as he was, he shrank to nothing before this decided woman. He repeated to her two or three times her own adjuration, “Hold your peace!” then, suddenly changing his tone, cried out, “Tell him then, confound ye! I’ll wash my hands o’t. If a’ the ghosts in Scotland were in the auld hoose, is that ony concern o’ mine?”

After this I elicited without much difficulty the whole story. In the opinion of the Jarvises, and of everybody about, the certainty that the place was haunted was beyond all doubt. As Sandy and his wife warmed to the tale, one tripping up another in their eagerness to tell everything, it gradually developed as distinct a superstition as I ever heard, and not without poetry and pathos. How long it was since the voice had been heard first, nobody could tell with certainty. Jarvis’s opinion was that his father, who had been coachman at Brentwood before him, had never heard anything about it, and that the whole thing had arisen within the last ten years, since the complete dismantling of the old house; which was a wonderfully modern date for a tale so well authenticated. According to these witnesses, and to several whom I questioned afterwards, and who were all in perfect agreement, it was only in the months of November and December that “the visitation” occurred. During these months, the darkest of the year, scarcely a night passed without the recurrence of these inexplicable cries. Nothing, it was said, had ever been seen — at least, nothing that could be identified. Some people, bolder or more imaginative than the others, had seen the darkness moving, Mrs. Jarvis said, with unconscious poetry. It began when night fell, and continued, at intervals, till day broke. Very often it was only all inarticulate cry and moaning, but sometimes the words which had taken possession of my poor boy’s fancy had been distinctly audible — “Oh, mother, let me in!” The Jarvises were not aware that there had ever been any investigation into it. The estate of Brentwood had lapsed into the hands of a distant branch of the family, who had lived but little there; and of the many people who had taken it, as I had done, few had remained through two Decembers. And nobody had taken the trouble to make a very close examination into the facts. “No, no,” Jarvis said, shaking his head, “No, no, Cornel. Wha wad set themsels up for a laughin’-stock to a’ the country-side, making a wark about a ghost? Naebody believes in ghosts. It bid to be the wind in the trees, the last gentleman said, or some effec’ o’ the water wrastlin’ among the rocks. He said it was a’ quite easy explained; but he gave up the hoose. And when you cam, Cornel, we were awfu’ anxious you should never hear. What for should I have spoiled the bargain and hairmed the property for no-thing?”

“Do you call my child’s life nothing?” I said in the trouble of the moment, unable to restrain myself. “And instead of telling this all to me, you have told it to him — to a delicate boy, a child unable to sift evidence or judge for himself, a tender-hearted young creature—”

I was walking about the room with an anger all the hotter that I felt it to be most likely quite unjust. My heart was full of bitterness against the stolid retainers of a family who were content to risk other people’s children and comfort rather than let a house be empty. If I had been warned I might have taken precautions, or left the place, or sent Roland away, a hundred things which now I could not do; and here I was with my boy in a brain-fever, and his life, the most precious life on earth, hanging in the balance, dependent on whether or not I could get to the reason of a commonplace ghost-story! I paced about in high wrath, not seeing what I was to do; for to take Roland away, even if he were able to travel, would not settle his agitated mind; and I feared even that a scientific explanation of refracted sound or reverberation, or any other of the easy certainties with which we elder men are silenced, would have very little effect upon the boy.

“Cornel,” said Jarvis solemnly, “and she’ll bear me witness — the young gentleman never heard a word from me — no, nor from either groom or gardener; I’ll gie ye my word for that. In the first place, he’s no a lad that invites ye to talk. There are some that are, and some that are na’. Some will draw ye on, till ye’ve tellt them a’ the clatter of the toun, and a’ ye ken, and whiles mair. But Maister Roland, his mind’s fu’ of his books. He’s aye civil and kind, and a fine lad; but no that sort. And ye see it’s for a’ our interest, Cornel, that you should stay at Brentwood. I took it upon me mysel to pass the word, — ‘No a syllable to Maister Roland, nor to the young leddies — no a syllable.’ The women-servants, that have little reason to be out at night, ken little or nothing about it. And some think it grand to have a ghost so long as they’re no in the way of coming across it. If you had been tellt the story to begin with, maybe ye would have thought so yourself.”

This was true enough, though it did not throw any light upon my perplexity. If we had heard of it to start with, it is possible that all the family would have considered the possession of a ghost a distinct advantage. It is the fashion of the times. We never think what a risk it is to play with young imaginations, but cry out, in the fashionable jargon, “A ghost! — nothing else was wanted to make it perfect.” I should not have been above this myself. I should have smiled, of course, at the idea of the ghost at all, but then to feel that it was mine would have pleased my vanity. Oh, yes, I claim no exemption. The girls would have been delighted. I could fancy their eagerness, their interest, and excitement. No; if we had been told, it would have done no good — we should have made the bargain all the more eagerly, the fools that we are. “And there has been no attempt to investigate it,” I said, “to see what it really is?”

“Eh, Cornel,” said the coachman’s wife, “wha would investigate, as ye call it, a thing that nobody believes in? Ye would be the laughin’-stock of a’ the country-side, as my man says.”

“But you believe in it,” I said, turning upon her hastily. The woman was taken by surprise. She made a step backward out of my way.

“Lord, Cornel, how ye frichten a body! Me! — there’s awfu’ strange things in this world. An unlearned person doesna ken what to think. But the minister and the gentry they just laugh in your face. Inquire into the thing that is not! Na, na, we just let it be.”

“Come with me, Jarvis,” I said hastily, “and we’ll make an attempt at least. Say nothing to the men or to anybody. I’ll come back after dinner, and we’ll make a serious attempt to see what it is, if it is anything. If I hear it — which I doubt — you may be sure I shall never rest till I make it out. Be ready for me about ten o’clock.”

“Me, Cornel!” Jarvis said, in a faint voice. I had not been looking at him in my own preoccupation, but when I did so, I found that the greatest change had come over the fat and ruddy coachman. “Me, Cornel!” he repeated, wiping the perspiration from his brow. His ruddy face hung in flabby folds, his knees knocked together, his voice seemed half extinguished in his throat. Then he began to rub his hands and smile upon me in a deprecating, imbecile way. “There’s nothing I wouldna do to pleasure ye, Cornel,” taking a step further back. “I’m sure she kens I’ve aye said I never had to do with a mair fair, weel-spoken gentleman—”

Here Jarvis came to a pause, again looking at me, rubbing his hands.

“Well?” I said.

“But eh, sir!” he went on, with the same imbecile yet insinuating smile, “if ye’ll reflect that I am no used to my feet. With a horse atween my legs, or the reins in my hand, I’m maybe nae worse than other men; but on fit, Cornel — It’s no the — bogles — but I’ve been cavalry, ye see,” with a little hoarse laugh, “a’ my life. To face a thing ye dinna understan’ — on your feet, Cornel.”

“Well, sir, if I do it,” said I tartly, “why shouldn’t you?”

“Eh, Cornel, there’s an awfu’ difference. In the first place, ye tramp about the haill countryside, and think naething of it; but a walk tires me mair than a hunard miles’ drive; and then ye’re a gentleman, and do your ain pleasure; and you’re no so auld as me; and it’s for your ain bairn, ye see, Cornel; and then—”

“He believes in it, Cornel, and you dinna believe in it,” the woman said.

“Will you come with me?” I said, turning to her.

She jumped back, upsetting her chair in her bewilderment. “Me!” with a scream, and then fell into a sort of hysterical laugh. “I wouldna say but what I would go; but what would the folk say to hear of Cornel Mortimer with an auld silly woman at his heels?”

The suggestion made me laugh too, though I had little inclination for it. “I’m sorry you have so little spirit, Jarvis,” I said. “I must find someone else, I suppose.”

Jarvis, touched by this, began to remonstrate, but I cut him short. My butler was a soldier who had been with me in India, and was not supposed to fear anything — man or devil — certainly not the former; and I felt that I was losing time. The Jarvises were too thankful to get rid of me. They attended me to the door with the most anxious courtesies. Outside, the two grooms stood close by, a little confused by my sudden exit. I don’t know if perhaps they had been listening — at least standing as near as possible, to catch any scrap of the conversation. I waved my hand to them as I went past, in answer to their salutations, and it was very apparent to me that they also were glad to see me go.

And it will be thought very strange, but it would be weak not to add, that I myself, though bent on the investigation I have spoken of, pledged to Roland to carry it out, and feeling that my boy’s health, perhaps his life, depended on the result of my inquiry, — I felt the most unaccountable reluctance to pass these ruins on my way home. My curiosity was intense; and yet it was all my mind could do to pull my body along. I daresay the scientific people would describe it the other way, and attribute my cowardice to the state of my stomach. I went on; but if I had followed my impulse, I should have turned and bolted. Everything in me seemed to cry out against it: my heart thumped, my pulses all began, like sledge-hammers, beating against my ears and every sensitive part. It was very dark, as I have said; the old house, with its shapeless tower, loomed a heavy mass through the darkness, which was only not entirely so solid as itself. On the other hand, the great dark cedars of which we were so proud seemed to fill up the night. My foot strayed out of the path in my confusion and the gloom together, and I brought myself up with a cry as I felt myself knock against something solid. What was it? The contact with hard stone and lime and prickly bramble-bushes restored me a little to myself. “Oh, it’s only the old gable,” I said aloud, with a little laugh to reassure myself. The rough feeling of the stones reconciled me. As I groped about thus, I shook off my visionary folly. What so easily explained as that I should have strayed from the path in the darkness? This brought me back to common existence, as if I had been shaken by a wise hand out of all the silliness of superstition. How silly it was, after all! What did it matter which path I took? I laughed again, this time with better heart, when suddenly, in a moment, the blood was chilled in my veins, a shiver stole along my spine, my faculties seemed to forsake me. Close by me, at my side, at my feet, there was a sigh. No, not a groan, not a moaning, not anything so tangible — a perfectly soft, faint, inarticulate sigh. I sprang back, and my heart stopped beating. Mistaken! no, mistake was impossible. I heard it as clearly as I hear myself speak; a long, soft, weary sigh, as if drawn to the utmost, and emptying out a load of sadness that filled the breast. To hear this in the solitude, in the dark, in the night (though it was still early), had an effect which I cannot describe. I feel it now — something cold creeping over me, up into my hair, and down to my feet, which refused to move. I cried out, with a trembling voice, “Who is there?” as I had done before; but there was no reply.

I got home I don’t quite know how; but in my mind there was no longer any indifference as to the thing, whatever it was, that haunted these ruins. My scepticism disappeared like a mist. I was as firmly determined that there was something as Roland was. I did not for a moment pretend to myself that it was possible I could be deceived; there were movements and noises which I understood all about — cracklings of small branches in the frost, and little rolls of gravel on the path, such as have a very eerie sound sometimes, and perplex you with wonder as to who has done it, when there is no real mystery; but I assure you all these little movements of nature don’t affect you one bit when there is something. I understood them. I did not understand the sigh. That was not simple nature; there was meaning in it, feeling, the soul of a creature invisible. This is the thing that human nature trembles at — a creature invisible, yet with sensations, feelings, a power somehow of expressing itself.

I had not the same sense of unwillingness to turn my back upon the scene of the mystery which I had experienced in going to the stables; but I almost ran home, impelled by eagerness to get everything done that had to be done, in order to apply myself to finding it out. Bagley was in the hall as usual when I went in. He was always there in the afternoon, always with the appearance of perfect occupation, yet, so far as I know, never doing anything. The door was open, so that I hurried in without any pause, breathless; but the sight of his calm regard, as he came to help me off with my overcoat, subdued me in a moment. Anything out of the way, anything incomprehensible, faded to nothing in the presence of Bagley. You saw and wondered how he was made: the parting of his hair, the tie of his white neckcloth, the fit of his trousers, all perfect as works of art; but you could see how they were done, which makes all the difference. I flung myself upon him, so to speak, without waiting to note the extreme unlikeness of the man to anything of the kind I meant. “Bagley,” I said, “I want you to come out with me tonight to watch for—”

“Poachers, Colonel?” he said, a gleam of pleasure running all over him.

“No, Bagley; a great deal worse,” I cried.

“Yes, Colonel; at what hour, sir?” the man said; but then I had not told him what it was.

It was ten o’clock when we set out. All was perfectly quiet indoors. My wife was with Roland, who had been quite calm, she said, and who (though, no doubt, the fever must run its course) had been better ever since I came. I told Bagley to put on a thick greatcoat over his evening coat, and did the same myself, with strong boots; for the soil was like a sponge, or worse. Talking to him, I almost forgot what we were going to do. It was darker even than it had been before, and Bagley kept very close to me as we went along. I had a small lantern in my hand, which gave us a partial guidance. We had come to the corner where the path turns. On one side was the bowling-green, which the girls had taken possession of for their croquet-ground — a wonderful enclosure surrounded by high hedges of holly, three hundred years old and more; on the other, the ruins. Both were black as night; but before we got so far, there was a little opening in which we could just discern the trees and the lighter line of the road. I thought it best to pause there and take breath. “Bagley,” I said, “there is something about these ruins I don’t understand. It is there I am going. Keep your eyes open and your wits about you. Be ready to pounce upon any stranger you see — anything, man or woman. Don’t hurt, but seize anything you see.” “Colonel,” said Bagley, with a little tremor in his breath, “they do say there’s things there — as is neither man nor woman.” There was no time for words. “Are you game to follow me, my man? that’s the question,” I said. Bagley fell in without a word, and saluted. I knew then I had nothing to fear.

We went, so far as I could guess, exactly as I had come; when I heard that sigh. The darkness, however, was so complete that all marks, as of trees or paths, disappeared. One moment we felt our feet on the gravel, another sinking noiselessly into the slippery grass, that was all. I had shut up my lantern, not wishing to scare anyone, whoever it might be. Bagley followed, it seemed to me, exactly in my footsteps as I made my way, as I supposed, towards the mass of the ruined house. We seemed to take a long time groping along seeking this; the squash of the wet soil under our feet was the only thing that marked our progress. After a while I stood still to see, or rather feel, where we were. The darkness was very still, but no stiller than is usual in a winter’s night. The sounds I have mentioned — the crackling of twigs, the roll of a pebble, the sound of some rustle in the dead leaves, or creeping creature on the grass — were audible when you listened, all mysterious enough when your mind is disengaged, but to me cheering now as signs of the livingness of nature, even in the death of the frost. As we stood still there came up from the trees in the glen the prolonged hoot of an owl. Bagley started with alarm, being in a state of general nervousness, and not knowing what he was afraid of. But to me the sound was encouraging and pleasant, being so comprehensible.

“An owl,” I said, under my breath. “Y-es, Colonel,” said Bagley, his teeth chattering. We stood still about five minutes, while it broke into the still brooding of the air, the sound widening out in circles, dying upon the darkness. This sound, which is not a cheerful one, made me almost gay. It was natural, and relieved the tension of the mind. I moved on with new courage, my nervous excitement calming down.

When all at once, quite suddenly, close to us, at our feet, there broke out a cry. I made a spring backwards in the first moment of surprise and horror, and in doing so came sharply against the same rough masonry and brambles that had struck me before. This new sound came upwards from the ground — a low, moaning, wailing voice, full of suffering and pain. The contrast between it and the hoot of the owl was indescribable; the one with a wholesome wildness and naturalness that hurt nobody; the other, a sound that made one’s blood curdle, full of human misery. With a great deal of fumbling — for in spite of everything I could do to keep up my courage my hands shook — I managed to remove the slide of my lantern. The light leaped out like something living, and made the place visible in a moment. We were inside what would have been the ruined building had anything remained but the gable-wall which I have described. It was close to us, the vacant doorway in it going out straight into the blackness outside. The light showed the bit of wall, the ivy glistening upon it in clouds of dark green, the bramble-branches waving, and below, the open door — a door that led to nothing. It was from this the voice came which died out just as the light flashed upon this strange scene. There was a moment’s silence, and then it broke forth again. The sound was so near, so penetrating, so pitiful, that, in the nervous start I gave, the light fell out of my hand. As I groped for it in the dark my hand was clutched by Bagley, who, I think, must have dropped upon his knees; but I was too much perturbed myself to think much of this. He clutched at me in the confusion of his terror, forgetting all his usual decorum. “For God’s sake, what is it, sir?” he gasped. If I yielded, there was evidently an end of both of us. “I can’t tell,” I said, “any more than you; that’s what we’ve got to find out. Up, man, up!” I pulled him to his feet. “Will you go round and examine the other side, or will you stay here with the lantern?” Bagley gasped at me with a face of horror. “Can’t we stay together, Colonel?” he said — his knees were trembling under him. I pushed him against the corner of the wall, and put the light into his hands. “Stand fast till I come back; shake yourself together, man; let nothing pass you,” I said. The voice was within two or three feet of us; of that there could be no doubt.

I went myself to the other side of the wall, keeping close to it. The light shook in Bagley’s hand, but, tremulous though it was, shone out through the vacant door, one oblong block of light marking all the crumbling corners and hanging masses of foliage. Was that something dark huddled in a heap by the side of it? I pushed forward across the light in the doorway, and fell upon it with my hands; but it was only a juniper-bush growing close against the wall. Meanwhile, the sight of my figure crossing the doorway had brought Bagley’s nervous excitement to a height: he flew at me, gripping my shoulder. “I’ve got him, Colonel! I’ve got him!” he cried, with a voice of sudden exultation. He thought it was a man, and was at once relieved. But at that moment the voice burst forth again between us, at our feet — more close to us than any separate being could be. He dropped off from me, and fell against the wall, his jaw dropping as if he were dying. I suppose, at the same moment, he saw that it was me whom he had clutched. I, for my part, had scarcely more command of myself. I snatched the light out of his hand, and flashed it all about me wildly. Nothing, — the juniper-bush which I thought I had never seen before, the heavy growth of the glistening ivy, the brambles waving. It was close to my ears now, crying, crying, pleading as if for life. Either I heard the same words Roland had heard, or else, in my excitement, his imagination got possession of mine. The voice went on, growing into distinct articulation, but wavering about, now from one point, now from another, as if the owner of it were moving slowly back and forward. “Mother! mother!” and then an outburst of wailing. As my mind steadied, getting accustomed (as one’s mind gets accustomed to anything), it seemed to me as if some uneasy, miserable creature was pacing up and down before a closed door. Sometimes — but that must have been excitement — I thought I heard a sound like knocking, and then another burst, “Oh, mother! mother!” All this close, close to the space where I was standing with my lantern, now before me, now behind me: a creature restless, unhappy, moaning, crying, before the vacant doorway, which no one could either shut or open more.

“Do you hear it, Bagley? do you hear what it is saying?” I cried, stepping in through the doorway. He was lying against the wall, his eyes glazed, half dead with terror. He made a motion of his lips as if to answer me, but no sounds came; then lifted his hand with a curious imperative movement as if ordering me to be silent and listen. And how long I did so I cannot tell. It began to have an interest, an exciting hold upon me, which I could not describe. It seemed to call up visibly a scene anyone could understand — a something shut out, restlessly wandering to and fro; sometimes the voice dropped, as if throwing itself down, sometimes wandered off a few paces, growing sharp and clear. “Oh, mother, let me in! oh, mother, mother, let me in! oh, let me in!” Every word was clear to me. No wonder the boy had gone wild with pity. I tried to steady my mind upon Roland, upon his conviction that I could do something, but my head swam with the excitement, even when I partially overcame the terror. At last the words died away, and there was a sound of sobs and moaning. I cried out, “In the name of God, who are you?” with a kind of feeling in my mind that to use the name of God was profane, seeing that I did not believe in ghosts or anything supernatural; but I did it all the same, and waited, my heart giving a leap of terror lest there should be a reply. Why this should have been I cannot tell, but I had a feeling that if there was an answer it would be more than I could bear. But there was no answer; the moaning went on, and then, as if it had been real, the voice rose a little higher again, the words recommenced, “Oh, mother, let me in! oh, mother, let me in!” with an expression that was heart-breaking to hear.

As if it had been real! What do I mean by that? I suppose I got less alarmed as the thing went on. I began to recover the use of my senses — I seemed to explain it all to myself by saying that this had once happened, that it was a recollection of a real scene. Why there should have seemed something quite satisfactory and composing in this explanation I cannot tell, but so it was. I began to listen almost as if it had been a play, forgetting Bagley, who, I almost think, had fainted, leaning against the wall. I was startled out of this strange spectatorship that had fallen upon me by the sudden rush of something which made my heart jump once more, a large black figure in the doorway waving its arms. “Come in! come in! come in!” it shouted out hoarsely at the top of a deep bass voice, and then poor Bagley fell down senseless across the threshold. He was less sophisticated than I, — he had not been able to bear it any longer. I took him for something supernatural, as he took me, and it was some time before I awoke to the necessities of the moment. I remembered only after, that from the time I began to give my attention to the man, I heard the other voice no more. It was some time before I brought him to. It must have been a strange scene: the lantern making a luminous spot in the darkness, the man’s white face lying on the black earth, I over him, doing what I could for him, probably I should have been thought to be murdering him had anyone seen us. When at last I succeeded in pouring a little brandy down his throat, he sat up and looked about him wildly. “What’s up?” he said; then recognizing me, tried to struggle to his feet with a faint “Beg your pardon, Colonel.” I got him home as best I could, making him lean upon my arm. The great fellow was as weak as a child. Fortunately he did not for some time remember what had happened. From the time Bagley fell the voice had stopped, and all was still.

•    •    •

“You’ve got an epidemic in your house, Colonel,” Simson said to me next morning. “What’s the meaning of it all? Here’s your butler raving about a voice. This will never do, you know; and so far as I can make out, you are in it too.”

“Yes, I am in it, Doctor. I thought I had better speak to you. Of course you are treating Roland all right, but the boy is not raving, he is as sane as you or me. It’s all true.”

“As sane as — I — or you. I never thought the boy insane. He’s got cerebral excitement, fever. I don’t know what you’ve got. There’s something very queer about the look of your eyes.”

“Come,” said I, “you can’t put us all to bed, you know. You had better listen and hear the symptoms in full.”

The Doctor shrugged his shoulders, but he listened to me patiently. He did not believe a word of the story, that was clear; but he heard it all from beginning to end. “My dear fellow,” he said, “the boy told me just the same. It’s an epidemic. When one person falls a victim to this sort of thing, it’s as safe as can be — there’s always two or three.”

“Then how do you account for it?” I said.

“Oh, account for it! — that’s a different matter; there’s no accounting for the freaks our brains are subject to. If it’s delusion, if it’s some trick of the echoes or the winds — some phonetic disturbance or other—”

“Come with me tonight, and judge for yourself,” I said.

Upon this, he laughed aloud, then said, “That’s not such a bad idea; but it would ruin me forever if it were known that John Simson was ghost-hunting.”

“There it is,” said I; “you dart down on us who are unlearned with your phonetic disturbances, but you daren’t examine what the thing really is for fear of being laughed at. That’s science!”

“It’s not science — it’s common-sense,” said the Doctor. “The thing has delusion on the front of it. It is encouraging an unwholesome tendency even to examine. What good could come of it? Even if I am convinced, I shouldn’t believe.”

“I should have said so yesterday; and I don’t want you to be convinced or to believe,” said I. “If you prove it to be a delusion, I shall be very much obliged to you for one. Come; somebody must go with me.”

“You are cool,” said the Doctor. “You’ve disabled this poor fellow of yours, and made him — on that point — a lunatic for life; and now you want to disable me. But, for once, I’ll do it. To save appearance, if you’ll give me a bed, I’ll come over after my last rounds.”

It was agreed that I should meet him at the gate, and that we should visit the scene of last night’s occurrences before we came to the house, so that nobody might be the wiser. It was scarcely possible to hope that the cause of Bagley’s sudden illness should not somehow steal into the knowledge of the servants at least, and it was better that all should be done as quietly as possible. The day seemed to me a very long one. I had to spend a certain part of it with Roland, which was a terrible ordeal for me, for what could I say to the boy? The improvement continued, but he was still in a very precarious state, and the trembling vehemence with which he turned to me when his mother left the room filled me with alarm. “Father?” he said quietly. “Yes, my boy, I am giving my best attention to it; all is being done that I can do. I have not come to any conclusion — yet. I am neglecting nothing you said,” I cried. What I could not do was to give his active mind any encouragement to dwell upon the mystery. It was a hard predicament, for some satisfaction had to be given him. He looked at me very wistfully, with the great blue eyes which shone so large and brilliant out of his white and worn face. “You must trust me,” I said. “Yes, father. Father understands,” he said to himself, as if to soothe some inward doubt. I left him as soon as I could. He was about the most precious thing I had on earth, and his health my first thought; but yet somehow, in the excitement of this other subject, I put that aside, and preferred not to dwell upon Roland, which was the most curious part of it all.

That night at eleven I met Simson at the gate. He had come by train, and I let him in gently myself. I had been so much absorbed in the coming experiment that I passed the ruins in going to meet him, almost without thought, if you can understand that. I had my lantern; and he showed me a coil of taper which he had ready for use. “There is nothing like light,” he said, in his scoffing tone. It was a very still night, scarcely a sound, but not so dark. We could keep the path without difficulty as we went along. As we approached the spot we could hear a low moaning, broken occasionally by a bitter cry. “Perhaps that is your voice,” said the Doctor; “I thought it must be something of the kind. That’s a poor brute caught in some of these infernal traps of yours; you’ll find it among the bushes somewhere.” I said nothing. I felt no particular fear, but a triumphant satisfaction in what was to follow. I led him to the spot where Bagley and I had stood on the previous night.

All was silent as a winter night could be — so silent that we heard far off the sound of the horses in the stables, the shutting of a window at the house. Simson lighted his taper and went peering about, poking into all the corners. We looked like two conspirators lying in wait for some unfortunate traveller; but not a sound broke the quiet. The moaning had stopped before we came up; a star or two shone over us in the sky, looking down as if surprised at our strange proceedings. Dr. Simson did nothing but utter subdued laughs under his breath. “I thought as much,” he said. “It is just the same with tables and all other kinds of ghostly apparatus; a sceptic’s presence stops everything. When I am present nothing ever comes off. How long do you think it will be necessary to stay here? Oh, I don’t complain; only when you are satisfied, I am — quite.”

I will not deny that I was disappointed beyond measure by this result. It made me look like a credulous fool. It gave the Doctor such a pull over me as nothing else could. I should point all his morals for years to come; and his materialism, his scepticism, would be increased beyond endurance. “It seems, indeed,” I said, “that there is to be no—”

“Manifestation,” he said, laughing; “that is what all the mediums say. No manifestations, in consequence of the presence of an unbeliever.” His laugh sounded very uncomfortable to me in the silence; and it was now near midnight. But that laugh seemed the signal; before it died away the moaning we had heard before was resumed. It started from some distance off, and came towards us, nearer and nearer, like someone walking along and moaning to himself. There could be no idea now that it was a hare caught in a trap. The approach was slow, like that of a weak person, with little halts and pauses. We heard it coming along the grass straight towards the vacant doorway. Simson had been a little startled by the first sound. He said hastily, “That child has no business to be out so late.” But he felt, as well as I, that this was no child’s voice. As it came nearer, he grew silent, and, going to the doorway with his taper, stood looking out towards the sound. The taper being unprotected blew about in the night air, though there was scarcely any wind. I threw the light of my lantern steady and white across the same space. It was in a blaze of light in the midst of the blackness. A little icy thrill had gone over me at the first sound, but as it came close, I confess that my only feeling was satisfaction. The scoffer could scoff no more. The light touched his own face, and showed a very perplexed countenance. If he was afraid, he concealed it with great success, but he was perplexed. And then all that had happened on the previous night was enacted once more. It fell strangely upon me with a sense of repetition. Every cry, every sob seemed the same as before. I listened almost without any emotion at all in my own person, thinking of its effect upon Simson. He maintained a very bold front, on the whole. All that coming and going of the voice was, if our ears could be trusted, exactly in front of the vacant, blank doorway, blazing full of light, which caught and shone in the glistening leaves of the great hollies at a little distance. Not a rabbit could have crossed the turf without being seen; but there was nothing. After a time, Simson, with a certain caution and bodily reluctance, as it seemed to me, went out with his roll of taper into this space. His figure showed against the holly in full outline. Just at this moment the voice sank, as was its custom, and seemed to fling itself down at the door. Simson recoiled violently, as if someone had come up against him, then turned, and held his taper low, as if examining something. “Do you see anybody?” I cried in a whisper, feeling the chill of nervous panic steal over me at this action. “It’s nothing but a ——— confounded juniper-bush,” he said. This I knew very well to be nonsense, for the juniper-bush was on the other side. He went about after this round and round, poking his taper everywhere, then returned to me on the inner side of the wall. He scoffed no longer; his face was contracted and pale. “How long does this go on?” he whispered to me, like a man who does not wish to interrupt someone who is speaking. I had become too much perturbed myself to remark whether the successions and changes of the voice were the same as last night. It suddenly went out in the air almost as he was speaking, with a soft reiterated sob dying away. If there had been anything to be seen, I should have said that the person was at that moment crouching on the ground close to the door.

We walked home very silent afterwards. It was only when we were in sight of the house that I said, “What do you think of it?” “I can’t tell what to think of it,” he said quickly. He took — though he was a very temperate man — not the claret I was going to offer him, but some brandy from the tray, and swallowed it almost undiluted. “Mind you, I don’t believe a word of it,” he said, when he had lighted his candle; “but I can’t tell what to think,” he turned round to add, when he was half-way up-stairs.

All of this, however, did me no good with the solution of my problem. I was to help this weeping, sobbing thing, which was already to me as distinct a personality as anything I knew — or what should I say to Roland? It was on my heart that my boy would die if I could not find some way of helping this creature. You may be surprised that I should speak of it in this way. I did not know if it was man or woman; but I no more doubted that it was a soul in pain than I doubted my own being; and it was my business to soothe this pain — to deliver it, if that was possible. Was ever such a task given to an anxious father trembling for his only boy? I felt in my heart, fantastic as it may appear, that I must fulfil this somehow, or part with my child; and you may conceive that rather than do that I was ready to die. But even my dying would not have advanced me, unless by bringing me into the same world with that seeker at the door.

•    •    •

Next morning Simson was out before breakfast, and came in with evident signs of the damp grass on his boots, and a look of worry and weariness, which did not say much for the night he had passed. He improved a little after breakfast, and visited his two patients, for Bagley was still an invalid. I went out with him on his way to the train, to hear what he had to say about the boy. “He is going on very well,” he said; “there are no complications as yet. But mind you, that’s not a boy to be trifled with, Mortimer. Not a word to him about last night.” I had to tell him then of my last interview with Roland, and of the impossible demand he had made upon me, by which, though he tried to laugh, he was much discomposed, as I could see. “We must just perjure ourselves all round,” he said, “and swear you exorcised it;” but the man was too kind-hearted to be satisfied with that. “It’s frightfully serious for you, Mortimer. I can’t laugh as I should like to. I wish I saw a way out of it, for your sake. By the way,” he added shortly, “didn’t you notice that juniper-bush on the left-hand side?” “There was one on the right hand of the door. I noticed you made that mistake last night.” “Mistake!” he cried, with a curious low laugh, pulling up the collar of his coat as though he felt the cold, — “there’s no juniper there this morning, left or right. Just go and see.” As he stepped into the train a few minutes after, he looked back upon me and beckoned me for a parting word. “I’m coming back tonight,” he said.

I don’t think I had any feeling about this as I turned away from that common bustle of the railway which made my private preoccupations feel so strangely out of date. There had been a distinct satisfaction in my mind before, that his scepticism had been so entirely defeated. But the more serious part of the matter pressed upon me now. I went straight from the railway to the manse, which stood on a little plateau on the side of the river opposite to the woods of Brentwood. The minister was one of a class which is not so common in Scotland as it used to be. He was a man of good family, well educated in the Scotch way, strong in philosophy, not so strong in Greek, strongest of all in experience, — a man who had “come across,” in the course of his life, most people of note that had ever been in Scotland, and who was said to be very sound in doctrine, without infringing the toleration with which old men, who are good men, are generally endowed. He was old-fashioned; perhaps he did not think so much about the troublous problems of theology as many of the young men, nor ask himself any hard questions about the Confession of Faith — but he understood human nature, which is perhaps better. He received me with a cordial welcome.

“Come away, Colonel Mortimer,” he said; “I’m all the more glad to see you, that I feel it’s a good sign for the boy. He’s doing well? — God be praised — and the Lord bless him and keep him. He has many a poor body’s prayers, and that can do nobody harm.”

“He will need them all, Dr. Moncrieff,” I said, “and your counsel too.” And I told him the story — more than I had told Simson. The old clergyman listened to me with many suppressed exclamations, and at the end the water stood in his eyes.

“That’s just beautiful,” he said. “I do not mind to have heard anything like it; it’s as fine as Burns when he wished deliverance to one — that is prayed for in no kirk. Ay, ay! so he would have you console the poor lost spirit? God bless the boy! There’s something more than common in that, Colonel Mortimer. And also the faith of him in his father! — I would like to put that into a sermon.” Then the old gentleman gave me an alarmed look, and said, “No, no; I was not meaning a sermon; but I must write it down for the ‘Children’s Record.’” I saw the thought that passed through his mind. Either he thought, or he feared I would think, of a funeral sermon. You may believe this did not make me more cheerful.

I can scarcely say that Dr. Moncrieff gave me any advice. How could anyone advise on such a subject? But he said, “I think I’ll come too. I’m an old man; I’m less liable to be frightened than those that are further off the world unseen. It behooves me to think of my own journey there. I’ve no cut-and-dry beliefs on the subject. I’ll come too; and maybe at the moment the Lord will put into our heads what to do.”

This gave me a little comfort — more than Simson had given me. To be clear about the cause of it was not my grand desire. It was another thing that was in my mind — my boy. As for the poor soul at the open door, I had no more doubt, as I have said, of its existence than I had of my own. It was no ghost to me. I knew the creature, and it was in trouble. That was my feeling about it, as it was Roland’s. To hear it first was a great shock to my nerves, but not now; a man will get accustomed to anything. But to do something for it was the great problem; how was I to be serviceable to a being that was invisible, that was mortal no longer? “Maybe at the moment the Lord will put it into our heads.” This is very old-fashioned phraseology, and a week before, most likely, I should have smiled (though always with kindness) at Dr. Moncrieff’s credulity; but there was a great comfort, whether rational or otherwise I cannot say, in the mere sound of the words.

The road to the station and the village lay through the glen, not by the ruins; but though the sunshine and the fresh air, and the beauty of the trees, and the sound of the water were all very soothing to the spirits, my mind was so full of my own subject that I could not refrain from turning to the right hand as I got to the top of the glen, and going straight to the place which I may call the scene of all my thoughts. It was lying full in the sunshine, like all the rest of the world. The ruined gable looked due east, and in the present aspect of the sun the light streamed down through the doorway as our lantern had done, throwing a flood of light upon the damp grass beyond. There was a strange suggestion in the open door — so futile, a kind of emblem of vanity: all free around, so that you could go where you pleased, and yet that semblance of an enclosure — that way of entrance, unnecessary, leading to nothing. And why any creature should pray and weep to get in — to nothing, or be kept out — by nothing, you could not dwell upon it, or it made your brain go round. I remembered, however, what Simson said about the juniper, with a little smile on my own mind as to the inaccuracy of recollection which even a scientific man will be guilty of. I could see now the light of my lantern gleaming upon the wet glistening surface of the spiky leaves at the right hand — and he ready to go to the stake for it that it was the left! I went round to make sure. And then I saw what he had said. Right or left there was no juniper at all! I was confounded by this, though it was entirely a matter of detail nothing at all: a bush of brambles waving, the grass growing up to the very walls. But after all, though it gave me a shock for a moment, what did that matter? There were marks as if a number of footsteps had been up and down in front of the door, but these might have been our steps; and all was bright and peaceful and still.

I poked about the other ruin — the larger ruins of the old house — for some time, as I had done before. There were marks upon the grass here and there — I could not call them footsteps — all about; but that told for nothing one way or another. I had examined the ruined rooms closely the first day. They were half filled up with soil and debris, withered brackens and bramble — no refuge for anyone there. It vexed me that Jarvis should see me coming from that spot when he came up to me for his orders. I don’t know whether my nocturnal expeditions had got wind among the servants, but there was a significant look in his face. Something in it I felt was like my own sensation when Simson in the midst of his scepticism was struck dumb. Jarvis felt satisfied that his veracity had been put beyond question. I never spoke to a servant of mine in such a peremptory tone before. I sent him away “with a flea in his lug,” as the man described it afterwards. Interference of any kind was intolerable to me at such a moment.

But what was strangest of all was, that I could not face Roland. I did not go up to his room, as I would have naturally done, at once. This the girls could not understand. They saw there was some mystery in it. “Mother has gone to lie down,” Agatha said; “he has had such a good night.” “But he wants you so, papa!” cried little Jeanie, always with her two arms embracing mine in a pretty way she had. I was obliged to go at last, but what could I say? I could only kiss him, and tell him to keep still — that I was doing all I could. There is something mystical about the patience of a child. “It will come all right, won’t it, father?” he said. “God grant it may! I hope so, Roland.” “Oh, yes, it will come all right.” Perhaps he understood that in the midst of my anxiety I could not stay with him as I should have done otherwise. But the girls were more surprised than it is possible to describe. They looked at me with wondering eyes. “If I were ill, papa, and you only stayed with me a moment, I should break my heart,” said Agatha. But the boy had a sympathetic feeling. He knew that of my own will I would not have done it. I shut myself up in the library, where I could not rest, but kept pacing up and down like a caged beast. What could I do? and if I could do nothing, what would become of my boy? These were the questions that, without ceasing, pursued each other through my mind.

Simson came out to dinner, and when the house was all still, and most of the servants in bed, we went out and met Dr. Moncrieff, as we had appointed, at the head of the glen. Simson, for his part, was disposed to scoff at the Doctor. “If there are to be any spells, you know, I’ll cut the whole concern,” he said. I did not make him any reply. I had not invited him; he could go or come as he pleased. He was very talkative, far more so than suited my humour, as we went on. “One thing is certain, you know; there must be some human agency,” he said. “It is all bosh about apparitions. I never have investigated the laws of sound to any great extent, and there’s a great deal in ventriloquism that we don’t know much about.” “If it’s the same to you,” I said, “I wish you’d keep all that to yourself, Simson. It doesn’t suit my state of mind.” “Oh, I hope I know how to respect idiosyncrasy,” he said. The very tone of his voice irritated me beyond measure. These scientific fellows, I wonder people put up with them as they do, when you have no mind for their cold-blooded confidence.

Dr. Moncrieff met us about eleven o’clock, the same time as on the previous night. He was a large man, with a venerable countenance and white hair — old, but in full vigour, and thinking less of a cold night walk than many a younger man. He had his lantern, as I had. We were fully provided with means of lighting the place, and we were all of us resolute men. We had a rapid consultation as we went up, and the result was that we divided to different posts. Dr. Moncrieff remained inside the wall — if you can call that inside where there was no wall but one. Simson placed himself on the side next the ruins, so as to intercept any communication with the old house, which was what his mind was fixed upon. I was posted on the other side. To say that nothing could come near without being seen was self-evident. It had been so also on the previous night. Now, with our three lights in the midst of the darkness, the whole place seemed illuminated. Dr. Moncrieff’s lantern, which was a large one, without any means of shutting up — an old-fashioned lantern with a pierced and ornamental top — shone steadily, the rays shooting out of it upward into the gloom. He placed it on the grass, where the middle of the room, if this had been a room, would have been. The usual effect of the light streaming out of the doorway was prevented by the illumination which Simson and I on either side supplied. With these differences, everything seemed as on the previous night.

And what occurred was exactly the same, with the same air of repetition, point for point, as I had formerly remarked. I declare that it seemed to me as if I were pushed against, put aside, by the owner of the voice as he paced up and down in his trouble, — though these are perfectly futile words, seeing that the stream of light from my lantern, and that from Simson’s taper, lay broad and clear, without a shadow, without the smallest break, across the entire breadth of the grass. I had ceased even to be alarmed, for my part. My heart was rent with pity and trouble — pity for the poor suffering human creature that moaned and pleaded so, and trouble for myself and my boy. God! if I could not find any help — and what help could I find? — Roland would die.

We were all perfectly still till the first outburst was exhausted, as I knew, by experience, it would be. Dr. Moncrieff, to whom it was new, was quite motionless on the other side of the wall, as we were in our places. My heart had remained almost at its usual beating during the voice. I was used to it; it did not rouse all my pulses as it did at first. But just as it threw itself sobbing at the door (I cannot use other words), there suddenly came something which sent the blood coursing through my veins, and my heart into my mouth. It was a voice inside the wall — the minister’s well-known voice. I would have been prepared for it in any kind of adjuration, but I was not prepared for what I heard. It came out with a sort of stammering, as if too much moved for utterance. “Willie, Willie! Oh, God preserve us! is it you?”

These simple words had an effect upon me that the voice of the invisible creature had ceased to have. I thought the old man, whom I had brought into this danger, had gone mad with terror. I made a dash round to the other side of the wall, half crazed myself with the thought. He was standing where I had left him, his shadow thrown vague and large upon the grass by the lantern which stood at his feet. I lifted my own light to see his face as I rushed forward. He was very pale, his eyes wet and glistening, his mouth quivering with parted lips. He neither saw nor heard me. We that had gone through this experience before, had crouched towards each other to get a little strength to bear it. But he was not even aware that I was there. His whole being seemed absorbed in anxiety and tenderness. He held out his hands, which trembled, but it seemed to me with eagerness, not fear. He went on speaking all the time. “Willie, if it is you — and it’s you, if it is not a delusion of Satan, — Willie, lad! why come ye here frighting them that know you not? Why came ye not to me?”

He seemed to wait for an answer. When his voice ceased, his countenance, every line moving, continued to speak. Simson gave me another terrible shock, stealing into the open doorway with his light, as much awe-stricken, as wildly curious, as I. But the minister resumed, without seeing Simson, speaking to someone else. His voice took a tone of expostulation: —

“Is this right to come here? Your mother’s gone with your name on her lips. Do you think she would ever close her door on her own lad? Do ye think the Lord will close the door, ye faint-hearted creature? No! — I forbid ye! I forbid ye!” cried the old man. The sobbing voice had begun to resume its cries. He made a step forward, calling out the last words in a voice of command. “I forbid ye! Cry out no more to man. Go home, ye wandering spirit! go home! Do you hear me? — me that christened ye, that have struggled with ye, that have wrestled for ye with the Lord!” Here the loud tones of his voice sank into tenderness. “And her too, poor woman! poor woman! her you are calling upon. She’s not here. You’ll find her with the Lord. Go there and seek her, not here. Do you hear me, lad? go after her there. He’ll let you in, though it’s late. Man, take heart! if you will lie and sob and greet, let it be at heaven’s gate, and not your poor mother’s ruined door.”

He stopped to get his breath; and the voice had stopped, not as it had done before, when its time was exhausted and all its repetitions said, but with a sobbing catch in the breath as if overruled. Then the minister spoke again, “Are you hearing me, Will? Oh, laddie, you’ve liked the beggarly elements all your days. Be done with them now. Go home to the Father — the Father! Are you hearing me?” Here the old man sank down upon his knees, his face raised upwards, his hands held up with a tremble in them, all white in the light in the midst of the darkness. I resisted as long as I could, though I cannot tell why; then I, too, dropped upon my knees. Simson all the time stood in the doorway, with an expression in his face such as words could not tell, his under lip dropped, his eyes wild, staring. It seemed to be to him, that image of blank ignorance and wonder, that we were praying. All the time the voice, with a low arrested sobbing, lay just where he was standing, as I thought.

“Lord,” the minister said — “Lord, take him into Thy everlasting habitations. The mother he cries to is with Thee. Who can open to him but Thee? Lord, when is it too late for Thee, or what is too hard for Thee? Lord, let that woman there draw him inower! Let her draw him inower!”

I sprang forward to catch something in my arms that flung itself wildly within the door. The illusion was so strong, that I never paused till I felt my forehead graze against the wall and my hands clutch the ground, — for there was nobody there to save from falling, as in my foolishness I thought. Simson held out his hand to me to help me up. He was trembling and cold, his lower lip hanging, his speech almost inarticulate. “It’s gone,” he said, stammering, — “it’s gone!” We leaned upon each other for a moment, trembling so much, both of us, that the whole scene trembled as if it were going to dissolve and disappear; and yet as long as I live I will never forget it — the shining of the strange lights, the blackness all round, the kneeling figure with all the whiteness of the light concentrated on its white venerable head and uplifted hands. A strange solemn stillness seemed to close all round us. By intervals a single syllable, “Lord! Lord!” came from the old minister’s lips. He saw none of us, nor thought of us. I never knew how long we stood, like sentinels guarding him at his prayers, holding our lights in a confused dazed way, not knowing what we did. But at last he rose from his knees, and standing up at his full height, raised his arms, as the Scotch manner is at the end of a religious service, and solemnly gave the apostolical benediction — to what? to the silent earth, the dark woods, the wide breathing atmosphere; for we were but spectators gasping an Amen!

It seemed to me that it must be the middle of the night, as we all walked back. It was in reality very late. Dr. Moncrieff put his arm into mine. He walked slowly, with an air of exhaustion. It was as if we were coming from a death-bed. Something hushed and solemnized the very air. There was that sense of relief in it which there always is at the end of a death-struggle. And nature, persistent, never daunted, came back in all of us, as we returned into the ways of life. We said nothing to each other, indeed, for a time; but when we got clear of the trees and reached the opening near the house, where we could see the sky, Dr. Moncrieff himself was the first to speak. “I must be going,” he said; “it’s very late, I’m afraid. I will go down the glen, as I came.”

“But not alone. I am going with you, Doctor.”

“Well, I will not oppose it. I am an old man, and agitation wearies more than work. Yes; I’ll be thankful of your arm. Tonight, Colonel, you’ve done me more good turns than one.”

I pressed his hand on my arm, not feeling able to speak. But Simson, who turned with us, and who had gone along all this time with his taper flaring, in entire unconsciousness, came to himself, apparently at the sound of our voices, and put out that wild little torch with a quick movement, as if of shame. “Let me carry your lantern,” he said; “it is heavy.” He recovered with a spring; and in a moment, from the awe-stricken spectator he had been, became himself, sceptical and cynical. “I should like to ask you a question,” he said. “Do you believe in Purgatory, Doctor? It’s not in the tenets of the Church, so far as I know.”

“Sir,” said Dr. Moncrieff, “an old man like me is sometimes not very sure what he believes. There is just one thing I am certain of — and that is the loving-kindness of God.”

“But I thought that was in this life. I am no theologian—”

“Sir,” said the old man again, with a tremor in him which I could feel going over all his frame, “if I saw a friend of mine within the gates of hell, I would not despair but his Father would take him by the hand still, if he cried like yon.”

“I allow it is very strange, very strange. I cannot see through it. That there must be human agency, I feel sure. Doctor, what made you decide upon the person and the name?”

The minister put out his hand with the impatience which a man might show if he were asked how he recognized his brother. “Tuts!” he said, in familiar speech; then more solemnly, “How should I not recognize a person that I know better — far better — than I know you?”

“Then you saw the man?”

Dr. Moncrieff made no reply. He moved his hand again with a little impatient movement, and walked on, leaning heavily on my arm. And we went on for a long time without another word, threading the dark paths, which were steep and slippery with the damp of the winter. The air was very still — not more than enough to make a faint sighing in the branches, which mingled with the sound of the water to which we were descending. When we spoke again, it was about indifferent matters, — about the height of the river, and the recent rains. We parted with the minister at his own door, where his old housekeeper appeared in great perturbation, waiting for him. “Eh, me, minister! the young gentleman will be worse?” she cried.

“Far from that — better. God bless him!” Dr. Moncrieff said.

I think if Simson had begun again to me with his questions, I should have pitched him over the rocks as we returned up the glen; but he was silent, by a good inspiration. And the sky was clearer than it had been for many nights, shining high over the trees, with here and there a star faintly gleaming through the wilderness of dark and bare branches. The air, as I have said, was very soft in them, with a subdued and peaceful cadence. It was real, like every natural sound, and came to us like a hush of peace and relief. I thought there was a sound in it as of the breath of a sleeper, and it seemed clear to me that Roland must be sleeping, satisfied and calm. We went up to his room when we went in. There we found the complete hush of rest. My wife looked up out of a doze, and gave me a smile: “I think he is a great deal better; but you are very late,” she said in a whisper, shading the light with her hand that the Doctor might see his patient. The boy had got back something like his own colour. He woke as we stood all round his bed. His eyes had the happy, half-awakened look of childhood, glad to shut again, yet pleased with the interruption and glimmer of the light. I stooped over him and kissed his forehead, which was moist and cool. “All is well, Roland,” I said. He looked up at me with a glance of pleasure, and took my hand and laid his cheek upon it, and so went to sleep.

•    •    •

For some nights after, I watched among the ruins, spending all the dark hours up to midnight patrolling about the bit of wall which was associated with so many emotions; but I heard nothing, and saw nothing beyond the quiet course of nature; nor, so far as I am aware, has anything been heard again. Dr. Moncrieff gave me the history of the youth, whom he never hesitated to name. I did not ask, as Simson did, how he recognized him. He had been a prodigal — weak, foolish, easily imposed upon, and “led away,” as people say. All that we had heard had passed actually in life, the Doctor said. The young man had come home thus a day or two after his mother died — who was no more than the housekeeper in the old house — and distracted with the news, had thrown himself down at the door and called upon her to let him in. The old man could scarcely speak of it for tears. To me it seemed as if — Heaven help us, how little do we know about anything! — a scene like that might impress itself somehow upon the hidden heart of nature. I do not pretend to know how, but the repetition had struck me at the time as, in its terrible strangeness and incomprehensibility, almost mechanical — as if the unseen actor could not exceed or vary, but was bound to re-enact the whole. One thing that struck me, however, greatly, was the likeness between the old minister and my boy in the manner of regarding these strange phenomena. Dr. Moncrieff was not terrified, as I had been myself, and all the rest of us. It was no “ghost,” as I fear we all vulgarly considered it, to him — but a poor creature whom he knew under these conditions, just as he had known him in the flesh, having no doubt of his identity. And to Roland it was the same. This spirit in pain — if it was a spirit — this voice out of the unseen — was a poor fellow-creature in misery, to be succoured and helped out of his trouble, to my boy. He spoke to me quite frankly about it when he got better. “I knew father would find out some way,” he said. And this was when he was strong and well, and all idea that he would turn hysterical or become a seer of visions had happily passed away.

•    •    •

I must add one curious fact, which does not seem to me to have any relation to the above, but which Simson made great use of, as the human agency which he was determined to find somehow. We had examined the ruins very closely at the time of these occurrences; but afterwards, when all was over, as we went casually about them one Sunday afternoon in the idleness of that unemployed day, Simson with his stick penetrated an old window which had been entirely blocked up with fallen soil. He jumped down into it in great excitement, and called me to follow. There we found a little hole — for it was more a hole than a room — entirely hidden under the ivy and ruins, in which there was a quantity of straw laid in a corner, as if someone had made a bed there, and some remains of crusts about the floor. Someone had lodged there, and not very long before, he made out; and that this unknown being was the author of all the mysterious sounds we heard he is convinced. “I told you it was human agency,” he said triumphantly. He forgets, I suppose, how he and I stood with our lights, seeing nothing, while the space between us was audibly traversed by something that could speak, and sob, and suffer. There is no argument with men of this kind. He is ready to get up a laugh against me on this slender ground. “I was puzzled myself — I could not make it out — but I always felt convinced human agency was at the bottom of it. And here it is — and a clever fellow he must have been,” the Doctor says.

Bagley left my service as soon as he got well. He assured me it was no want of respect, but he could not stand “them kind of things;” and the man was so shaken and ghastly that I was glad to give him a present and let him go. For my own part, I made a point of staying out the time — two years — for which I had taken Brentwood; but I did not renew my tenancy. By that time we had settled, and found for ourselves a pleasant home of our own.

I must add, that when the Doctor defies me, I can always bring back gravity to his countenance, and a pause in his railing, when I remind him of the juniper-bush. To me that was a matter of little importance. I could believe I was mistaken. I did not care about it one way or other; but on his mind the effect was different. The miserable voice, the spirit in pain, he could think of as the result of ventriloquism, or reverberation, or — anything you please: an elaborate prolonged hoax, executed somehow by the tramp that had found a lodging in the old tower; but the juniper-bush staggered him. Things have effects so different on the minds of different men.

“Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine,” Jan. 1882

COLONEL HALIFAX’S GHOST STORY

Sabine Baring-Gould

1887

I had just come back to England, after having been some years in India, and was looking forward to meet my friends, among whom there was none I was more anxious to see than Sir Francis Lynton. We had been at Eton together, and for the short time I had been at Oxford before entering the Army we had been at the same college. Then we had been parted. He came into the title and estates of the family in Yorkshire on the death of his grandfather — his father had predeceased — and I had been over a good part of the world. One visit, indeed, I had made him in his Yorkshire home, before leaving for India, of but a few days.

It will easily be imagined how pleasant it was, two or three days after my arrival in London, to receive a letter from Lynton saying he had just seen in the papers that I had arrived, and begging me to come down at once to Byfield, his place in Yorkshire.

“You are not to tell me,” he said, “that you cannot come. I allow you a week in which to order and try on your clothes, to report yourself at the War Office, to pay your respects to the Duke, and to see your sister at Hampton Court; but after that I shall expect you. In fact, you are to come on Monday. I have a couple of horses which will just suit you; the carriage shall meet you at Packham, and all you have got to do is to put yourself in the train which leaves King’s Cross at twelve o’clock.”

Accordingly, on the day appointed I started; in due time reached Packham, losing much time on a detestable branch line, and there found the dogcart of Sir Francis awaiting me. I drove at once to Byfield.

The house I remembered. It was a low, gabled structure of no great size, with old-fashioned lattice windows, separated from the park, where were deer, by a charming terraced garden.

No sooner did the wheels crunch the gravel by the principal entrance, than, almost before the bell was rung, the porch door opened, and there stood Lynton himself, whom I had not seen for so many years, hardly altered, and with all the joy of welcome beaming in his face. Taking me by both hands, he drew me into the house, got rid of my hat and wraps, looked me all over, and then, in a breath, began to say how glad he was to see me, what a real delight it was to have got me at last under his roof, and what a good time we would have together, like the old days over again.

He had sent my luggage up to my room, which was ready for me, and he bade me make haste and dress for dinner.

So saying, he took me through a panelled hall up an oak staircase, and showed me my room, which, hurried as I was, I observed was hung with tapestry, and had a large fourposter bed, with velvet curtains, opposite the window.

They had gone into dinner when I came down, despite all the haste I made in dressing; but a place had been kept for me next Lady Lynton.

Besides my hosts, there were their two daughters, Colonel Lynton, a brother of Sir Francis, the chaplain, and some others whom I do not remember distinctly.

After dinner there was some music in the hall, and a game of whist in the drawing-room, and after the ladies had gone upstairs, Lynton and I retired to the smoking-room, where we sat up talking the best part of the night. I think it must have been near three when I retired. Once in bed, I slept so soundly that my servant’s entrance the next morning failed to arouse me, and it was past nine when I awoke.

After breakfast and the disposal of the newspapers, Lynton retired to his letters, and I asked Lady Lynton if one of her daughters might show me the house. Elizabeth, the eldest, was summoned, and seemed in no way to dislike the task.

The house was, as already intimated, by no means large; it occupied three sides of a square, the entrance and one end of the stables making the fourth side. The interior was full of interest — passages, rooms, galleries, as well as hall, were panelled in dark wood and hung with pictures. I was shown everything on the ground floor, and then on the first floor. Then my guide proposed that we should ascend a narrow twisting staircase that led to a gallery. We did as proposed, and entered a handsome long room or passage, leading to a small chamber at one end, in which my guide told me her father kept books and papers.

I asked if anyone slept in this gallery, as I noticed a bed, and fireplace, and rods, by means of which curtains might be drawn, enclosing one portion where were bed and fireplace, so as to convert it into a very cosy chamber.

She answered “No,” the place was not really used except as a playroom, though sometimes, if the house happened to be very full, in her great-grandfather’s time, she had heard that it had been occupied.

By the time we had been over the house, and I had also been shown the garden and the stables, and introduced to the dogs, it was nearly one o’clock. We were to have an early luncheon, and to drive afterwards to see the ruins of one of the grand old Yorkshire abbeys.

This was a pleasant expedition, and we got back just in time for tea, after which there was some reading aloud. The evening passed much in the same way as the preceding one, except that Lynton, who had some business, did not go down to the smoking-room, and I took the opportunity of retiring early in order to write a letter for the Indian mail, something having been said as to the prospect of hunting the next day.

I had finished my letter, which was a long one, together with two or three others, and had just got into bed when I heard a step overhead as of someone walking along the gallery, which I now knew ran immediately above my room. It was a slow, heavy, measured tread which I could hear getting gradually louder and nearer, and then as gradually fading away as it retreated into the distance.

I was startled for a moment, having been informed that the gallery was unused; but the next instant it occurred to me that I had been told it communicated with a chamber where Sir Francis kept books and papers. I knew he had some writing to do, and I thought no more on the matter.

I was down the next morning at breakfast in good time. “How late you were last night!” I said to Lynton, in the middle of breakfast. “I heard you overhead after one o’clock.”

Lynton replied rather shortly, “Indeed you did not, for I was in bed last night before twelve.”

“There was someone certainly moving overhead last night,” I answered, “for I heard his steps as distinctly as I ever heard anything in my life, going down the gallery.”

Upon which Colonel Lynton remarked that he had often fancied he had heard steps on his staircase, when he knew that no one was about. He was apparently disposed to say more, when his brother interrupted him somewhat curtly, as I fancied, and asked me if I should feel inclined after breakfast to have a horse and go out and look for the hounds. They met a considerable way off, but if they did not find in the coverts they should first draw, a thing not improbable, they would come our way, and we might fall in with them about one o’clock and have a run. I said there was nothing I should like better. Lynton mounted me on a very nice chestnut, and the rest of the party having gone out shooting, and the young ladies being otherwise engaged, he and I started about eleven o’clock for our ride.

The day was beautiful, soft, with a bright sun, one of those delightful days which so frequently occur in the early part of November.

On reaching the hilltop where Lynton had expected to meet the hounds no trace of them was to be discovered. They must have found at once, and run in a different direction. At three o’clock, after we had eaten our sandwiches, Lynton reluctantly abandoned all hopes of falling in with the hounds, and said we would return home by a slightly different route.

We had not descended the hill before we came on an old chalk quarry and the remains of a disused kiln.

I recollected the spot at once. I had been here with Sir Francis on my former visit, many years ago. “Why — bless me!” said I. “Do you remember, Lynton, what happened here when I was with you before? There had been men engaged removing chalk, and they came on a skeleton under some depth of rubble. We went together to see it removed, and you said you would have it preserved till it could be examined by some ethnologist or anthropologist, one or other of those dry-as-dusts, to decide whether the remains are dolichocephalous or brachycephalous, whether British, Danish, or — modern. What was the result?”

Sir Francis hesitated for a moment, and then answered: “It is true, I had the remains removed.”

“Was there an inquest?”

“No. I had been opening some of the tumuli on the Wolds. I had sent a crouched skeleton and some skulls to the Scarborough Museum. This I was doubtful about, whether it was a prehistoric interment — in fact, to what date it belonged. No one thought of an inquest.”

On reaching the house, one of the grooms who took the horses, in answer to a question from Lynton, said that Colonel and Mrs. Hampshire had arrived about an hour ago, and that, one of the horses being lame, the carriage in which they had driven over from Castle Frampton was to put up for the night. In the drawing-room we found Lady Lynton pouring out tea for her husband’s youngest sister and her husband, who, as we came in, exclaimed: “We have come to beg a night’s lodging.”

It appeared that they had been on a visit in the neighbourhood, and had been obliged to leave at a moment’s notice in consequence of a sudden death in the house where they were staying, and that, in the impossibility of getting a fly, their hosts had sent them over to Byfield.

“We thought,” Mrs. Hampshire went on to say, “that as we were coming here the end of next week, you would not mind having us a little sooner; or that, if the house were quite full, you would be willing to put us up anywhere till Monday, and let us come back later.”

Lady Lynton interposed with the remark that it was all settled; and then, turning to her husband, added: “But I want to speak to you for a moment.”

They both left the room together.

Lynton came back almost immediately, and, making an excuse to show me on a map in the hall the point to which we had ridden, said as soon as we were alone, with a look of considerable annoyance: “I am afraid we must ask you to change your room. Shall you mind very much? I think we can make you quite comfortable upstairs in the gallery, which is the only room available. Lady Lynton has had a good fire lit; the place is really not cold, and it will be for only a night or two. Your servant has been told to put your things together, but Lady Lynton did not like to give orders to have them actually moved before my speaking to you.”

I assured him that I did not mind in the very least, that I should be quite as comfortable upstairs, but that I did mind very much their making such a fuss about a matter of that sort with an old friend like myself.

Certainly nothing could look more comfortable than my new lodging when I went upstairs to dress. There was a bright fire in the large grate, an armchair had been drawn up beside it, and all my books and writing things had been put in, with a reading-lamp in the central position, and the heavy tapestry curtains were drawn, converting this part of the gallery into a room to itself. Indeed, I felt somewhat inclined to congratulate myself on the change. The spiral staircase had been one reason against this place having been given to the Hampshires. No lady’s long dress trunk could have mounted it.

Sir Francis was necessarily a good deal occupied in the evening with his sister and her husband, whom he had not seen for some time. Colonel Hampshire had also just heard that he was likely to be ordered to Egypt, and when Lynton and he retired to the smoking-room, instead of going there I went upstairs to my own room to finish a book in which I was interested. I did not, however, sit up long, and very soon went to bed.

Before doing so, I drew back the curtains on the rod, partly because I like plenty of air where I sleep, and partly also because I thought I might like to see the play of the moonlight on the floor in the portion of the gallery beyond where I lay, and where the blinds had not been drawn.

I must have been asleep for some time, for the fire, which I had left in full blaze, was gone to a few sparks wandering among the ashes, when I suddenly awoke with the impression of having heard a latch click at the further extremity of the gallery, where was the chamber containing books and papers.

I had always been a light sleeper, but on the present occasion I woke at once to complete and acute consciousness, and with a sense of stretched attention which seemed to intensify all my faculties. The wind had risen, and was blowing in fitful gusts round the house.

A minute or two passed, and I began almost to fancy I must have been mistaken, when I distinctly heard the creak of the door, and then the click of the latch falling back into its place. Then I heard a sound on the boards as of one moving in the gallery. I sat up to listen, and as I did so I distinctly heard steps coming down the gallery. I heard them approach and pass my bed. I could see nothing, all was dark; but I heard the tread proceeding towards the further portion of the gallery where were the uncurtained and unshuttered windows, two in number; but the moon shone through only one of these, the nearer; the other was dark, shadowed by the chapel or some other building at right angles. The tread seemed to me to pause now and again, and then continue as before.

I now fixed my eyes intently on the one illumined window, and it appeared to me as if some dark body passed across it: but what? I listened intently, and heard the step proceed to the end of the gallery and then return.

I again watched the lighted window, and immediately that the sound reached that portion of the long passage it ceased momentarily, and I saw, as distinctly as I ever saw anything in my life, by moonlight, a figure of a man with marked features, in what appeared to be a fur cap drawn over the brows.

It stood in the embrasure of the window, and the outline of the face was in silhouette; then it moved on, and as it moved I again heard the tread. I was as certain as I could be that the thing, whatever it was, or the person, whoever he was, was approaching my bed.

I threw myself back in the bed, and as I did so a mass of charred wood on the hearth fell down and sent up a flash of — I fancy sparks, that gave out a glare in the darkness, and by that — red as blood — I saw a face near me.

With a cry, over which I had as little control as the scream uttered by a sleeper in the agony of a nightmare, I called: “Who are you?”

There was an instant during which my hair bristled on my head, as in the horror of the darkness I prepared to grapple with the being at my side; when a board creaked as if someone had moved, and I heard the footsteps retreat, and again the click of the latch.

The next instant there was a rush on the stairs and Lynton burst into the room, just as he had sprung out of bed, crying: “For God’s sake, what is the matter? Are you ill?”

I could not answer. Lynton struck a light and leant over the bed. Then I seized him by the arm, and said without moving: “There has been something in this room — gone in thither.”

The words were hardly out of my mouth when Lynton, following the direction of my eyes, had sprung to the end of the corridor and thrown open the door there.

He went into the room beyond, looked round it, returned, and said: “You must have been dreaming.”

By this time I was out of bed.

“Look for yourself,” said he, and he led me into the little room. It was bare, with cupboards and boxes, a sort of lumber-place. “There is nothing beyond this,” said he, “no door, no staircase. It is a cul-de-sac.” Then he added: “Now pull on your dressing-gown and come downstairs to my sanctum.”

I followed him, and after he had spoken to Lady Lynton, who was standing with the door of her room ajar in a state of great agitation, he turned to me and said: “No one can have been in your room. You see my and my wife’s apartments are close below, and no one could come up the spiral staircase without passing my door. You must have had a nightmare. Directly you screamed I rushed up the steps, and met no one descending; and there is no place of concealment in the lumber-room at the end of the gallery.”

Then he took me into his private snuggery, blew up the fire, lighted a lamp, and said: “I shall be really grateful if you will say nothing about this. There are some in the house and neighbourhood who are silly enough as it is. You stay here, and if you do not feel inclined to go to bed, read — here are books. I must go to Lady Lynton, who is a good deal frightened, and does not like to be left alone.”

He then went to his bedroom.

Sleep, as far as I was concerned, was out of the question, nor do I think that Sir Francis or his wife slept much either.

I made up the fire, and after a time took up a book, and tried to read, but it was useless.

I sat absorbed in thoughts and questionings till I heard the servants stirring in the morning. I then went to my own room, left the candle burning, and got into bed. I had just fallen asleep when my servant brought me a cup of tea at eight o’clock.

At breakfast Colonel Hampshire and his wife asked if anything had happened in the night, as they had been much disturbed by noises overhead, to which Lynton replied that I had not been very well, and had an attack of cramp, and that he had been upstairs to look after me. From his manner I could see that he wished me to be silent, and I said nothing accordingly.

In the afternoon, when everyone had gone out, Sir Francis took me into his snuggery and said: “Halifax, I am very sorry about that matter last night. It is quite true, as my brother said, that steps have been heard about this house, but I never gave heed to such things, putting all noises down to rats. But after your experiences I feel that it is due to you to tell you something, and also to make to you an explanation. There is — there was — no one in the room at the end of the corridor, except the skeleton that was discovered in the chalk-pit when you were here many years ago. I confess I had not paid much heed to it. My archaeological fancies passed; I had no visits from anthropologists; the bones and skull were never shown to experts, but remained packed in a chest in that lumber-room. I confess I ought to have buried them, having no more scientific use for them, but I did not — on my word, I forgot all about them, or, at least, gave no heed to them. However, what you have gone through, and have described to me, has made me uneasy, and has also given me a suspicion that I can account for that body in a manner that had never occurred to me before.”

After a pause, he added: “What I am going to tell you is known to no one else, and must not be mentioned by you — anyhow, in my lifetime, You know now that, owing to the death of my father when quite young, I and my brother and sister were brought up here with our grandfather, Sir Richard. He was an old, imperious, short-tempered man. I will tell you what I have made out of a matter that was a mystery for long, and I will tell you afterwards how I came to unravel it. My grandfather was in the habit of going out at night with a young under-keeper, of whom he was very fond, to look after the game and see if any poachers, whom he regarded as his natural enemies, were about.

“One night, as I suppose, my grandfather had been out with the young man in question, and, returning by the plantations, where the hill is steepest, and not far from that chalk-pit you remarked on yesterday, they came upon a man, who, though not actually belonging to the country, was well known in it as a sort of travelling tinker of indifferent character, and a notorious poacher. Mind this, I am not sure it was at the place I mention; I only now surmise it. On the particular night in question, my grandfather and the keeper must have caught this man setting snares; there must have been a tussle, in the course of which as subsequent circumstances have led me to imagine, the man showed fight and was knocked down by one or other of the two — my grandfather or the keeper. I believe that after having made various attempts to restore him, they found that the man was actually dead.

“They were both in great alarm and concern — my grandfather especially. He had been prominent in putting down some factory riots, and had acted as magistrate with promptitude, and had given orders to the military to fire, whereby a couple of lives had been lost. There was a vast outcry against him, and a certain political party had denounced him as an assassin. No man was more vituperated; yet, in my conscience, I believe that he acted with both discretion and pluck, and arrested a mischievous movement that might have led to much bloodshed. Be that as it may, my impression is that he lost his head over this fatal affair with the tinker, and that he and the keeper together buried the body secretly, not far from the place where he was killed. I now think it was in the chalk-pit, and that the skeleton found years after there belonged to this man.”

“Good heavens!” I exclaimed, as at once my mind rushed back to the figure with the fur cap that I had seen against the window.

Sir Francis went on: “The sudden disappearance of the tramp, in view of his well-known habits and wandering mode of life, did not for some time excite surprise; but, later on, one or two circumstances having led to suspicion, an inquiry was set on foot, and among others, my grandfather’s keepers were examined before the magistrates. It was remembered afterwards that the under-keeper in question was absent at the time of the inquiry, my grandfather having sent him with some dogs to a brother-in-law of his who lived upon the moors; but whether no one noticed the fact, or if they did, preferred to be silent, I know not, no observations were made. Nothing came of the investigation, and the whole subject would have dropped if it had not been that two years later, for some reasons I do not understand, but at the instigation of a magistrate recently imported into the division, whom my grandfather greatly disliked, and who was opposed to him in politics, a fresh inquiry was instituted. In the course of that inquiry it transpired that, owing to some unguarded words dropped by the under-keeper, a warrant was about to be issued for his arrest. My grandfather, who had had a fit of the gout, was away from home at the time, but on hearing the news he came home at once. The evening he returned he had a long interview with the young man, who left the house after he had supped in the servants’ hall. It was observed that he looked much depressed. The warrant was issued the next day, but in the meantime the keeper had disappeared. My grandfather gave orders to all his own people to do everything in their power to assist the authorities in the search that was at once set on foot, but was unable himself to take any share in it.

“No trace of the keeper was found, although at a subsequent period rumours circulated that he had been heard of in America. But the man having been unmarried, he gradually dropped out of remembrance, and as my grandfather never allowed the subject to be mentioned in his presence, I should probably never have known anything about it but for the vague tradition which always attaches to such events, and for this fact: that after my grandfather’s death a letter came addressed to him from somewhere in the United States from someone — the name different from that of the keeper — but alluding to the past, and implying the presence of a common secret, and, of course, with it came a request for money. I replied, mentioning the death of Sir Richard, and asking for an explanation. I did get an answer, and it is from that that I am able to fill in so much of the story. But I never learned where the man had been killed and buried, and my next letter to the fellow was returned with ‘Deceased’ written across it. Somehow, it never occurred to me till I heard your story that possibly the skeleton in the chalk-pit might be that of the poaching tinker. I will now most assuredly have it buried in the churchyard.”

“That certainly ought to be done,” said I.

“And — ” said Sir Francis, after a pause, “I give you my word. After the burial of the bones, and you are gone, I will sleep for a week in the bed in the gallery, and report to you if I see or hear anything. If all be quiet, then — well, you form your own conclusions.”

I left a day after. Before long I got a letter from my friend, brief but to the point: “All quiet, old boy; come again.”

“The Illustrated English Magazine,” 1887

THE WITHERED ARM

Thomas Hardy

1888

I

A Lorn Milkmaid

It was an eighty-cow dairy, and the troop of milkers, regular and supernumerary, were all at work; for, though the time of year was as yet but early April, the feed lay entirely in water-meadows, and the cows were “in full pail.” The hour was about six in the evening, and three-fourths of the large, red, rectangular animals having been finished off, there was opportunity for a little conversation.

“He do bring home his bride tomorrow, I hear. They’ve come as far as Anglebury today.”

The voice seemed to proceed from the belly of the cow called Cherry, but the speaker was a milking-woman, whose face was buried in the flank of that motionless beast.

“Hav’ anybody seen her?” said another.

There was a negative response from the first. “Though they say she’s a rosy-cheeked, tisty-tosty little body enough,” she added; and as the milkmaid spoke she turned her face so that she could glance past her cow’s tail to the other side of the barton [farmhouse], where a thin, fading woman of thirty milked somewhat apart from the rest.

“Years younger than he, they say,” continued the second, with also a glance of reflectiveness in the same direction.

“How old do you call him, then?”

“Thirty or so.”

“More like forty,” broke in an old milkman near, in a long white pinafore or “wropper,” and with the brim of his hat tied down, so that he looked like a woman. “A was born before our Great Weir was builded, and I hadn’t man’s wages when I laved water there.”

The discussion waxed so warm that the purr of the milk streams became jerky, till a voice from another cow’s belly cried with authority, “Now then, what the Turk do it matter to us about Farmer Lodge’s age, or Farmer Lodge’s new mis’ess? I shall have to pay him nine pound a year for the rent of every one of these milchers, whatever his age or hers. Get on with your work, or ’twill be dark afore we have done. The evening is pinking in a’ready.” This speaker was the dairyman himself, by whom the milkmaids and men were employed.

Nothing more was said publicly about Farmer Lodge’s wedding, but the first woman murmured under her cow to her next neighbour. “’Tis hard for she,” signifying the thin worn milkmaid aforesaid.

“O no,” said the second. “He ha’n’t spoke to Rhoda Brook for years.”

When the milking was done they washed their pails and hung them on a many-forked stand made as usual of the peeled limb of an oak-tree, set upright in the earth, and resembling a colossal antlered horn. The majority then dispersed in various directions homeward. The thin woman who had not spoken was joined by a boy of twelve or thereabout, and the twain went away up the field also.

Their course lay apart from that of the others, to a lonely spot high above the water-meads, and not far from the border of Egdon Heath, whose dark countenance was visible in the distance as they drew nigh to their home.

“They’ve just been saying down in barton that your father brings his young wife home from Anglebury tomorrow,” the woman observed. “I shall want to send you for a few things to market, and you’ll be pretty sure to meet ’em.”

“Yes, Mother,” said the boy. “Is Father married then?”

“Yes.… You can give her a look, and tell me what she’s like, if you do see her.”

“Yes, Mother.”

“If she’s dark or fair, and if she’s tall — as tall as I. And if she seems like a woman who has ever worked for a living, or one that has been always well off, and has never done anything, and shows marks of the lady on her, as I expect she do.”

“Yes.”

They crept up the hill in the twilight and entered the cottage. It was built of mud-walls, the surface of which had been washed by many rains into channels and depressions that left none of the original flat face visible, while here and there in the thatch above a rafter showed like a bone protruding through the skin.

She was kneeling down in the chimney-corner, before two pieces of turf laid together with the heather inwards, blowing at the red-hot ashes with her breath till the turves flamed. The radiance lit her pale cheek, and made her dark eyes, that had once been handsome, seem handsome anew. “Yes,” she resumed, “see if she is dark or fair, and if you can, notice if her hands be white; if not, see if they look as though she had ever done housework, or are milker’s hands like mine.”

The boy again promised, inattentively this time, his mother not observing that he was cutting a notch with his pocket-knife in the beech-backed chair.

II

The Young Wife

The road from Anglebury to Holmstoke is in general level, but there is one place where a sharp ascent breaks its monotony. Farmers homeward-hound from the former market-town, who trot all the rest of the way, walk their horses up this short incline.

The next evening while the sun was yet bright a handsome new gig, with a lemon-coloured body and red wheels, was spinning westward along the level highway at the heels of a powerful mare. The driver was a yeoman in the prime of life, cleanly shaven like an actor, his face being toned to that bluish-vermilion hue which so often graces a thriving farmer’s features when returning home after successful dealings in the town. Beside him sat a woman, many years his junior — almost, indeed, a girl. Her face too was fresh in colour, but it was of a totally different quality — soft and evanescent, like the light under a heap of rose-petals.

Few people travelled this way, for it was not a main road; and the long white riband of gravel that stretched before them was empty, save of one small scarce-moving speck, which presently resolved itself into the figure of a boy, who was creeping on at a snail’s pace, and continually looking behind him — the heavy bundle he carried being some excuse for, if not the reason of, his dilatoriness. When the bouncing gig-party slowed at the bottom of the incline above mentioned, the pedestrian was only a few yards in front. Supporting the large bundle by putting one hand on his hip, he turned and looked straight at the farmer’s wife as though he would read her through and through, pacing along abreast of the horse.

The low sun was full in her face, rendering every feature, shade, and colour distinct, from the curve of her little nostril to the colour of her eyes. The farmer, though he seemed annoyed at the boy’s persistent presence, did not order him to get out of the way; and thus the lad preceded them, his hard gaze never leaving her, till they reached the top of the ascent, when the farmer trotted on with relief in his lineaments having taken no outward notice of the boy whatever.

“How that poor lad stared at me!” said the young wife.

“Yes, dear; I saw that he did.”

“He is one of the village, I suppose?”

“One of the neighbourhood. I think he lives with his mother a mile or two off.”

“He knows who we are, no doubt?”

“O yes. You must expect to be stared at just at first, my pretty Gertrude.”

“I do — though I think the poor boy may have looked at us in the hope we might relieve him of his heavy load, rather than from curiosity.”

“O no,” said her husband off-handedly. “These country lads will carry a hundredweight once they get it on their backs; besides his pack had more size than weight in it. Now, then, another mile and I shall be able to show you our house in the distance — if it is not too dark before we get there.” The wheels spun round, and particles flew from their periphery as before, till a white house of ample dimensions revealed itself, with farm-buildings and ricks at the back.

Meanwhile the boy had quickened his pace, and turning up a by-lane some mile-and-a-half short of the white farmstead, ascended towards the leaner pastures, and so on to the cottage of his mother.

She had reached home after her day’s milking at the outlying dairy, and was washing cabbage at the doorway in the declining light. “Hold up the net a moment,” she said, without preface, as the boy came up.

He flung down his bundle, held the edge of the cabbage-net, and as she filled its meshes with the dripping leaves she went on, “Well, did you see her?”

“Yes; quite plain.”

“Is she ladylike?”

“Yes; and more. A lady complete.”

“Is she young?”

“Well, she’s growed up, and her ways be quite a woman’s.”

“Of course. What colour is her hair and face?”

“Her hair is lightish, and her face as comely as a live doll’s.”

“Her eyes, then, are not dark like mine?”

“No — of a bluish turn, and her mouth is very nice and red; and when she smiles, her teeth show white.”

“Is she tall?” said the woman sharply.

“I couldn’t see. She was sitting down.”

“Then do you go to Holmstoke church tomorrow morning: she’s sure to be there. Go early and notice her walking in, and come home and tell me if she’s taller than I.”

“Very well, Mother. But why don’t you go and see for yourself?”

“I go to see her! I wouldn’t look up at her if she were to pass my window this instant. She was with Mr. Lodge, of course. What did he say or do?”

“Just the same as usual.”

“Took no notice of you?”

“None.”

Next day the mother put a clean shirt on the boy, and started him off for Holmstoke church. He reached the ancient little pile when the door was just being opened, and he was the first to enter. Taking his seat by the font, he watched all the parishioners file in. The well-to-do Farmer Lodge came nearly last; and his young wife, who accompanied him, walked up the aisle with the shyness natural to a modest woman who had appeared thus for the first time. As all other eyes were fixed upon her, the youth’s stare was not noticed now.

When he reached home his mother said, “Well?” before he had entered the room.

“She is not tall. She is rather short,” he replied.

“Ah!” said his mother, with satisfaction.

“But she’s very pretty — very. In fact, she’s lovely.” The youthful freshness of the yeoman’s wife had evidently made an impression even on the somewhat hard nature of the boy.

“That’s all I want to hear,” said his mother quickly. “Now, spread the table-cloth. The hare you wired is very tender; but mind nobody catches you. You’ve never told me what sort of hands she had.”

“I have never seen ’em. She never took off her gloves”

“What did she wear this morning?”

“A white bonnet and a silver-coloured gownd. It whewed and whistled so loud when it rubbed against the pews that the lady coloured up more than ever for very shame at the noise, and pulled it in to keep it from touching; but when she pushed into her seat, it whewed more than ever. Mr. Lodge, he seemed pleased, and his waistcoat stuck out, and his great golden seals hung like a lord’s; but she seemed to wish her noisy gownd anywhere but on her.”

“Not she! However, that will do now.”

These descriptions of the newly married couple were continued from time to time by the boy at his mother’s request, after any chance encounter he had had with them. But Rhoda Brook, though she might easily have seen young Mrs. Lodge for herself by walking a couple of miles, would never attempt an excursion towards the quarter where the farmhouse lay. Neither did she, at the daily milking in the dairyman’s yard on Lodge’s outlying second farm, ever speak on the subject of the recent marriage. The dairyman, who rented the cows of Lodge, and knew perfectly the tall milkmaid’s history, with manly kindness always kept the gossip in the cow-barton from annoying Rhoda. But the atmosphere thereabout was full of the subject the first days of Mrs. Lodge’s arrival; and fom her boy’s description and the casual words of the other milkers, Rhoda Brook could raise a mental image of the unconscious Mrs. Lodge that was realistic as a photograph.

III

A Vision

One night, two or three weeks after the bridal return, when the boy had gone to bed, Rhoda sat a long time over the turf ashes that she had raked out in front of her to extinguish them. She contemplated so intently the new wife, as presented to her in her mind’s eye over the embers, that she forgot the lapse of time. At last, wearied by her day’s work, she too retired.

But the figure which had occupied her so much during this and the previous days was not to be banished at night. For the first time Gertrude Lodge visited the supplanted woman in her dreams. Rhoda Brook dreamed — since her assertion that she really saw, before falling asleep, was not to be believed — that the young wife, in the pale silk dress and white bonnet, but with features shockingly distorted, and wrinkled as by age, was sitting upon her chest as she lay. The pressure of Mrs. Lodge’s person grew heavier; the blue eyes peered cruelly into her face: and then the figure thrust forward its left hand mockingly, so as to make the wedding-ring it wore glitter in Rhoda’s eyes. Maddened mentally, and nearly suffocated by pressure, the sleeper struggled; the incubus, still regarding her, withdrew to the foot of the bed, only, however, to come forward by degrees, resume her seat, and flash her left hand as before.

Gasping for breath, Rhoda, in a last desperate effort, swung out her right hand, seized the confronting spectre by its obtrusive left arm, and whirled it backward to the floor, starting up herself as she did so with a low cry.

“O, merciful heaven!” she cried, sitting on the edge of the bed in a cold sweat; “that was not a dream — she was here!”

She could feel her antagonist’s arm within her grasp even now — the very flesh and hone of it, as it seemed. She looked on the floor whither she had whirled the spectre, but there was nothing to be seen.

Rhoda Brook slept no more that night, and when she went milking at the next dawn they noticed how pale and haggard she looked. The milk that she drew quivered into the pail; her hand had not calmed even yet. and still retained the feel of the arm, She came home to breakfast as wearily as if it had been supper-time.

“What was that noise in your chimmer, mother, last night?” said her son. “You fell off the bed. surely?”

“Did you hear anything fall? At what time?”

“Just when the clock struck two.”

She could not explain, and when the meal was done went silently about her household works, the boy assisting her, for he hated going afield on the farms, and she indulged his reluctance. Between eleven and twelve the garden-gate clicked, and she lifted her eyes to the window. At the bottom of the garden, within the gate, stood the woman of her vision. Rhoda seemed transfixed.

“Ah, she said she would come!” exclaimed the boy, also observing her.

“Said so — when? How does she know us?”

“I have seen and spoken to her. I talked to her yesterday.”

“I told you,” said the mother, flushing indignantly, “never to speak to anybody in that house, or go near the place.”

“I did not speak to her till she spoke to me. And I did not go near the place. I met her in the road.”

“What did you tell her?”

“Nothing. She said, ‘Are you the poor boy who had to bring the heavy load from market?’ And she looked at my hoots, and said they would not keep my feet dry if it came on wet, because they were so cracked. I told her I lived with my mother, and we had enough to do to keep ourselves, and that’s how it was; and she said then: ‘I’ll come and bring you some better hoots, and see your mother.’ She gives away things to other folks in the meads besides us.”

Mrs. Lodge was by this time close to the door — not in her silk, as Rhoda had dreamt of in the bed-chamber, but in a morning hat, and gown of common light material, which became her better than silk. On her arm she carried a basket.

The impression remaining from the night’s experience was still strong. Brook had almost expected to see the wrinkles, the scorn and the cruelty on her visitor’s face. She would have escaped an interview, had escape been possible. There was, however, no backdoor to the cottage, and in an instant the boy had lifted the latch to Mrs. Lodge’s gentle knock.

“I see I have come to the right house,” said she, glancing at the lad, and smiling. “But I was not sure till you opened the door.”

The figure and action were those of the phantom; but her voice was so indescribably sweet, her glance so winning, her smile so tender, so unlike that of Rhoda’s midnight visitant, that the latter could hardly believe the evidence of her senses. She was truly glad that she had not hidden away in sheer aversion, as she had been inclined to do. In her basket Mrs. Lodge brought the pair of boots that she had promised to the boy, and other useful articles.

At these proofs of a kindly feeling towards her and hers Rhoda’s heart reproached her bitterly. This innocent young thing should have her blessing and not her curse. When she left them a light seemed gone from the dwelling. Two days later she came again to know if the boots fitted; and less than a fortnight after paid Rhoda another call. On this occasion the boy was absent.

“I walk a good deal,” said Mrs. Lodge, “and your house is the nearest outside our own parish. I hope you are well. You don’t look quite well.”

Rhoda said she was well enough; and, indeed, though the paler of the two, there was more of the strength that endures in her well-defined features and large frame than in the soft-cheeked young woman before her. The conversation became quite confidential as regarded their powers and weaknesses; and when Mrs. Lodge was leaving, Rhoda said, “I hope you will find this air agree with you, ma’am, and not suffer from the damp of the water-meads.”

The younger one replied that there was not much doubt of her general health being usually good. “Though, now you remind me,” she added, “I have one little ailment which puzzles me. It is nothing serious, but I cannot make it out.”

She uncovered her left hand and arm; and their outline confronted Rhoda’s gaze as the exact original of the limb she had beheld and seized in her dream. Upon the pink round surface of the arm were faint marks of an unhealthy colour, as if produced by a rough grasp. Rhoda’s eyes became riveted on the discolourations; she fancied that she discerned in them the shape of her own four fingers.

“How did it happen?” she said mechanically.

“I cannot tell,” replied Mrs. Lodge, shaking her head. “One night when I was sound asleep, dreaming I was away in some strange place, a pain suddenly shot into my arm there, and was so keen as to awaken me. I must have struck it in the daytime, I suppose, though I don’t remember doing so.” She added, laughing, “I tell my dear husband that it looks just as if he had flown into a rage and struck me there. O, I daresay it will soon disappear.”

“Ha, ha! Yes.… On what night did it come?”

Mrs. Lodge considered, and said it would be a fortnight ago on the morrow. “When I awoke I could not remember where I was,” she added, “till the clock striking two reminded me.”

She had named the night and hour of Rhoda’s spectral encounter, and Brook felt like a guilty thing. The artless disclosure startled her; she did not reason on the freaks of coincidence; and all the scenery of that ghastly night returned with double vividness to her mind.

“O, can it be,” she said to herself, when her visitor had departed, “that I exercise a malignant power over people against my own will?” She knew that she had been slyly called a witch since hey fall; but never having understood why that particular stigma had been attached to her, it had passed disregarded. Could this be the explanation, and had such things as this ever happened before?

IV

A Suggestion

The summer drew on, and Rhoda Brook almost dreaded to meet Mrs. Lodge again, notwithstanding that her feeling for the young wife amounted well-nigh to affection. Something in her own individuality seemed to convict Rhoda of crime. Yet a fatality sometimes would direct the steps of the latter to the outskirts of Holmstoke whenever she left her house for any other purpose than her daily work; and hence it happened that their next encounter was out of doors. Rhoda could not avoid the subject which had so mystified her, and after the first few words she stammered, “I hope your — arm is well again, ma’am?” She had perceived with consternation that Gertrude Lodge carried her left arm stiffly.

“No; it not quite well. Indeed it is no better at all; it is rather worse. It pains me dreadfully sometimes.”

“Perhaps you had better go to a doctor, ma’am.”

She replied that she had already seen a doctor. Her husband had insisted upon her going to one. But the surgeon had not seemed to understand the afflicted limb at all; he had told her to bathe it in hot water, and she had bathed it, but the treatment had done no good.

“Will you let me see it?” said the milkwoman.

Mrs. Lodge pushed up her sleeve and disclosed the place, which was a few inches above the wrist. As soon as Rhoda Brook saw it, she could hardly preserve her composure. There was nothing of the nature of a wound, but the arm at that point had a shrivelled look, and the outline of the four fingers appeared more distinct than at the former Moreover, she fancied that they were imprinted in precisely the relative position of her clutch upon the arm in the trance; the first linger towards Gertrude’s wrist, and the fourth towards her elbow.

What the impress resembled seemed to have struck Gertrude herself since their last meeting. “It looks almost like finger marks,” she said; adding with a faint laugh, “my husband says it is as if some witch, or the devil himself, had taken hold of me there, and blasted the flesh.”

Rhoda shivered. “That’s fancy,” she said hurriedly. “I wouldn’t mind it, if I were you.”

“I shouldn’t so much mind it,” said the younger, with hesitation, “if — if I hadn’t a notion that it makes my husband dislike me — no, love me less. Men think so much of personal appearance.”

“Some do — he for one.”

“Yes; and he was very proud of mine, at first.”

“Keep your arm covered from his sight.”

“Ah — he knows the disfigurement is there!” She tried to hide the tears that filled her eyes.

“Well, ma’am, I earnestly hope it will go away soon.”

And so the milkwoman’s mind was chained anew to the subject by a horrid sort of spell as she returned home. The sense of having been guilty of an act of malignity increased, affect as she might to ridicule her superstition. In her secret heart Rhoda did not altogether object to a slight diminution of her successor’s beauty, by whatever means it had come about; but she did not wish to inflict upon her physical pain. For though this pretty young woman had rendered impossible any reparation which Lodge might have made Rhoda for his past conduct, everything like resentment at the unconscious usurpation had quite passed away from the elder’s mind.

If the sweet and kindly Gertrude Lodge only knew of the dream-scene in the bed-chamber, what would she think? Not to inform her of it seemed treachery in the presence of her friendliness; but tell she could not of her own accord neither could she devise a remedy.

She mused upon the matter the greater part of the night; and the next day, after the morning milking, set out to obtain another glimpse of Gertrude Lodge if she could, being held to her by a gruesome fascination. By watching the house from a distance the milkmaid was presently able to discern the farmer’s wife in a ride she was taking alone — probably to join her husband in some distant field. Mrs. Lodge perceived her, and cantered in her direction.

“Good morning, Rhoda!” Gertrude said, when she had come up. “I was going to call.”

Rhoda noticed that Mrs. Lodge held the reins with some difficulty.

“I hope — the bad arm,” said Rhoda.

“They tell me there is possibly one way by which I might be able to find out the cause, and so perhaps the cure of it,” replied the other anxiously. “It is by going to some clever man over in Egdon Heath. They did not know if he was still alive — and I cannot remember his name at this moment; but they said that you knew more of his movements than anybody else hereabout, and could tell me if he were still to be consulted. Dear me what was his name? But you know.”

“Not Conjuror Trendle?” said her thin companion, turning pale.

“Trendle — yes. Is he alive?”

“I believe so,” said Rhoda, with reluctance.

“Why do you call him conjuror?”

“Well — they say — they used to say he was a — he had powers other folks have not.”

“O, how could my people be so superstitious as to recommend a man of that sort! I thought they meant some medical man. I shall think no more of him.”

Rhoda looked relieved, and Mrs. Lodge rode on. The milkwoman had inwardly seen, from the moment she heard of her having been mentioned as a reference for this man, that there must exist a sarcastic feeling among the work-folk that a sorceress would know the whereabouts of the exorcist. They suspected her, then. A short time ago this would have given no concern to a woman of her common sense. But she had a haunting reason to be superstitious now; and she had been seized with sudden dread that this Conjuror Trendle might name her as the malignant influence which was blasting the fair person of Gertrude, and so lead her friend to hate her forever, and to treat her as some fiend in human shape.

But all was not over. Two days after, a shadow intruded into the window-pattern thrown on Rhoda Brook’s floor by the afternoon sun. The woman opened the door at once, almost breathlessly.

“Are you alone?” said Gertrude. She seemed to be no less harassed and anxious than Brook herself.

“Yes,” said Rhoda.

“The place on my arm seems worse, and troubles me!” the young farmer’s wife went on. “It is so mysterious! I do hope it will not be an incurable wound. I have again been thinking of what they said about Conjuror Trendle. I don’t really believe in such men, but I should not mind just visiting him, from curiosity — though on no account must my husband know. Is it far to where he lives?”

“Yes — five miles,” said Rhoda backwardly. “In the heart of Egdon.”

“Well, I should have to walk. Could not you go with me to show me the way — say tomorrow afternoon?”

“O, not I; that is — ,” the milkwoman murmured, with a start of dismay. Again the dread seized her that something to do with her fierce act in the dream might be revealed, and her character in the eyes of the most useful friend she had ever had be ruined irretrievably.

Mrs. Lodge urged, and Rhoda finally assented, though with much misgiving. Sad as the journey would be to her, she could not conscientiously stand in the way of a possible remedy for her patron’s strange affliction. It was agreed that, to escape suspicion of their mystic intent, they should meet at the edge of the heath at the corner of a plantation which was visible from the spot where they now stood.

V

Conjuror Trendle

By the next afternoon Rhoda would have done anything to escape this inquiry. But she had promised to go. Moreover, there was a horrid fascination at times in becoming instrumental in throwing such possible light on her own character as would reveal her to be something greater in the occult world than she had ever herself suspected.

She started just before the time of day mentioned between them, and half an hour’s brisk walking brought her to the south-eastern extension of the Egdon tract of country, where the fir plantation was. A slight figure, cloaked and veiled; was already there. Rhoda recognized, almost with a shudder, that Mrs. Lodge bore her left arm in a sling.

They hardly spoke to each other, and immediately set out on their climb into the interior of this solemn, country, which stood high above the rich alluvial soil they had left half an hour before. It was a long walk; thick clouds made the atmosphere dark, though it was as yet only early afternoon; and the wind howled dismally over the slopes of the heath — not improbably the same heath which had witnessed the agony of the Wessex King Ina, presented to after-ages as Lear. Gertrude Lodge talked most, Rhoda replying with monosyllabic preoccupation. She had a strange dislike to walking on the side of her companion where hung the afflicted arm, moving round to the other when inadvertently near it. Much heather had been brushed by their feet when they descended upon a cart-track, beside which stood the house of the man they sought.

He did not profess his remedial practices openly, or care anything about their continuance, his direct interests being those of a dealer in furze, turf, “sharp sand,” and other local products. Indeed, he affected not to believe largely in his own powers, and when watts that had been shown him for cure miraculously disappeared — which it must be owned they infallibly did — he would say lightly, “O, I only drink a glass of grog upon ’em at your expense — perhaps it’s all chance,” and immediately turn the subject.

He was at home when they arrived, having in fact seen them descending into his valley. He was a grey-bearded man, with a reddish face, and he looked singularly at Rhoda the first moment he beheld her. Mrs. Lodge told him her errand; and then with words of self-disparagement he examined her arm.

“Medicine can’t cure it,” he said promptly. “’Tis the work of an enemy.”

Rhoda shrank into herself, and drew back.

“An enemy? What enemy?” asked Mrs. Lodge.

He shook his head. “That’s best known to yourself,” he said. “If you like, I can show the person to you, though I shall not myself know who it is. I can do no more; and don’t wish to do that.”

She pressed him; on which he told Rhoda to wait outside where she stood, and took Mrs. Lodge into the room. It opened immediately from the door; and, as the latter remained ajar, Rhoda Brook could see the proceedings without taking part in them. He brought a tumbler from the dresser, nearly filled it with water, and fetching an egg, prepared it in some private way; after which he broke it on the edge of the glass, so that the white went in and the yolk remained. As it was getting gloomy, he took the glass and its contents to the window, and told Gertrude to watch the mixture closely. They leant over the table together, and the milkwoman could see the opaline hue of the egg-fluid changing form as it sank in the water, but she was not near enough to define the shape that it assumed.

“Do you catch the likeness of any face or figure as you look?” demanded the conjuror of the young woman.

She murmured a reply, in tones so low as to be inaudible to Rhoda, and continued to gaze intently into the glass. Rhoda turned, and walked a few steps away.

When Mrs. Lodge came out, and her face was met by the light, it appeared exceedingly pale — as pale as Rhoda’s — against the sad dun shades of the upland’s garniture. Trendle shut the door behind her, and they at once started homeward together. But Rhoda perceived that her companion had quite changed.

“Did he charge much?” she asked tentatively.

“Oh, no — nothing. He would not take a farthing,” said Gertrude.

“And what did you see?” inquired Rhoda.

“Nothing I — care to speak of.” The constraint in her manner was remarkable; her face was so rigid as to wear an oldened aspect, faintly suggestive of the face in Rhoda’s bed-chamber.

“Was it you who first proposed coming here?” Mrs. Lodge suddenly inquired, after a long pause. “How very odd, if you did!”

“No. But I am not very sorry we have come, all things considered.” she replied. For the first time a sense of triumph possessed her, and she did not altogether deplore that the young thing at her side should learn that their lives had been antagonized by other influences than their own.

The subject was no more alluded to during the long and dreary walk home. But in some way or other a story was whispered about the many-dairied lowland that winter that Mrs. Lodge’s gradual loss of the use of her left arm was owing to her being “overlooked” by Rhoda Brook. The latter kept her own counsel about the incubus, but her face grew sadder and thinner; and in the spring she and her boy disappeared from the neighbourhood of Holmstoke.

VI

A Second Attempt

Half a dozen years passed away. and Mr. and Mrs. Lodge’s married experience sank into prosiness, and worse. The farmer was usually gloomy and silent: the woman whom he had wooed for her grace and beauty was contorted and disfigured in the left limb; moreover, she had brought him no child, which rendered it likely that he would be the last of a family who had occupied that valley for some two hundred years. He thought of Rhoda Brook and her son; and feared this might be a judgement from heaven upon him.

The once blithe-hearted and enlightened Gertrude was changing into an irritable, superstitious woman, whose whole time was given to experimenting upon her ailment with every quack remedy she came across. She was honestly attached to her husband, and was ever secretly hoping against hope to win back his heart again by regaining some at least of her personal beauty. Hence it arose that her closet was lined with bottles, packets, and ointment-pots of every description — nay, bunches of mystic herbs, charms, and books of necromancy, which in her schoolgirl time she would have ridiculed as folly.

“Damned if you won’t poison yourself with these apothecary messes and witch mixtures some time or other,” said her husband, when his eye chanced to fall upon the multitudinous array.

She did not reply, but turned her sad, soft glance upon him in such heart-swollen reproach that he looked sorry for his words, and added, “I only meant it for your good, you know, Gertrude.”

“I’ll clear out the whole lot, and destroy them,” said she huskily, “and try such remedies no more!”

“You want somebody to cheer you,” he observed. “I once thought of adopting a boy; but he is too old now. And he is gone away I don’t know where.”

She guessed to whom he alluded; for, Rhoda Brook’s story had in the course of years become known to her; though not a, word had ever passed between her husband and herself on the subject. Neither had she ever spoken to him of her visit to Conjuror Trendle, and of what was revealed to her, or she thought was revealed to her, by that solitary heathman.

She was now five-and-twenty; but she seemed older. “Six years of marriage, and only a few months of love,” she sometimes whispered to herself. And then she thought of the apparent cause, and said, with a tragic glance at her withering limb, “If I could only be again as I was when he first saw me!”

She obediently destroyed her nostrums and charms; but there remained a hankering wish to try something else — some other sort of cure altogether. She had never revisited Trendle since she had been conducted to the house of the solitary by Rhoda against her will; but it now suddenly occurred to Gertrude that she would, in a last desperate effort at deliverance from this seeming curse, again seek out the man, if he yet lived. He was entitled to a certain credence, for the indistinct form he had raised in the glass had undoubtedly resembled the only woman in the world who — as she now knew, though not then — could have a reason for bearing her ill-will. The visit should be paid.

This time she went alone, though she nearly got lost on the heath, and roamed a considerable distance out of her way. Trendle’s house was reached at last, however: he was not indoors, and instead of waiting at the cottage. she went to where his bent figure was pointed out to her at work a long way off. Trendle remembered her, and laying down the handful of furze-roots which he was gathering and throwing into a heap, he offered to accompany her in the homeward direction, as the distance was considerable and the days were short. So they walked together, his head bowed nearly to the earth, and his form of a colour with it.

“You can send away warts and other excrescences, I know,” she said; “why can’t you send away this?” And the arm was uncovered.

“You think too much of my powers!” said Trendle; “and I am old and weak now, too. No, no; it is too much for me to attempt in my own person. What have ye tried?”

She named to him some of the hundred medicaments and counterspells which she had adopted from time to time. He shook his head.

“Some were good enough,” he said approvingly; “but not many of them for such as this. This is of the nature of a blight, not of the nature of a wound; and if you ever do throw it off, it will be all at once.”

“If I only could!”

“There is only one chance of doing it known to me. It has never failed in kindred afflictions — that I can declare. But it is hard to carry out, and especially for a woman.”

“Tell me!” said she.

“You must touch with the limb the neck of a man who’s been hanged.”

She started a little at the image he had raised.

“Before he’s cold — just after he’s cut down,” continued the conjuror impassively.

“How can that do good?”

“It will turn the blood and change the constitution. But, as I say, to do it is hard. You must go to the jail when there’s a hanging, and wait for him when he’s brought off the gallows. Lots have done it, though perhaps not such pretty women as you. I used to send dozens for skin complaints. But that was in former times. The last I sent was in ’13 — near twelve years ago.”

He had no more to tell her; and, when he had put her into a straight track homeward, turned and left her, refusing all money as at first.

VII

A Ride

The communication sank deep into Gertrude’s mind. Her nature was rather a timid one; and probably of all remedies that the white wizard could have suggested there was not one which would have filled her with so much aversion as this, not to speak of the immense obstacles in the way of its adoption.

Casterbridge, the county-town, was a dozen or fifteen miles off; and though in those days, when men were executed for horse-stealing, arson, and burglary, an assize seldom passed without a hanging, it was not likely that she could get access to the body of the criminal unaided. And the fear of her husband’s anger made her reluctant to breathe a word of Trendle’s suggestion to him or to anybody about him.

She did nothing for months, and patiently bore her disfigurement as before. But her woman’s nature, craving for renewed love, through the medium of renewed beauty (she was but twenty-five), was ever stimulating her to try what, at any rate, could hardly do her any harm. “What came by a spell will go by a spell surely,” she would say. Whenever her imagination pictured the act she shrank in terror from the possibility of it: then the words of the conjuror, “It will turn your blood,” were seen to be capable of a scientific no less than ghastly interpretation; the mastering desire returned;. and urged her on again.

There was at this time but one county paper, and that her husband only occasionally borrowed. But old-fashioned days had old-fashioned means, and news was extensively conveyed by word of mouth from market to market, or from fair to fair, so that, whenever such an event as an execution was about to take place, few within a radius of twenty miles were ignorant of the coming sight; and, so far as Holmstoke was concerned, some enthusiasts had been known to walk all the way to Casterbridge and back in one day, solely to witness the spectacle. The next assizes were in March; and when Gertrude Lodge heard that they had been held, she inquired stealthily at the inn as to the result, as soon as she could find opportunity.

She was, however, too late. The time at which the sentences were to be carried out had arrived, and to make the journey and obtain permission at such short notice required at least her husband’s assistance. She dared not tell him, for she had found by delicate experiment that these smouldering village beliefs made him furious if mentioned, partly because he half entertained them himself. It was therefore necessary to wait for another opportunity.

Her determination received a fillip from learning that two epileptic children had attended from this very village of Holmstoke many years before with beneficial results, though the experiment had been strongly condemned by the neighbouring clergy. April, May, June, passed; and it is no overstatement to say that by the end of the last-named month Gertrude well-nigh longed for the death of a fellow-creature. Instead of her formal prayers each night, her unconscious prayer was, “O Lord, hang some guilty or innocent person soon!”

This time she made earlier inquiries, and was altogether more systematic in her proceedings. Moreover the season was summer, between the haymaking and the harvest, and in the leisure thus afforded him her husband had been holiday-taking away from home.

The assizes were in July, and she went to the inn as before. There was to be one execution — only one — for arson.

Her greatest problem was not how to get to Casterbridge, but what means she should adopt for obtaining admission to the jail. Though access for such purposes had formerly never been denied, the custom had fallen into desuetude; and in contemplating her possible difficulties, she was again almost driven to fall back upon her husband. But, on sounding him about the assizes, he was so uncommunicative, so more than usually cold, that she did not proceed, and decided that whatever she did she would do alone.

Fortune, obdurate hitherto, showed her unexpected favour. On the Thursday before the Saturday fixed for the execution, Lodge remarked to her that he was going away from home for another day or two on business at a fair, and that he was sorry he could not take her with him.

She exhibited on this occasion so much readiness to stay at home that he looked at her in surprise. Time had been when she would have shown deep disappointment at the loss of such a jaunt. However, he lapsed into his usual taciturnity, and on the day named left Holmstoke.

It was now her turn. She at first had thought of driving, but on reflection held that driving would not do, since it would necessitate her keeping to the turnpike-road, and so increase by tenfold the risk of her ghastly errand being found out. She decided to ride, and avoid the beaten track, notwithstanding that in her husband’s stables there was no animal just at present which by any stretch of imagination could be considered a lady’s mount, in spite of his promise before marriage to always keep a mare for her. He had, however, many cart-horses, fine ones of their kind; and among the rest was a serviceable creature, an equine Amazon, with a back as broad as a sofa, on which Gertrude had occasionally taken an airing when unwell. This horse she chose.

On Friday afternoon one of the men brought it round. She was dressed, and before going down looked at her shrivelled arm. “Ah!” she said to it, “if it had not been for you this terrible ordeal would have been saved me!”

When strapping up the bundle in which she carried a few articles of clothing, she took occasion to say to the servant, “I take these in case I should not get back tonight from the person I am going to visit. Don’t be alarmed if I am not in by ten, and close up the house as usual. I shall be home tomorrow for certain.” She meant then to tell her husband privately: the deed accomplished was not like the deed projected. He would almost certainly forgive her.

And then the pretty palpitating Gertrude Lodge went from her husband’s homestead; but though her goal was Casterbridge she did not take the direct route thither through Stickleford. Her cunning course at first was in precisely the opposite direction. As soon as she was out of sight, however, she turned to the left, by a road which led into Egdon, and on entering the heath wheeled round, and set out in the true course, due westerly. A more private way down the county could not be imagined; and as to direction, she had merely to keep her horse’s head to a point a little to the right of the sun. She knew that she would light upon a furze-cutter or cottager of some sort from time to time, from whom she might correct her bearing.

Though the date was comparatively recent, Egdon was much less fragmentary in character than now. The attempts — successful and otherwise — at cultivation on the lower slopes, which intrude and break up the original heath Into small detached heaths, had not been carried far; Enclosure Acts had not taken effect, and the banks and fences which now exclude the cattle of those villagers who formerly enjoyed rights of commonage thereon, and the carts of those who had turbary privileges which kept them in firing all the year round, were not erected. Gertrude, therefore, rode along with no other obstacles than the prickly furze-bushes, the mats of heather, the white water-courses, and the natural steeps and declivities of the ground.

Her horse was sure, if heavy-footed and slow, and though a draught animal, was easy-paced; had it been otherwise, she was not a woman who could have ventured to ride over such a bit of country with a half-dead arm. It was therefore nearly eight o’clock when she drew rein to breathe her bearer on the last outlying high point of heath-land towards Casterbridge, previous to leaving Egdon for the cultivated valleys.

She halted before a pool called Rushy-pond, flanked by the ends of two hedges; a railing ran through the centre of the pond, dividing h in half. Over the railing she saw the low green country; over the green trees the roofs of the town; over the roofs a white flat façade, denoting the entrance to the county jail. On the roof of this front specks were moving about; they seemed to be workmen erecting something. Her flesh crept. She descended slowly, and was soon amid corn-fields and pastures In another half-hour, when it was almost dusk, Gertrude reached the White Hart, the first inn of the town on that side.

Little surprise was excited by her arrival; farmers’ wives rode on horseback then more than they do now; though, for that matter, Mrs. Lodge was not imagined to be a wife at all; the innkeeper supposed her some harum-skarum young woman who had come to attend “hang-fair” next day. Neither her husband nor herself ever dealt in Casterbridge market, so that she was unknown. While dismounting she beheld a crowd of boys standing at the door of a harness-maker’s shop just above the inn, looking inside it with deep interest.

“What is going on there?” she asked of the ostler.

“Making the rope for tomorrow.”

She throbbed responsively, and contracted her arm.

“’Tis sold by the inch afterwards,” the man continued. “I could get you a bit, miss, for nothing, if you’d like?”

She hastily repudiated any such wish, all the more from a curious creeping feeling that the condemned wretch’s destiny was becoming interwoven with her own; and having engaged a room for the night, sat down to think.

Up to this time she had formed but the vaguest notions about her means of obtaining access to the prison. The words of the cunning-man returned to her mind. He had implied that she should use her beauty, impaired though it was, as a pass-key, In her inexperience she knew little about jail functionaries; she had heard of a high-sheriff and an under-sheriff, but dimly only. She knew, however, that there must be a hangman, and to the hangman she determined to apply.

VIII

A Water-side Hermit

At this date, and for several years after, there was a hangman to almost every jail. Gertrude found, on inquiry, that the Casterbridge official dwelt in. a lonely cottage by a deep slow river flowing under the cliff on which the prison buildings were situate — the stream being the self-same one, though she did not know it, which watered the Stickleford and Holmstoke meads lower down in its course.

Having changed her dress, and before she had eaten or drunk — for she could not take her ease till she had ascertained some particulars — Gertrude pursued her way by a path along the water-side to the cottage indicated. Passing thus the outskirts of the jail, she discerned on the level roof over the gateway three rectangular lines against the sky, where the specks had been moving in her distant view; she recognized what the erection was, and passed quickly on. Another hundred yards brought her to the executioner’s house, which a boy pointed out. It stood close to the same stream, and was hard by a weir, the waters of which emitted a steady roar.

While she stood hesitating the door opened, and an old man came forth shading a candle with one hand. Locking the door on the outside, he turned to a flight of wooden steps fixed against the end of the cottage, and began to ascend them, this being evidently the staircase to his bedroom. Gertrude hastened forward, but by the time she reached the foot of the ladder he was at the top. She called to him loudly enough to be heard above the roar of the weir; he looked down and said, “What d’ye want here?”

“To speak to you a minute.”

The candle-light, such as it was, fell upon her imploring, pale, upturned face, and Davies (as the hangman was called) backed down the ladder. “I was just going to bed,” he said; “Early to bed and early to rise, but I don’t mind stopping a minute for such a one as you. Come into house.” He reopened the door, and preceded her to the room within.

The implements of his daily work, which was that of a jobbing gardener, stood in a corner, and seeing probably that she looked rural, he said, “If you want me to undertake country work I can’t come, for I never leave Casterbridge for gentle nor simple — not I. My real calling is officer of justice,” he added formally.

“Yes, yes! That’s it. Tomorrow!”

“Ah! I thought so. Well, what’s the matter about that? ’Tis no use to come here about the knot — folks do come continually, but I tell ’em one knot is as merciful as another if ye keep it under the ear. Is the unfortunate man a relation; or, I should say, perhaps” (looking at her dress) “a person who’s been in your employ?”

“No. What time is the execution?”

“The same as usual — twelve o’clock, or as soon after as the London mail-coach gets in. We always wait for that, in case of a reprieve.”

“O — a reprieve — I hope not!” she said involuntarily.

“Well, — hee, hee! — as a matter of business, so do I! But still, if ever a young fellow deserved to be let off, this one does; only just turned eighteen, and only present by chance when the rick was fired. Howsomever, there’s not much risk of that, as they are obliged to make an example of him, there having been so much destruction of property that way lately.”

“I mean,” she explained, “that I want to touch him for a charm, a cure of an affliction, by the advice of a man who has proved the virtue of the remedy.”

“O yes, miss! Now I understand. I’ve had such people come in past years. But it didn’t strike me that you looked of a sort to require blood-turning. What’s the complaint? The wrong kind for this, I’ll be bound.”

“My arm.” She reluctantly showed the withered skin.

“Ah! — ’tis all a-scram!” said the hangman, examining it.

“Yes,” said she.

“Well,” he continued, with interest, “that is the class o’ subject, I’m bound to admit! I like the look of the wownd; it is as suitable for the cure as any I ever saw. ’Twas a knowing-man that sent ’ee, whoever he was.”

“You can contrive for me all that’s necessary?” she said breathlessly.

“You should really have gone to the governor of the jail, and your doctor with ’ee, and given your name and address — that’s how it used to be done, if I recollect. Still, perhaps, I can manage it for a trifling fee.”

“O, thank you! I would rather do it this way, as I should like it kept private.”

“Lover not to know, eh?”

“No — husband.”

“Aha! Very well. I’ll get ’ee a touch of the corpse.”

“Where is it now?” she said, shuddering.

“It? — he, you mean; he’s living yet. Just inside that little small winder up there in the glum.” He signified the jail on the cliff above.

She thought of her husband and her friends. “Yes, of course,” she said; “and how am I to proceed?”

He took her to the door. “Now, do you be waiting at the little wicket in the wall, that you’ll find up there in the lane, not later than one o’clock. I will open it from the inside, as I shan’t come home to dinner till he’s cut down. Goodnight. Be punctual; and if you don’t want anybody to know ’ee, wear a veil. Ah — once I had such a daughter as you!”

She went away, and climbed the path above, to assure herself that she would be able to find the wicket next day. Its outline was soon visible to her — a narrow opening in the outer wall of the prison precincts. The steep was so great that, having reached the wicket, she stopped a moment to breathe: and, looking back upon the water-side cot, saw the hangman again ascending his outdoor staircase. He entered the loft or chamber to which it led, and in a few minutes extinguished his light.

The town clock struck ten, and she returned to the White Hart as she had come.

IX

A Rencounter

It was one o’clock on Saturday. Gertrude Lodge, having been admitted to the jail as above described, was sitting in a waiting-room within the second gate, which stood under a classic archway of ashlar, then comparatively modern, and bearing the inscription, ‘COVNTY JAIL: 1793.’ This had been the façade she saw from the heath the day before. Near at hand was a passage to the roof on which the gallows stood.

The town was thronged, and the market suspended; but Gertrude had seen scarcely a soul. Having kept her room till the hour of the appointment, she had proceeded to the spot by a way which avoided the open space below the cliff where the spectators had gathered; but she could, even now, hear the multitudinous babble of their voices, out of which rose at intervals the hoarse croak of a single voice uttering the words, “Last dying speech and confession!” There had been no reprieve, and the execution was over; but the crowd still waited to see the body taken down.

Soon the persistent woman heard a trampling overhead, then a hand beckoned to her, and, following directions, she went out and crossed the inner paved court beyond the gate-house, her knees trembling so that she could scarcely walk. One of her arms was out of its sleeve, and only covered by her shawl.

On the spot at which she had now arrived were two trestles, and before she could think of their purpose she heard, heavy feet descending stairs somewhere at her back. Turn her head she would not, or could not, and, rigid in this position, she was conscious of a rough coffin passing her borne by four men. It was open, and in it lay the body of a young man, wearing the smockfrock of a rustic, and fustian breeches. The corpse had been thrown into the coffin so hastily that the skirt of the smockfrock was hanging over. The burden was temporarily deposited on the trestles.

By this time the young woman’s state was such that a grey mist seemed to float before her eyes, on account of which, and the veil she wore, she could scarcely discern anything: it was as though she had nearly died, but was held up by a sort of galvanism.

“Now!” said a voice close at hand, and she was just conscious that the word had been addressed to her.

By a last strenuous effort she advanced, at the same time hearing persons approaching behind her. She bared her poor curst arm; and Davies, uncovering the face of the corpse, took Gertrude’s hand, and held it so that her arm lay across the dead man’s neck, upon a line the colour of an unripe blackberry, which surrounded it.

Gertrude shrieked: “the turn o’ the blood,” predicted by the conjuror, had taken place. But at that moment a second shriek rent the air of the enclosure: it was not Gertrude’s, and its effect upon her was to make her start round.

Immediately behind her stood Rhoda Brook, her face drawn, and her eyes red with weeping. Behind Rhoda stood Gertrude’s own husband; his countenance lined, his eyes dim, but without a tear.

“Damn you! what are you doing here?” he said hoarsely.

“Hussy — to come between us and our child now!” cried Rhoda. “This is the meaning of what Satan showed me in the vision! You are like her at last!” And clutching the bare arm of the younger woman, she pulled her unresistingly back against the wall. Immediately Brook had loosened her hold the fragile young Gertrude slid down against the feet of her husband. When he lifted her up she was unconscious.

The mere sight of the twain had been enough to suggest to her that the dead young man was Rhoda’s son. At that time the relatives of an executed convict had the privilege of claiming the body for burial, if they chose to do so; and it was for this purpose that Lodge was awaiting the inquest with Rhoda. He had been summoned by her as soon as the young man was taken in the crime, and at different times since; and he had attended in court during the trial. This was the “holiday” he had been indulging in of late. The two wretched parents had wished to avoid exposure; and hence had come themselves for the body, a wagon and sheet for its conveyance and covering being in waiting outside.

Gertrude’s case was so serious that it was deemed advisable to call to her the surgeon who was at hand. She was taken out of the jail into the town; but she never reached home alive. Her delicate vitality, sapped perhaps by the paralysed arm, collapsed under the double shock that followed the severe strain, physical and mental, to which she had subjected herself during the previous twenty-four hours. Her blood had been “turned” indeed — too far. Her death took place in the town three days after.

Her husband was never seen in Casterbridge again; once only in the old market-place at Anglebury, which he had so much frequented, and very seldom in public anywhere. Burdened at first with moodiness and remorse, he eventually changed for the better, and appeared as a chastened and thoughtful man. Soon after attending the funeral of his poor wife he took steps towards giving up the farms in Holmstoke and the adjoining parish, and, having sold every head of his stock, he went away to Port-Bredy, at the other end of the county, living there in solitary lodgings till his death two years later of a painless decline. It was then found that he had bequeathed the whole of his not inconsiderable property to a reformatory for boys, subject to the payment of a small annuity to Rhoda Brook, if she could be found to claim it.

For some time she could not be found; but eventually she reappeared in her old parish — absolutely refusing, however, to have anything to do with the provision made for her. Her monotonous milking at the dairy was resumed, and followed for many long years, till her form became bent, and her once abundant dark hair white and worn away at the forehead — perhaps by long pressure against the cows. Here, sometimes, those who knew her experiences would stand and observe her, and wonder what sombre thoughts were beating inside that impassive, wrinkled brow, to the rhythm of the alternating milk-streams.

“Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine,” Jan. 1888

THE EBONY FRAME

Edith Nesbit

1891

To be rich is a luxurious sensation — the more so when you have plumbed the depths of hard-up-ness as a Fleet Street hack, a picker-up of unconsidered pars, a reporter, an unappreciated journalist — all callings utterly inconsistent with one’s family feeling and one’s direct descent from the Dukes of Picardy.

When my Aunt Dorcas died and left me seven hundred a year and a furnished house in Chelsea, I felt that life had nothing left to offer except immediate possession of the legacy. Even Mildred Mayhew, whom I had hitherto regarded as my life’s light, became less luminous. I was not engaged to Mildred, but I lodged with her mother, and I sang duets with Mildred, and gave her gloves when it would run to it, which was seldom. She was a dear good girl, and I meant to marry her someday. It is very nice to feel that a good little woman is thinking of you — it helps you in your work — and it is pleasant to know she will say “Yes” when you say “Will you?”

But, as I say, my legacy almost put Mildred out of my head, especially as she was staying with friends in the country just then.

Before the first gloss was off my new mourning I was seated in my aunt’s own armchair in front of the fire in the dining-room of my own house. My own house! It was grand, but rather lonely. I did think of Mildred just then.

The room was comfortably furnished with oak and leather. On the walls hung a few fairly good oil-paintings, but the space above the mantelpiece was disfigured by an exceedingly bad print, “The Trial of Lord William Russell,” framed in a dark frame. I got up to look at it. I had visited my aunt with dutiful regularity, but I never remembered seeing this frame before. It was not intended for a print, but for an oil-painting. It was of fine ebony, beautifully and curiously carved.

I looked at it with growing interest, and when my aunt’s housemaid — I had retained her modest staff of servants — came in with the lamp, I asked her how long the print had been there.

“Mistress only bought it two days afore she was took ill,” she said; “but the frame — she didn’t want to buy a new one — so she got this out of the attic. There’s lots of curious old things there, sir.”

“Had my aunt had this frame long?”

“Oh yes, sir. It come long afore I did, and I’ve been here seven years come Christmas. There was a picture in it — that’s upstairs too — but it’s that black and ugly it might as well be a chimley-back.”

I felt a desire to see this picture. What if it were some priceless old master in which my aunt’s eyes had only seen rubbish?

Directly after breakfast next morning I paid a visit to the lumber-room.

It was crammed with old furniture enough to stock a curiosity shop. All the house was furnished solidly in the early Victorian style, and in this room everything not in keeping with the “drawing-room suite” ideal was stowed away. Tables of papier-maché and mother-of-pearl, straight-backed chairs with twisted feet and faded needlework cushions, firescreens of old-world design, oak bureaux with brass handles, a little work-table with its faded moth-eaten silk flutings hanging in disconsolate shreds: on these and the dust that covered them blazed the full daylight as I drew up the blinds. I promised myself a good time in re-enshrining these household gods in my parlour, and promoting the Victorian suite to the attic. But at present my business was to find the picture as “black as the chimley-back;” and presently, behind a heap of hideous still-life studies, I found it.

Jane the housemaid identified it at once. I took it downstairs carefully and examined it. No subject, no colour were distinguishable. There was a splodge of a darker tint in the middle, but whether it was figure or tree or house no man could have told. It seemed to be painted on a very thick panel bound with leather. I decided to send it to one of those persons who pour on rotting family portraits the water of eternal youth — mere soap and water Mr. Besant tells us it is; but even as I did so the thought occurred to me to try my own restorative hand at a corner of it.

My bath-sponge, soap, and nailbrush vigorously applied for a few seconds showed me that there was no picture to clean! Bare oak presented itself to my persevering brush. I tried the other side, Jane watching me with indulgent interest. The same result. Then the truth dawned on me. Why was the panel so thick? I tore off the leather binding, and the panel divided and fell to the ground in a cloud of dust. There were two pictures — they had been nailed face to face. I leaned them against the wall, and the next moment I was leaning against it myself.

For one of the pictures was myself — a perfect portrait — no shade of expression or turn of feature wanting. Myself — in a cavalier dress, “love-locks and all!” When had this been done? And how, without my knowledge? Was this some whim of my aunt’s?

“Lor’, sir!” the shrill surprise of Jane at my elbow; “what a lovely photo it is! Was it a fancy ball, sir?”

“Yes,” I stammered. “I — I don’t think I want anything more now. You can go.”

She went; and I turned, still with my heart beating violently, to the other picture. This was a woman of the type of beauty beloved of Burne Jones and Rossetti — straight nose, low brows, full lips, thin hands, large deep luminous eyes. She wore a black velvet gown. It was a full-length portrait. Her arms rested on a table beside her, and her head on her hands; but her face was turned full forward, and her eyes met those of the spectator bewilderingly. On the table by her were compasses and instruments whose uses I did not know, books, a goblet, and a miscellaneous heap of papers and pens. I saw all this afterwards. I believe it was a quarter of an hour before I could turn my eyes away from hers. I have never seen any other eyes like hers. They appealed, as a child’s or a dog’s do; they commanded, as might those of an empress.

“Shall I sweep up the dust, sir?” Curiosity had brought Jane back. I acceded. I turned from her my portrait. I kept between her and the woman in the black velvet. When I was alone again I tore down “The Trial of Lord William Russell,” and I put the picture of the woman in its strong ebony frame.

Then I wrote to a frame-maker for a frame for my portrait. It had so long lived face to face with this beautiful witch that I had not the heart to banish it from her presence; from which, it will be perceived that I am by nature a somewhat sentimental person.

The new frame came home, and I hung it opposite the fireplace. An exhaustive search among my aunt’s papers showed no explanation of the portrait of myself, no history of the portrait of the woman with the wonderful eyes. I only learned that all the old furniture together had come to my aunt at the death of my great-uncle, the head of the family; and I should have concluded that the resemblance was only a family one, if everyone who came in had not exclaimed at the “speaking likeness.” I adopted Jane’s “fancy ball” explanation.

And there, one might suppose, the matter of the portraits ended. One might suppose it, that is, if there were not evidently a good deal more written here about it. However, to me, then, the matter seemed ended.

I went to see Mildred; I invited her and her mother to come and stay with me. I rather avoided glancing at the picture in the ebony frame. I could not forget, nor remember without singular emotion, the look in the eyes of that woman when mine first met them. I shrank from meeting that look again.

I reorganised the house somewhat, preparing for Mildred’s visit. I turned the dining-room into a drawing-room. I brought down much of the old-fashioned furniture, and, after a long day of arranging and re-arranging, I sat down before the fire, and, lying back in a pleasant languor, I idly raised my eyes to the picture. I met her dark, deep hazel eyes, and once more my gaze was held fixed as by a strong magic — the kind of fascination that keeps one sometimes staring for whole minutes into one’s own eyes in the glass. I gazed into her eyes, and felt my own dilate, pricked with a smart like the smart of tears.

“I wish,” I said, “oh, how I wish you were a woman, and not a picture! Come down! Ah, come down!”

I laughed at myself as I spoke; but even as I laughed I held out my arms.

I was not sleepy; I was not drunk. I was as wide awake and as sober as ever was a man in this world. And yet, as I held out my arms, I saw the eyes of the picture dilate, her lips tremble — if I were to be hanged for saying it, it is true. Her hands moved slightly, and a sort of flicker of a smile passed over her face.

I sprang to my feet. “This won’t do,” I said, still aloud. “Firelight does play strange tricks. I’ll have the lamp.”

I pulled myself together and made for the bell. My hand was on it, when I heard a sound behind me, and turned — the bell still unrung. The fire had burned low, and the corners of the room were deeply shadowed; but, surely, there — behind the tall worked chair — was something darker than a shadow.

“I must face this out,” I said, “or I shall never be able to face myself again.” I left the bell, I seized the poker, and battered the dull coals to a blaze. Then I stepped back resolutely, and looked up at the picture. The ebony frame was empty! From the shadow of the worked chair came a silken rustle, and out of the shadow the woman of the picture was coming — coming towards me.

I hope I shall never again know a moment of terror so blank and absolute. I could not have moved or spoken to save my life. Either all the known laws of nature were nothing, or I was mad. I stood trembling, but, I am thankful to remember, I stood still, while the black velvet gown swept across the hearthrug towards me.

Next moment a hand touched me — a hand soft, warm, and human — and a low voice said, “You called me. I am here.”

At that touch and that voice the world seemed to give a sort of bewildering half-turn. I hardly know how to express it, but at once it seemed not awful — not even unusual — for portraits to become flesh — only most natural, most right, most unspeakably fortunate.

I laid my hand on hers. I looked from her to my portrait. I could not see it in the firelight.

“We are not strangers,” I said.

“Oh no, not strangers.” Those luminous eyes were looking up into mine — those red lips were near me. With a passionate cry — a sense of having suddenly recovered life’s one great good, that had seemed wholly lost — I clasped her in my arms. She was no ghost — she was a woman — the only woman in the world.

“How long,” I said, “O love — how long since I lost you?”

She leaned back, hanging her full weight on the hands that were clasped behind my head.

“How can I tell how long? There is no time in hell,” she answered.

It was not a dream. Ah, no — there are no such dreams. I wish to God there could be. When in dreams do I see her eyes, hear her voice, feel her lips against my cheek, hold her hands to my lips, as I did that night — the supreme night of my life? At first we hardly spoke. It seemed enough’

… after long grief and pain,

To feel the arms of my true love

Round me once again.

•    •    •

It is very difficult to tell this story. There are no words to express the sense of glad reunion, the complete realisation of every hope and dream of a life, that came upon me as I sat with my hand in hers and looked into her eyes.

How could it have been a dream, when I left her sitting in the straight-backed chair, and went down to the kitchen to tell the maids I should want nothing more — that I was busy, and did not wish to be disturbed; when I fetched wood for the fire with my own hands, and, bringing it in, found her still sitting there — saw the little brown head turn as I entered, saw the love in her dear eyes; when I threw myself at her feet and blessed the day I was born, since life had given me this?

Not a thought of Mildred: all the other things in my life were a dream — this, its one splendid reality.

“I am wondering,” she said after a while, when we had made such cheer each of the other as true lovers may after long parting — “I am wondering how much you remember of our past.”

“I remember nothing,” I said. “Oh, my dear lady, my dear sweetheart — I remember nothing but that I love you — that I have loved you all my life.”

“You remember nothing — really nothing?”

“Only that I am yours; that we have both suffered; that — Tell me, my mistress dear, all that you remember. Explain it all to me. Make me understand. And yet — No, I don’t want to understand. It is enough that we are together.”

If it was a dream, why have I never dreamed it again?

She leaned down towards me, her arm lay on my neck, and drew my head till it rested on her shoulder. “I am a ghost, I suppose,” she said, laughing softly; and her laughter stirred memories which I just grasped at, and just missed. “But you and I know better, don’t we? I will tell you everything you have forgotten. We loved each other — ah! no, you have not forgotten that — and when you came back from the war we were to be married. Our pictures were painted before you went away. You know I was more learned than women of that day. Dear one, when you were gone they said I was a witch. They tried me. They said I should be burned. Just because I had looked at the stars and had gained more knowledge than they, they must needs bind me to a stake and let me be eaten by the fire. And you far away!”

Her whole body trembled and shrank. O love, what dream would have told me that my kisses would soothe even that memory?

“The night before,” she went on, “the devil did come to me. I was innocent before — you know it, don’t you? And even then my sin was for you — for you — because of the exceeding love I bore you. The devil came, and I sold my soul to eternal flame. But I got a good price. I got the right to come back, through my picture (if anyone looking at it wished for me), as long as my picture stayed in its ebony frame. That frame was not carved by man’s hand. I got the right to come back to you. Oh, my heart’s heart, and another thing I won, which you shall hear anon. They burned me for a witch, they made me suffer hell on earth. Those faces, all crowding round, the crackling wood and the smell of the smoke — ”

“O love! no more — no more.”

“When my mother sat that night before my picture she wept, and cried, ‘Come back, my poor lost child!’ And I went to her, with glad leaps of heart. Dear, she shrank from me, she fled, she shrieked and moaned of ghosts. She had our pictures covered from sight and put again in the ebony frame. She had promised me my picture should stay always there. Ah, through all these years your face was against mine.”

She paused.

“But the man you loved?”

“You came home. My picture was gone. They lied to you, and you married another woman; but someday I knew you would walk the world again and that I should find you.”

“The other gain?” I asked.

“The other gain,” she said slowly, “I gave my soul for. It is this. If you also will give up your hopes of heaven I can remain a woman, I can move in your world — I can be your wife. Oh, my dear, after all these years, at last — at last.”

“If I sacrifice my soul,” I said slowly, with no thought of the imbecility of such talk in our “so-called nineteenth century” — “if I sacrifice my soul, I win you? Why, love, it’s a contradiction in terms. You are my soul.”

Her eyes looked straight into mine. Whatever might happen, whatever did happen, whatever may happen, our two souls in that moment met, and became one.

“Then you choose — you deliberately choose — to give up your hopes of heaven for me, as I gave up mine for you?”

“I decline,” I said, “to give up my hope of heaven on any terms. Tell me what I must do, that you and I may make our heaven here — as now, my dear love.”

“I will tell you tomorrow,” she said. “Be alone here tomorrow night — twelve is ghost’s time, isn’t it? — and then I will come out of the picture and never go back to it. I shall live with you, and die, and be buried, and there will be an end of me. But we shall live first, my heart’s heart.”

I laid my head on her knee. A strange drowsiness overcame me. Holding her hand against my cheek, I lost consciousness. When I awoke the grey November dawn was glimmering, ghost-like, through the uncurtained window. My head was pillowed on my arm, which rested — I raised my head quickly — ah! not on my lady’s knee, but on the needle-worked cushion of the straight-backed chair. I sprang to my feet. I was stiff with cold, and dazed with dreams, but I turned my eyes on the picture. There she sat, my lady, my dear love. I held out my arms, but the passionate cry I would have uttered died on my lips. She had said twelve o’clock. Her lightest word was my law. So I only stood in front of the picture and gazed into those grey-green eyes till tears of passionate happiness filled my own.

“Oh, my dear, my dear, how shall I pass the hours till I hold you again?”

No thought, then, of my whole life’s completion and consummation being a dream.

I staggered up to my room, fell across my bed, and slept heavily and dreamlessly. When I awoke it was high noon. Mildred and her mother were coming to lunch.

I remembered, at one shock, Mildred’s coming and her existence.

Now, indeed, the dream began.

With a penetrating sense of the futility of any action apart from her, I gave the necessary orders for the reception of my guests. When Mildred and her mother came I received them with cordiality; but my genial phrases all seemed to be someone else’s. My voice sounded like an echo; my heart was other where.

Still, the situation was not intolerable until the hour when afternoon tea was served in the drawing-room. Mildred and her mother kept the conversational pot boiling with a profusion of genteel commonplaces, and I bore it, as one can bear mild purgatories when one is in sight of heaven. I looked up at my sweetheart in the ebony frame, and I felt that anything that might happen, any irresponsible imbecility, any bathos of boredom, was nothing, if, after it all, she came to me again.

And yet, when Mildred, too, looked at the portrait, and said, “What a fine lady! One of your flames, Mr. Devigne?” I had a sickening sense of impotent irritation, which became absolute torture when Mildred — how could I ever have admired that chocolate-box barmaid style of prettiness? — threw herself into the high-backed chair, covering the needlework with her ridiculous flounces, and added, “Silence gives consent! Who is it, Mr. Devigne? Tell us all about her: I am sure she has a story.”

Poor little Mildred, sitting there smiling, serene in her confidence that her every word charmed me — sitting there with her rather pinched waist, her rather tight boots, her rather vulgar voice — sitting in the chair where my dear lady had sat when she told me her story! I could not bear it.

“Don’t sit there,” I said; “it’s not comfortable!”

But the girl would not be warned. With a laugh that set every nerve in my body vibrating with annoyance, she said, “Oh, dear! mustn’t I even sit in the same chair as your black-velvet woman?”

I looked at the chair in the picture. It was the same; and in her chair Mildred was sitting. Then a horrible sense of the reality of Mildred came upon me. Was all this a reality after all? But for fortunate chance might Mildred have occupied, not only her chair, but her place in my life? I rose.

“I hope you won’t think me very rude,” I said; “but I am obliged to go out.”

I forget what appointment I alleged. The lie came readily enough.

I faced Mildred’s pouts with the hope that she and her mother would not wait dinner for me. I fled. In another minute I was safe, alone, under the chill, cloudy autumn sky — free to think, think, think of my dear lady.

I walked for hours along streets and squares; I lived over again and again every look, word, and hand-touch — every kiss; I was completely, unspeakably happy.

Mildred was utterly forgotten: my lady of the ebony frame filled my heart and soul and spirit.

As I heard eleven boom through the fog, I turned, and went home.

When I got to my street, I found a crowd surging through it, a strong red light filling the air.

A house was on fire. Mine.

I elbowed my way through the crowd.

The picture of my lady — that, at least, I could save!

As I sprang up the steps, I saw, as in a dream — yes, all this was really dream-like — I saw Mildred leaning out of the first-floor window, wringing her hands.

“Come back, sir,” cried a fireman; “we’ll get the young lady out right enough.”

But my lady? I went on up the stairs, cracking, smoking, and as hot as hell, to the room where her picture was. Strange to say, I only felt that the picture was a thing we should like to look on through the long glad wedded life that was to be ours. I never thought of it as being one with her.

As I reached the first floor I felt arms round my neck. The smoke was too thick for me to distinguish features.

“Save me!” a voice whispered. I clasped a figure in my arms, and, with a strange dis-ease, bore it down the shaking stairs and out into safety. It was Mildred. I knew that directly I clasped her.

“Stand back,” cried the crowd.

“Everyone’s safe,” cried a fireman.

The flames leaped from every window. The sky grew redder and redder. I sprang from the hands that would have held me. I leaped up the steps. I crawled up the stairs. Suddenly the whole horror of the situation came on me. “As long as my picture remains in the ebony frame.” What if picture and frame perished together?

I fought with the fire, and with my own choking inability to fight with it. I pushed on. I must save my picture. I reached the drawing-room.

As I sprang in I saw my lady — I swear it — through the smoke and the flames, hold out her arms to me — to me — who came too late to save her, and to save my own life’s joy. I never saw her again.

Before I could reach her, or cry out to her, I felt the floor yield beneath my feet, and I fell into the fiery hell below.

•    •    •

How did they save me? What does that matter? They saved me somehow — curse them. Every stick of my aunt’s furniture was destroyed. My friends pointed out that, as the furniture was heavily insured, the carelessness of a nightly-studious housemaid had done me no harm.

No harm!

That was how I won and lost my only love.

I deny, with all my soul in the denial, that it was a dream. There are no such dreams. Dreams of longing and pain there are in plenty, but dreams of complete, of unspeakable happiness — ah, no — it is the rest of life that is the dream.

But if I think that, why have I married Mildred, and grown stout and dull and prosperous?

I tell you it is all this that is the dream; my dear lady only is the reality. And what does it matter what one does in a dream?

“Longman’s Magazine” Oct. 1891]

Grim Tales (1893)

THE ACTUAL APPARITION

Wirt Girarre

1895

He was a real ghost, there was no mistake about that, though many people disputed it. In the matter of ghosts experience alone carries complete conviction. If those who doubt did but pass through what I suffered, they would not speak glibly of hallucinations or illusions, they would know what a ghost is like — words may fail to convey the exact impression. My experience again is remarkable in so far as I saw, heard, and felt the apparition — if one sense was deceived all were deceived. But to the story.

In 1892 I removed into a couple of cosy little rooms recommended me by a friend as being “just the thing, you know, so snug and convenient, just right for an artist, and then the landlady is so nice and good-natured.”

I took up my residence there in June, and for a few weeks went through the usual process of “settling down.” With the exception of a nightmare or two, or that which seemed then to come under the category of such, I gradually began to feel myself at home, or as near there as one can be in the average furnished apartments.

These so-called nightmares were the forerunners of my future experiences. Vague and inexplicable, I did not at first attach any importance to them, or attribute them to any ghostly visitant; but rather to bad dreams, or perhaps over-fatigue. I did not then take account of when and how they happened; such a course, naturally, did not enter my mind, and it was some time afterward that I had occasion to classify them as it were.

It was on the night of the 30th Sept., 1892, that the apparition first took actual shape. As usual that night I went to bed not feeling the least nervous, as I had plenty of other things to occupy my mind at that time, and I was utterly unsuspicious of any harm happening on that, or any other night. It was about 11 p.m. when I extinguished my candle, and I had been asleep about two hours I suppose, when I suddenly awoke with the impression that someone else was in the room. The place, with the exception of the farthest corners, seemed to be filled with a ghastly grey light (there was no moon that night), and in front of the window the dark figure of a man passed to the foot of the bed, and stood there regarding me.

For the moment it seemed almost familiar to me, for the figure somewhat resembled that of my father, so much so that involuntarily I gasped:

“Father, is that you?”

“I’m not your father,” was the sullen reply.

“Then who are you,” I asked, highly indignant at the intrusion.

“If you want to know who I am, I’m Robert,” he hissed.

I knew no one of that name, I became frightened, his expression was so maniacal, so devilish, that I was speechless with terror, but could not remove my gaze. I dared not move, I did not scream, but I am not given to screaming on any account or under any stress of fright.

The cold perspiration stood out all over me, and I lay there simply paralysed under that gaze. Then, horror of horrors! he sprang at me like a cat, and for a moment the struggle was fearful; afterwards I must have swooned, for I remember nothing more for some minutes, or it may be longer, when I gradually perceived that the room was dark once more, and there was no apparent form visible; though I dared not think of what might be lurking in the dim corners of the room. I felt I dare not move an inch even to reach the matches, nor could I contemplate for a moment raising an alarm. Such a course would have been futile, as my rooms were cut off from the rest of the sleeping apartments. There was no more sleep for me that night. All I could do was to wait and watch for the dawn, which came at last, and with it relief

I felt convinced that my visitant was no human being; for no human being could have got through the door of my sitting-room, which led into my bedroom, without my being instantly aware of it, — as the fastening had an unfortunate trick of snapping with a spring rather loudly, and without the least warning, no matter how carefully manipulated. The windows, too, of both sitting-room and bedroom, are unyielding, noisy in their movements; and though I kept the one in the bedroom always open at the top, yet only sufficiently wide to admit a free current of fresh air, certainly not wide enough to admit any intruder choosing to come in that way.

I could not chase the recollection of the horrid thing from my mind all that day, and I made it my business to tax my landlady with it, and get her to account for it in a reasonable way. I asked her first, whether she knew of anything out of the ordinary that might have happened in the rooms before I took them; or whether a death had occurred there. She seemed very much taken by surprise, and innocently curious as to my reason for asking her; in fact, her replies were most irritating in their assumption of innocence. Whether she ever really was cognizant of anything taking place there, and kept her knowledge back for pecuniary reasons of her own, I shall never learn. I only know that it was with the most guileless air imaginable that she promised to make inquiries of an old lady next door, who had lived there in the former tenant’s time, and most likely knew all about it. But whatever the old lady did say was never told to me, though I repeatedly made inquiries.

I for my part took note of the fact that it was on the last night of the month, which struck me as being peculiar, as on the last night of the preceding month I remembered I had had a curious experience during the night, the precise nature of which I could never arrive at satisfactorily. It seemed to me a curious jumble of dream and reality, and a sense of being pummelled to a pulp. I put this experience down to a nightmare, as I could not account for it in any other way, though I had partaken of nothing that evening at supper to cause indigestion. In short, I tried in vain to arrive at a satisfactory conclusion, and to reduce the unusual experience to a natural cause, but did not succeed in so doing.

The month went quickly by; I had much to think of; life is made up of a multitude of little things, and the trivialities often fully occupy our thoughts; but at that time I was contemplating a change of importance, and what to do in the circumstances pressing upon me required so much thought and attention, that the experience of the last night in the month faded into insignificance; so much so, that the last day of the month again arrived without so much as a thought on my part that it was the last day. I therefore retired that night as inapprehensive as one could wish, full of my little troubles, and utterly oblivious to nervous fear.

I had not been asleep two hours before I felt a horrible pressure from behind (I was lying on my right side), and two long, cold, clammy hands were gradually insinuated beneath my arms. I felt instinctively that they were “Robert’s,” and, cold with fright, almost paralysed by the strength of his grip, I held them tight as in a vice; whereupon they were removed and immediately held in front of my face, on a level with my eyes, each finger moving as though vindicating their release from my pressure; and in my determination to hurt them if I possibly could, and thereby rid myself of his presence once and for all, I took the little finger of the hand nearest me to pinch it with a spiteful pinch, when it again eluded my grasp and vanished, together with the hands themselves.

Trembling at what I had had the temerity to do, I sank back on my pillow, moved not a limb for very fear, and waited for morning.

I asked myself again and again, What did it all mean? Was I to be haunted in this way all the time I remained in these rooms, tormented by a thing so uncanny as this “Robert,” as he called himself? Why I had never in my life before come across, or had any dealings with, any person of the name of Robert, and certainly after this experience I never wished to. I resolved that as soon as possible I would seek fresh apartments, and until they were found I would sleep anywhere but in that room on all future “last nights.” After this, therefore, at the end of every month, I slept at the houses of friends who, while appearing to sympathise most warmly with me, laughed undisguisedly at my contention that Robert was a real ghost.

I have long since removed from the apartments and the only facts I have been able to gather concerning its previous tenants were obtained for me by the wife of a medical man long resident in the neighbourhood. “Robert” was the son (or brother, I forget which), then dead, of the family who formerly lived in the house where I lodged. He was known to be wrong in the head, and some time before his death had to be placed under restraint and labelled “dangerous.” Moreover, his apartments in the house were those which I occupied. I was never able to find out any reason for his appearance on the last nights only. I have not seen him or his apparition once since I left the house, nor do I wish to.

This is a plain statement of the actual facts in nothing elaborated, and the drawing I have made is a faithful presentment of what I saw.

Phantasms (1895)

AUGUST HEAT

William F. Harvey

1910

I have had what I believe to be the most remarkable day in my life, and while the events are still fresh in my mind, I wish to put them down on paper as clearly as possible.

Let me say at the outset that my name is James Clarence Withencroft. I am forty years old, in perfect health, never having known a day’s illness. By profession I am an artist, not a very successful one, but I earn enough money by my black-and-white work to satisfy my necessary wants.

My only near relative, a sister, died five years ago, so that I am independent. I breakfasted this morning at nine, and after glancing through the morning paper I lighted my pipe and proceeded to let my mind wander in the hope that I might chance upon some subject for my pencil.

The room, though door and windows were open, was oppressively hot, and I had just made up my mind that the coolest and most comfortable place in the neighbourhood would be the deep end of the public swimming bath, when the idea came.

I began to draw. So intent was I on my work that I left my lunch untouched, only stopping work when the clock of St. Jude’s struck four.

The final result, for a hurried sketch, was, I felt sure, the best thing I had done. It showed a criminal in the dock immediately after the judge had pronounced sentence. The man was fat — enormously fat. The flesh hung in rolls about his chin; it creased his huge, stumpy neck. He was clean shaven (perhaps I should say a few days before he must have been clean shaven) and almost bald. He stood in the dock, his short, clumsy fingers clasping the rail, looking straight in front of him. The feeling that his expression conveyed was not so much one of horror as of utter, absolute collapse.

There seemed nothing in the man strong enough to sustain that mountain of flesh.

I rolled up the sketch, and without quite knowing why, placed it in my pocket. Then with the rare sense of happiness which the knowledge of a good thing well done gives, I left the house.

I believe that I set out with the idea of calling upon Trenton, for I remember walking along Lytton Street and turning to the right along Gilchrist Road at the bottom of the hill where the men were at work on the new tram lines.

From there onwards I have only the vaguest recollection of where I went. The one thing of which I was fully conscious was the awful heat, that came up from the dusty asphalt pavement as an almost palpable wave. I longed for the thunder promised by the great banks of copper-coloured cloud that hung low over the western sky.

I must have walked five or six miles, when a small boy roused me from my reverie by asking the time.

It was twenty minutes to seven.

When he left me I began to take stock of my bearings. I found myself standing before a gate that led into a yard bordered by a strip of thirsty earth, where there were flowers, purple stock and scarlet geranium. Above the entrance was a board with the inscription —

CHS. ATKINSON.
MONUMENTAL MASON.
WORKER IN ENGLISH
AND ITALIAN MARBLES

From the yard itself came a cheery whistle, the noise of hammer blows, and the cold sound of steel meeting stone.

A sudden impulse made me enter.

A man was sitting with his back towards me, busy at work on a slab of curiously veined marble. He turned round as he heard my steps and I stopped short.

It was the man I had been drawing, whose portrait lay in my pocket.

He sat there, huge and elephantine, the sweat pouring from his scalp, which he wiped with a red silk handkerchief. But though the face was the same, the expression was absolutely different.

He greeted me smiling, as if we were old friends, and shook my hand.

I apologised for my intrusion.

“Everything is hot and glary outside,” I said. “This seems an oasis in the wilderness.”

“I don’t know about the oasis,” he replied, “but it certainly is hot, as hot as hell. Take a seat, sir!”

He pointed to the end of the gravestone on which he was at work, and I sat down.

“That’s a beautiful piece of stone you’ve got hold of,” I said.

He shook his head. “In a way it is,” he answered; “the surface here is as fine as anything you could wish, but there’s a big flaw at the back, though I don’t expect you’d ever notice it. I could never make really a good job of a bit of marble like that. It would be all right in the summer like this; it wouldn’t mind the blasted heat. But wait till the winter comes. There’s nothing quite like frost to find out the weak points in stone.”

“Then what’s it for?” I asked.

The man burst out laughing.

“You’d hardly believe me if I was to tell you it’s for an exhibition, but it’s the truth. Artists have exhibitions: so do grocers and butchers; we have them too. All the latest little things in headstones, you know.”

He went on to talk of marbles, which sort best withstood wind and rain, and which were easiest to work; then of his garden and a new sort of carnation he had bought. At the end of every other minute he would drop his tools, wipe his shining head, and curse the heat.

I said little, for I felt uneasy. There was something unnatural, uncanny, in meeting this man.

I tried at first to persuade myself that I had seen him before, that his face, unknown to me, had found a place in some out-of-the-way corner of my memory, but I knew that I was practising little more than a plausible piece of self-deception.

Mr. Atkinson finished his work, spat on the ground, and got up with a sigh of relief.

“There! what do you think of that?” he said, with an air of evident pride. The inscription which I read for the first time was this —

SACRED TO THE MEMORY OF
JAMES CLARENCE WITHENCROFT.
BORN JAN. 18TH, 1860.
HE PASSED AWAY VERY SUDDENLY
ON AUGUST 20TH, 190-

“In the midst of life we are in death.”

For some time I sat in silence. Then a cold shudder ran down my spine. I asked him where he had seen the name.

“Oh, I didn’t see it anywhere,” replied Mr. Atkinson. “I wanted some name, and I put down the first that came into my head. Why do you want to know?”

“It’s a strange coincidence, but it happens to be mine.” He gave a long, low whistle.

“And the dates?”

“I can only answer for one of them, and that’s correct.”

“It’s a rum go!” he said.

But he knew less than I did. I told him of my morning’s work. I took the sketch from my pocket and showed it to him. As he looked, the expression of his face altered until it became more and more like that of the man I had drawn.

“And it was only the day before yesterday,” he said, “that I told Maria there were no such things as ghosts!”

Neither of us had seen a ghost, but I knew what he meant.

“You probably heard my name,” I said.

“And you must have seen me somewhere and have forgotten it! Were you at Clacton-on-Sea last July?”

I had never been to Clacton in my life. We were silent for some time. We were both looking at the same thing, the two dates on the gravestone, and one was right.

“Come inside and have some supper,” said Mr. Atkinson.

His wife was a cheerful little woman, with the flaky red cheeks of the country-bred. Her husband introduced me as a friend of his who was an artist. The result was unfortunate, for after the sardines and watercress had been removed, she brought out a Doré Bible, and I had to sit and express my admiration for nearly half an hour.

I went outside, and found Atkinson sitting on the gravestone smoking.

We resumed the conversation at the point we had left off. “You must excuse my asking,” I said, “but do you know of anything you’ve done for which you could be put on trial?”

He shook his head. “I’m not a bankrupt, the business is prosperous enough. Three years ago I gave turkeys to some of the guardians at Christmas, but that’s all I can think of. And they were small ones, too,” he added as an afterthought.

He got up, fetched a can from the porch, and began to water the flowers. “Twice a day regular in the hot weather,” he said, “and then the heat sometimes gets the better of the delicate ones. And ferns, good Lord! they could never stand it. Where do you live?”

I told him my address. It would take an hour’s quick walk to get back home.

“It’s like this,” he said. “We’ll look at the matter straight. If you go back home tonight, you take your chance of accidents. A cart may run over you, and there’s always banana skins and orange peel, to say nothing of fallen ladders.”

He spoke of the improbable with an intense seriousness that would have been laughable six hours before. But I did not laugh.

“The best thing we can do,” he continued, “is for you to stay here till twelve o’clock. We’ll go upstairs and smoke, it may be cooler inside.”

To my surprise I agreed.

We are sitting now in a long, low room beneath the eaves. Atkinson has sent his wife to bed. He himself is busy sharpening some tools at a little oilstone, smoking one of my cigars the while.

The air seems charged with thunder. I am writing this at a shaky table before the open window.

The leg is cracked, and Atkinson, who seems a handy man with his tools, is going to mend it as soon as he has finished putting an edge on his chisel.

It is after eleven now. I shall be gone in less than an hour.

But the heat is stifling.

It is enough to send a man mad.

Midnight House and Other Tales (1910)

THE PIPERS OF MALLORY

Theo. Douglas

1917

I

While my last letter was flying out to you in India, dear Margaret, and your reply flying back to me, a great deal has been happening.

My last letter was all about Jack, wasn’t it? — how we met and fell in love and how he was under orders for the war, and so we had to be married in a desperate hurry — such a hurry that it shocked Aunt Winifred, glad as she was to get rid of me. I told you what I was going to wear, and Jack says I made rather a nice-looking bride (he put it more strongly than that). He was, of course, in khaki, and looked dearer than ever, and half an hour or less turned me into Mrs. Frazer. We had only nine days for our honeymoon instead of the three weeks we hoped for, but they were nine lovely days. Then there was the dreadful going away; but, before that came about, the question had to be settled — the question you ask, my dear cousin — what was to become of me while Jack was away in France fighting those horrible Huns?

It was over this Jack and I had our first difference — not a serious difference, for we kissed and made it up at once — when I found out what he wanted me to do. He actually wished me to make my home with his mother in Scotland — fancy that — to bury myself for months and months in the wilds with a woman I did not know, who would be worse than Aunt Winifred twice over. I had never been free in my life, but always in leading-strings, and I made up my mind I would be free now, quite on my own, to make up for what I should suffer through Jack being away.

I didn’t tell Jack that — about wanting to be emancipated, he would not have understood. I told him what was quite true — that I wanted to make my V.A.D. training of use, and do war work of sorts in a London hospital, like Violet Power. And my plan was that Violet and I should take a flat together, a tiny flat, which would cost next to nothing (I thought), near enough to her hospital to be convenient, a hospital which needed helpers, and would find work for me, too.

Jack did not like it. Dear fellow! He is one of the old-fashioned sort who thinks women should be hedged about and protected, and give themselves up to looking after their household concerns; but he gave in when he saw I was determined. That was nearly at the end of our time together — our lovely time. He had planned to take me up to Mallory, to say good-bye at the end of his leave, but having to go off suddenly altered that. However, he made me promise I would go there alone as soon as he left, to pay my mother-in-law a long visit before I settled down with Violet in the flat. Over that I was obliged to yield (with some private reservation about the long), for, as you will understand, I could not say “No” to him just then.

Well, we parted, and it was a hard parting. He put me in the night train for the North, before he left to cross over to France. Peters, his mother’s servant, was to meet me in Edinburgh and take care of me from there; you see, I could not get away from the “take care.”

Now you will know from my letter, the “Jack” letter, that I had never seen Lady Heron. She is always more or less of an invalid, and bronchitis, or something like that, prevented her taking the long journey to be present at our wedding. Fancy having attacks of bronchitis, and yet living up there in the North! She has been a widow for many years, and Jack is her only son; there is a son by a former marriage, Jack’s half-brother, who is now Lord Heron. The Frazers are poor in these days, but Jack’s mother has an income of her own, though I do not think it is a large one. Mallory is the old family place — mind you pronounce it right — Mal-lory, and not the other way. I suppose Lady Heron would not live there if Heron married, but he is still a bachelor, and with the regiment somewhere in France. Jack does not say much about his half-brother. I fancy the two are not very good friends.

Peters was waiting for me on the Edinburgh station, and by that time I was feeling rather better, and able to take an interest in what was new. Breakfast was ready for me at an hotel, with no bill for it, as Peters paid everything. I was “her leddyship’s guest,” he said, and it was by Lady Heron’s orders; he seemed quite hurt when I offered. A very good breakfast it was, and I was hungry, for I had been far too wretched to eat any dinner the night before. Then, after rest and refreshment, I had to sally forth again to a different station, Peters carrying my hand-luggage. And when we gained the street — that wonderful street with the Castle opposite, standing up grey against the morning sky — there was a skirl of wild music coming towards us, with the tramp of marching feet.

A skirl. That is the right word for bagpipes, as perhaps you know. I daresay you have heard them in India, as there are Scottish regiments there, but I had never heard them before. Their music may be barbaric — people say so; but there is something about it that fires the blood — that fired my blood, though I am only a Scotswoman married and not born. I could understand how it put spirit into the tired feet which were following, muddy from a long route march, as they kept time to the swing and beat of the brave tune. Jack belongs to a Highland regiment, of course, the same that Heron is in. And at the moment I felt prouder than ever to be Jack’s wife.

“I suppose Lady Heron has a piper at Mallory, has she not?” It was the first question I had put to Peters. I had the notion that a piper must be a necessary appendage to every Highland family of importance; Lady Heron would not of course detain a young man, but she might so employ some old retainer, past the age to be of service in the war. But the servant shook his head. He, too, is quite elderly — did I say? — and speaks broad Scotch, though his name might as well be English.

“No, mom,” he answered, “we hef no piper at Mallory. Her leddyship does not like the pipes.”

Not like the pipes! How odd of her, I thought. And upon this scrap of information the latent opposition which I had felt towards Jack’s mother from the beginning swelled and took shape. How strange of a woman who had soldier sons — a son and a step-son — and who wrote as if she were proud of them and their calling; and of one who I knew from Jack was Highland bred to the backbone! Throughout the journey north-west, now with great hills looming up through mist, now by the side of rushing streams, I was thinking of my mother-in-law, and how much easier it would have been to meet her for the first time if Jack had gone with me to Mallory. I was afraid of her, to tell the truth, and that made me brace myself beforehand to be defiant, picturing a great lady who would stand on her dignity, and think Jack might have done better for himself than in marrying me, an Englishwoman of no particular family and small fortune. She would condemn, she would dictate, she would want to interfere.

The day wore on; the train was not a fast one, and there were frequent stoppages, and every hour Peters would come to the window to know whether I wanted anything. But at last there came the station where we alighted for Mallory. There was a car to meet us, and in less than half an hour Mallory came into view. Not the fine place I had been picturing to myself, only a moderate-sized country house, but possessing a tower with corner-turrets in the Scottish fashion, which gives it some distinction. The rest of the house is low, with thick walls of undoubted antiquity. The windows are small, but beyond them there are lovely views.

It was only a confused impression I derived from that first entrance — of a hall warm with firelight, decorated with heads of beasts, and skins and weapons, of a room beyond, also warm, and of a frail little lady rising from her chair at the window, and coming lamely across to greet me with an embrace and a kiss. Such a frail little lady to be the mother of a great, strong man like Jack She, like the house, was not what I expected, but I was right in two particulars. She is grande dame to the finger-tips, and I am certain she views me critically.

II

On further acquaintance I like Lady Heron better than I expected, and I have been able to express myself somewhat enthusiastically in writing to Jack; this will please him. I would give a good deal to know what her letter — the long letter I saw her writing — said to him about me. She is kind to me, painstakingly kind, but still we are strangers to each other, and I think it likely we shall be strangers to the end. That she is fond of Jack ought to knit a bond between us, but somehow I strongly suspect it is the very thing which holds us apart.

She is always testing and appraising me, though not in the way I expected; she tells me little anecdotes of Jack’s youth, and watches to see if I receive them with the enthusiasm I ought; she shows me some cherished pictures — stupid, old- fashioned photographs — of Jack as a baby, Jack as a toddler learning to walk, and upwards at various stages of his boyhood. It is plainly my duty to care about these, but I don’t particularly; they seem too far removed from the Jack I know. The pictures bore me, and I shudder inwardly when a new anecdote is presented. And, sitting here in the chair of truth, I must confess it — I find Mallory dull. My chief amusement is going out for rambles by myself, rambles Lady Heron is too lame to share; she can only walk up and down the terrace with her stick by way of exercise, and that at the sunniest time of the day. The surroundings here are certainly beautiful, and the Highland people interest me. I talk to them when I have a chance, and try to get accustomed to their way of speech. It was from one of these Highlanders I found out the reason why Lady Heron does not like the pipes. I never put the question to her. I do not know why not, as it would have been a simple thing to ask, but whenever it came into my head, something happened to divert the thought and keep the words unspoken. But that thrilling pibroch heard in Edinburgh seemed to haunt me here at Mallory, though not always the same tune. I dreamt of it the first night I was here; it waked me from sleep, as a real thing might have done but when I listened in the deep, country stillness and the darkness of the unfamiliar room, there was not a sound. And each time I walked in the direction of Glen Fruin I heard it with my waking ears, very faint and far in the distance, but I could be certain it was there.

I went some way up the Glen on the third occasion, hoping to get nearer to the sound, but it seemed to recede as I approached; the preliminary skirl, and two or three bars of a tune, as if the musician were practising, and then a fault and silence. Presently my watch warned me I should return, for Mallory is a punctual household, and Lady Heron would be waiting tea. I was well on my way home when I met an old shepherd I had spoken to before, and, as I still heard the music at intervals, I bethought myself to ask him:

“Who is it about here who plays the pipes? Somebody is practising away there in the Glen.”

Highland fashion, he met my question by another, and his shaggy brows drew together.

“You be the Leddy Frazer, be you not?”

I was Mrs. Frazer, I told him.

“Eh, weel, ye are Frazer married, and so have a right to hear. ’Tisn’t lucky for the Frazers when the pipes are sounding in Glen Fruin, but the Lord be thankit that they don’t come lower down! I do not look to hear them mysel’, being nobbut Steenson that was once Macgregor.”

This was pretty well Greek to me.

“Why isn’t it good for the Frazers?” I demanded.

“Ye’ve never heard the legend? Mebbe ’tis not for the likes of me to tell ye, but seeing as ye ask — Time gone by the chief of the Frazers had his pipers equal with the best, always seven of them in his tail, and callants growing up to take the place — and a proud place it was — of them as were short-winded or old. Glen Fruin was full of folk in those days, where there’s nought now but a wheen ruins, or a square in the green to mark where walls have been. And custom was that Frazer’s pipers should be chosen from the Glen Fruin folk.

“That was a time of battles, same as now, and the Frazers were up in arms. I don’t mind the name of the battle, no, nor how long ago, but there was a great slaughter, and the Frazers fell to a man, and the pipers with their chief. It is said there was none to fill their places, for the callants had not been instructed, and the head of the clan was nobbut a wailing Cairn. And since that day the Frazers have had no pipers — the Frazers of Mallory. Mebbe that is why the dead men are not content, and when a Frazer is about to die they are heard piping in Glen Fruin.” I am putting down the old man’s words as nearly as I remember them, but I daresay I spell them wrong. As I listened a cold shiver went down my spine and crept among the roots of my hair; if my hair had been undone I think it would have stood up with fright.

“Why, you don’t mean to say,” I stammered — “you don’t mean to tell me that what I have been hearing is a ghost? A ghost in broad daylight and in the open air! And who is it who is going to die?”

“You needn’t be afeared, my leddy, for him as is your own. There’s a many Frazers at the war besides, and the pipers pipe the same for a death in bed. There’s John Frazer near his end at the Mill, and mebbe ’tis for him. He has a son fighting, and Donald Frazer, farmer, has two more. Ye need na fear for the heads of the clan, or for their womenfolk, unless the pipers come right down to Mallory, and go round the house.”

“Do they come as close as that?” I asked, shuddering. “Aye, my leddy, that they do. And they are heard by all of the Frazer name, and sometimes by them as are not so called, but I never heard tell of their being seen. It is just a sound and no more, sometimes a lament on the pipes, sometimes a fine march for them as fall. And they go once round for a woman, and twice for the heir, and three times for the head of the clan. They went three times round the house when the late lord died, and there was many who heard them, together with my Leddy Heron hersel’. And ever since then she hasna been able to bear the pipes, the real pipes, and they are warned not to come nigh.”

After that I wondered no more at what Peters had told me in Edinburgh. The faint, far-off skirling, which had sounded even while old Steenson was speaking, ceased as I hurried back, but Mallory looked a dark blot in the prospect, dismal as it had never seemed before. Was it because of this superstition that Lady Heron had grown old and grey before her time? It would be awful, I thought, to live here year in and year out, eternally listening for those notes of doom. What should I do, I, a married Frazer, if I heard them circling round the house, and if it meant that Jack — I tell you frankly what was my first impression afterwards; some healthy scepticism came to my relief. An old man’s story of impossible ghosts — where was the need to credit it?

Through that day and the next everything moved on velvet — the quiet, regular hours, the careful service, the slightly formal ways with an old-world atmosphere about them, which I found piquant and attractive when not in one of my impatient moods. And I was perhaps more patient, more inclined to be appreciative, because the weeks of my visit had nearly run out; very soon now I should be setting out to establish myself with Violet at the flat, in the midst of London and life. I was softened, too, because Lady Heron appeared to recognize my right of choice as to what I would do in Jack’s absence. All she said was:

“Your home is here, my dear, when you care to have it so. When you wish to come back to Mallory you have only to let me know.” Then I heard her sigh softly to herself, perhaps because she recognized that I did not care. I thanked her and said I would write, and she replied:

“I think I shall know without telling.” An odd thing to say.

On the next evening, which was the last but one, we were sitting together in the half-light with the windows open, for although it was late October the weather was still warm. I was holding wool for Lady Heron to wind, and was so close in front of her and could clearly see her face, when, in the distance, and a mere thread of sound, but perfectly distinct, I heard the skirl of the pipes.

I do not think my hands trembled, held out stiffly with the skein, but hers did in the effort to wind. The thin, faint music came near, nearer, and then seemed to turn away. Not to the house; for all my cherished unbelief, I was thankful that it was not coming to the house.

Lady Heron had dropped her ball of wool, and now stooped to regain it.

“We will not wind any more now, my dear,” she said. “I am obliged to you, but I shall have enough.” And then she crossed the room and rang the bell, a hanging bell-pull, old-fashioned like all else at Mallory. Peters came quickly; was it only my fancy that he looked disturbed.

“We will have the windows closed now and the lamp lit.” Such was her commonplace order. I heard no more of the pipes that night, but next morning came the news that John Frazer, the tenant of the Mill, had passed away. It was no doubt a coincidence, nothing more, but we may put it down as an odd one. That was the day before yesterday. I left early yesterday morning, Peters going with me as far as Edinburgh, and I have been busy writing, writing, all these hours in the train. What a packet you will have to wade through!

III

You have been good, dear Margaret, in liking my letters about the hospital work, although while I was so busy they could only be scraps. (And, what was worse, I am afraid my letters to poor old Jack in the trenches were scrappy too. Ungrateful, perhaps, for I have lived all this while on his scraps to me.)

But to go back to the hospital. You will be surprised to hear that I have had to give up my work there, which is a great disappointment. But everything has been horrid of late. I am alone in the flat. The beginning of the upset was that Violet turned horrid; wasn’t it nasty of her, when we had been such chums? I told you about Captain Bridgwater, who used to come to see us after he left the hospital; he was cousin to some of Violet’s people, and an old schoolfellow of Jack’s. It seemed right and natural to be friends, as that was so I liked him in the beginning — really I liked him very much, and was pleased when he showed that he liked me. But Violet liked him in a different way, and expected a flirtation they had begun years before to have a serious meaning; she declares it would have meant something serious if it had not been for me. So we had a quarrel, and she said dreadful things, and I was indignant, as I had a right to be, and was not sorry when she packed her boxes and gave up her share of the flat, leaving me alone.

I was not sorry, but I was shaken by it, and it so happened that when Captain Bridgwater came in he found me crying. Then he was horrid, too, and said things — things that at first I did not understand, and that he had no business to say to Jack’s wife, he who had been Jack’s friend. I shall never speak to him again, you may be sure.

After this I went to the hospital, to my work as usual, but I did not feel a bit like myself. I had a fainting fit for the first time in my life, and they were a long while in bringing me to. Afterwards the doctor told me I should have to give up V.A.D.-ing. I am not strong enough.

I am wondering what I ought to do. Jack would not like me being here by myself. He only consented to the plan because Violet was joining me, and I do not know of anybody else. But nothing on earth will induce me to go back to Aunt Winifred.

•    •    •

I was interrupted there, and now where do you think I am continuing my letter? I am writing in the train, the Scotch express, and I am on my way to Mallory. There is a surprise for you, and a surprise for me, but I begin to think it is the best solution of the difficulty that could have been found. Lady Heron sent for me, and the queer thing is how she could have known or guessed. I begin to think my mother-in-law must be a bit of a witch.

Where I broke off above was when the servant came in to say a man named Peters had called and had brought a letter. It was a kind letter, so kind a letter that it made me cry, though that is saying little, as tears have been close to my eyes of late. The rigours of winter were past, Lady Heron wrote; the days were already lengthening into spring; a visit would give her the utmost pleasure, and she fancied it might now suit me to come to her again. Peters was her messenger instead of the post, and if I were willing Peters would arrange my journey, and spare me all trouble about it, as indeed he has done. And it was not necessary for me to write. Peters would send her a wire, and a warm welcome would await me.

So here I am travelling North. And I think you will agree it has been a wise decision, and one that will please Jack as things are. I shall post this to you in Edinburgh, my dear, and write again from Mallory.

IV

Really, Margaret, I am happy to be here, much happier than I was before. Lady Heron is so kind, and I think we understand each other better than we did. I have a lovely room on the south side of the house, and the air is far milder than you would suppose. We never say anything about the pipes, but I fancy they must have been heard twice at least while I was in London, because two more of the Frazers have fallen; sons of the people at the farm; and another of the clan name died in hospital the week before my return.

Alas! We have heard the pipes again, and I will tell you how. They came at the edge of dusk, not what they call here the murk of the night, but while there was still light enough to see, had there been bodily presence to be seen. Lady Heron likes me to play to her, and I was sitting at the piano, recollecting old airs, and sometimes crooning a bit of song half to myself, when it seemed as if my music had an echo outside the house. My fingers fell from the keys, and in another moment I was sure what it was, and where.

It came with a sweep, swiftly, devouring space, heard afar, and then immediately close, passing our window, which looked out upon nothing — nothing, not a shadow even, nor the print of a foot. The wild pibroch passed by, but it went circling round the house, and, oh, it was coming back? We both sprang up and met in a close clasp together, each of us calling the other by name. “Mother!” I cried to her — the first time I have called her so, but it seemed rent from me without thought. It passed the second time, and now there was a cry with it, like a human voice in pain, and again it went circling through the air which had been still, but was rising with a gust of storm.

Twice for the heir! That was what the old man Steenson said, and, oh, me! Jack was the heir. There was a pause of seconds, and then it passed for the third time, the pibroch and the shriek. Afterwards there was a great silence. The wind which had swept with it fell also — if it were wind indeed; and we two women drew apart and looked at each other. Her face was ghastly, and I expect mine was no better.

“Cecily,” she said, “you know!” And then, “Who told you?” Soon afterwards Peters came in to light the lamps, and the old servant’s hands so trembled as he performed his task that the glasses clashed and clattered — he who was usually noiseless. He, too, had heard; of that I made no doubt; he had heard even as we.

It was the sign for the head of the house. Lady Heron heard it just so before her husband died. There was some small comfort to us both in the belief that it came for Heron and not Jack. But that comfort did not last. The telegram from the War Office came two days after — “Wounded and missing, believed killed” — the intimation to Lady Heron about both her sons, Lieut.-Colonel Lord Heron, and Captain the Hon. John Frazer; not one alone, but both.

I cannot write about that time. A chink was left to us through which hope came, but one could hardly look at it in face of the awful doubt. And the sign for the head of the house would stand also for Jack, provided Heron had been the first to fall.

V

Looking back I cannot think how we endured the suspense. Counted by days the measure of it was not long, but it seemed as if ages went by. We tried to comfort each other; Lady Heron was an angel to me through all her own pain; but for her I would have died.

I cannot write about it; you must take it for granted, and I hurry on to the end. We were sitting together, we two alone, as we were when the sign came. Lady Heron was knitting, feverishly knitting at those socks for Jack which she would not lay aside, little as either of us believed they would be worn. We were together, as I said, when Peters rushed into the room with another telegram on his silver tray. (I wonder he remembered the tray.) Lady Heron tore it open; it was addressed to her. “Home slightly wounded. With you and Cecily tomorrow. — Jack.”

My mind takes a leap from that moment to another when he stood at the door. Lady Heron would not let me go to the station because I had fainted again, and as I might not, she would not either; she said it would be unfair to take the advantage. Jack at the door, a figure in soiled khaki, very pale, with his head bandaged and his arm in a sling; Jack himself, alive and still to live. My Jack; and I do not mind now, as once I did, that he is his mother’s Jack as well.

He has been through dreadful things. Heron fell — poor Heron — and was left in No Man’s Land, and Jack went after him. At the utmost risk to himself he dragged out his brother from under a pile of dead, and into the shelter of a shell-crater. There they existed for three days under incessant fire, all hope of them being abandoned; existed by a miracle, for it was death to move. Heron was fearfully wounded, but Jack, wounded himself, managed so to bandage him that the bleeding stopped; and then he found some emergency rations on which they sustained life. If there ever were a coldness between the brothers, as I thought, it must have melted away in those dreadful hours.

On the fourth day our troops attacked again on the farther side of the wood, which diverted attention, and then Jack began the task — the difficult and painful task — of half-carrying, half-dragging Heron to where he could be helped, as his only chance of life. All this time Jack was wounded himself, in the head and on the shoulder and side, but the burst of shrapnel which shattered his arm did not happen till they were close to our own lines. By this Heron was wounded again, but in any case Jack thinks he could not have survived; the doctor at the dressing-station said so. Heron died there, but not till some hours later, and Jack was with him to the last.

So the pipers were right and not wrong when they bewailed the head of the house who had fallen. What it meant to Jack I did not consider then, and it came on me with a shock of surprise when Peters, sometime later, addressed him as “my lord.”

But I think more — much more — of the fact that he has been recommended for the Cross.

“The Novel Magazine,” May 1917

THE BEAST WITH FIVE FINGERS

William F. Harvey

1919

When I was a little boy I once went with my father to call on Adrian Borlsover. I played on the floor with a black spaniel while my father appealed for a subscription. Just before we left my father said, “Mr. Borlsover, may my son here shake hands with you? It will be a thing to look back upon with pride when he grows to be a man.”

I came up to the bed on which the old man was lying and put my hand in his, awed by the still beauty of his face. He spoke to me kindly, and hoped that I should always try to please my father. Then he placed his right hand on my head and asked for a blessing to rest upon me. “Amen!” said my father, and I followed him out of the room, feeling as if I wanted to cry. But my father was in excellent spirits.

“That old gentleman, Jim,” said he, “is the most wonderful man in the whole town. For ten years he has been quite blind.”

“But I saw his eyes,” I said. “They were ever so black and shiny; they weren’t shut up like Nora’s puppies. Can’t he see at all?”

And so I learnt for the first time that a man might have eyes that looked dark and beautiful and shining without being able to see.

“Just like Mrs. Tomlinson has big ears,” I said, “and can’t hear at all except when Mr. Tomlinson shouts.”

“Jim,” said my father, “it’s not right to talk about a lady’s ears. Remember what Mr. Borlsover said about pleasing me and being a good boy.”

That was the only time I saw Adrian Borlsover. I soon forgot about him and the hand which he laid in blessing on my head. But for a week I prayed that those dark tender eyes might see.

“His spaniel may have puppies,” I said in my prayers, “and he will never be able to know how funny they look with their eyes all closed up. Please let old Mr. Borlsover see.”

•   •   •

Adrian Borlsover, as my father had said, was a wonderful man. He came of an eccentric family. Borlsovers’ sons, for some reason, always seemed to marry very ordinary women, which perhaps accounted for the fact that no Borlsover had been a genius, and only one Borlsover had been mad. But they were great champions of little causes, generous patrons of odd sciences, founders of querulous sects, trustworthy guides to the bypath meadows of erudition.

Adrian was an authority on the fertilization of orchids. He had held at one time the family living at Borlsover Conyers, until a congenital weakness of the lungs obliged him to seek a less rigorous climate in the sunny south coast watering-place where I had seen him. Occasionally he would relieve one or other of the local clergy. My father described him as a fine preacher, who gave long and inspiring sermons from what many men would have considered unprofitable texts. “An excellent proof,” he would add, “of the truth of the doctrine of direct verbal inspiration.”

Adrian Borlsover was exceedingly clever with his hands. His penmanship was exquisite. He illustrated all his scientific papers, made his own woodcuts, and carved the reredos that is at present the chief feature of interest in the church at Borlsover Conyers. He had an exceedingly clever knack in cutting silhouettes for young ladies and paper pigs and cows for little children, and made more than one complicated wind instrument of his own devising.

When he was fifty years old Adrian Borlsover lost his sight. In a wonderfully short time he had adapted himself to the new conditions of life. He quickly learned to read Braille. So marvellous indeed was his sense of touch that he was still able to maintain his interest in botany. The mere passing of his long supple fingers over a flower was sufficient means for its identification, though occasionally he would use his lips. I have found several letters of his among my father’s correspondence. In no case was there anything to show that he was afflicted with blindness, and this in spite of the fact that he exercised undue economy in the spacing of lines. Toward the close of his life the old man was credited with powers of touch that seemed almost uncanny: it has been said that he could tell at once the colour of a ribbon placed between his fingers. My father would neither confirm nor deny the story.

I

Adrian Borlsover was a bachelor. His elder brother George had married late in life, leaving one son, Eustace, who lived in the gloomy Georgian mansion at Borlsover Conyers, where he could work undisturbed in collecting material for his great book on heredity.

Like his uncle, he was a remarkable man. The Borlsovers had always been born naturalists, but Eustace possessed in a special degree the power of systematizing his knowledge. He had received his university education in Germany, and then, after post-graduate work in Vienna and Naples, had travelled for four years in South America and the East, getting together a huge store of material for a new study into the processes of variation.

He lived alone at Borlsover Conyers with Saunders his secretary, a man who bore a somewhat dubious reputation in the district, but whose powers as a mathematician, combined with his business abilities, were invaluable to Eustace.

Uncle and nephew saw little of each other. The visits of Eustace were confined to a week in the summer or autumn: long weeks, that dragged almost as slowly as the bath-chair in which the old man was drawn along the sunny sea front. In their way the two men were fond of each other, though their intimacy would doubtless have been greater had they shared the same religious views. Adrian held to the old-fashioned evangelical dogmas of his early manhood; his nephew for many years had been thinking of embracing Buddhism. Both men possessed, too, the reticence the Borlsovers had always shown, and which their enemies sometimes called hypocrisy. With Adrian it was a reticence as to the things he had left undone; but with Eustace it seemed that the curtain which he was so careful to leave undrawn hid something more than a half-empty chamber.

•   •   •

Two years before his death Adrian Borlsover developed, unknown to himself, the not uncommon power of automatic writing. Eustace made the discovery by accident. Adrian was sitting reading in bed, the forefinger of his left hand tracing the Braille characters, when his nephew noticed that a pencil the old man held in his right hand was moving slowly along the opposite page. He left his seat in the window and sat down beside the bed. The right hand continued to move, and now he could see plainly that they were letters and words which it was forming.

“Adrian Borlsover,” wrote the hand, “Eustace Borlsover, George Borlsover, Francis Borlsover, Sigismund Borlsover, Adrian Borlsover, Eustace Borlsover, Saville Borlsover. B, for Borlsover. Honesty is the Best Policy. Beautiful Belinda Borlsover.”

“What curious nonsense!” said Eustace to himself.

“King George the Third ascended the throne in 1760,” wrote the hand. “Crowd, a noun of multitude; a collection of individuals — Adrian Borlsover, Eustace Borlsover.”

“It seems to me,” said his uncle, closing the book, “that you had much better make the most of the afternoon sunshine and take your walk now.”

“I think perhaps I will,” Eustace answered as he picked up the volume. “I won’t go far, and when I come back I can read to you those articles in Nature about which we were speaking.”

He went along the promenade, but stopped at the first shelter, and seating himself in the corner best protected from the wind, he examined the book at leisure. Nearly every page was scored with a meaningless jungle of pencil marks: rows of capital letters, short words, long words, complete sentences, copy-book tags. The whole thing, in fact, had the appearance of a copy-book, and on a more careful scrutiny Eustace thought that there was ample evidence to show that the handwriting at the beginning of the book, good though it was, was not nearly so good as the handwriting at the end.

He left his uncle at the end of October, with a promise to return early in December. It seemed to him quite clear that the old man’s power of automatic writing was developing rapidly, and for the first time he looked forward to a visit that combined duty with interest.

But on his return he was at first disappointed. His uncle, he thought, looked older. He was listless too, preferring others to read to him and dictating nearly all his letters. Not until the day before he left had Eustace an opportunity of observing Adrian Borlsover’s new-found faculty.

The old man, propped up in bed with pillows, had sunk into a light sleep. His two hands lay on the coverlet, his left hand tightly clasping his right. Eustace took an empty manuscript book and placed a pencil within reach of the fingers of the right hand. They snatched at it eagerly; then dropped the pencil to unloose the left hand from its restraining grasp.

“Perhaps to prevent interference I had better hold that hand,” said Eustace to himself, as he watched the pencil. Almost immediately it began to write.

“Blundering Borlsovers, unnecessarily unnatural, extraordinarily eccentric, culpably curious.”

“Who are you?” asked Eustace, in a low voice.

“Never you mind,” wrote the hand of Adrian.

“Is it my uncle who is writing?”

“Oh, my prophetic soul, mine uncle.”

“Is it anyone I know?”

“Silly Eustace, you’ll see me very soon.”

“When shall I see you?”

“When poor old Adrian’s dead.”

“Where shall I see you?”

“Where shall you not?”

Instead of speaking his next question, Borlsover wrote it. “What is the time?”

The fingers dropped the pencil and moved three or four times across the paper. Then, picking up the pencil, they wrote:

“Ten minutes before four. Put your book away, Eustace. Adrian mustn’t find us working at this sort of thing. He doesn’t know what to make of it, and I won’t have poor old Adrian disturbed. Au revoir.”

Adrian Borlsover awoke with a start.

“I’ve been dreaming again,” he said; “such queer dreams of leaguered cities and forgotten towns. You were mixed up in this one, Eustace, though I can’t remember how. Eustace, I want to warn you. Don’t walk in doubtful paths. Choose your friends well. Your poor grandfather — ”

A fit of coughing put an end to what he was saying, but Eustace saw that the hand was still writing. He managed unnoticed to draw the book away. “I’ll light the gas,” he said, “and ring for tea.” On the other side of the bed curtain he saw the last sentences that had been written.

“It’s too late, Adrian,” he read. “We’re friends already; aren’t we, Eustace Borlsover?”

On the following day Eustace Borlsover left. He thought his uncle looked ill when he said goodbye, and the old man spoke despondently of the failure his life had been.

“Nonsense, uncle!” said his nephew. “You have got over your difficulties in a way not one in a hundred thousand would have done. Everyone marvels at your splendid perseverance in teaching your hand to take the place of your lost sight. To me it’s been a revelation of the possibilities of education.”

“Education,” said his uncle dreamily, as if the word had started a new train of thought, “education is good so long as you know to whom and for what purpose you give it. But with the lower orders of men, the base and more sordid spirits, I have grave doubts as to its results. Well, goodbye, Eustace, I may not see you again. You are a true Borlsover, with all the Borlsover faults. Marry, Eustace. Marry some good, sensible girl. And if by any chance I don’t see you again, my will is at my solicitor’s. I’ve not left you any legacy, because I know you’re well provided for, but I thought you might like to have my books. Oh, and there’s just one other thing. You know, before the end people often lose control over themselves and make absurd requests. Don’t pay any attention to them, Eustace. Good-bye!” and he held out his hand. Eustace took it. It remained in his a fraction of a second longer than he had expected, and gripped him with a virility that was surprising. There was, too, in its touch a subtle sense of intimacy.

“Why, uncle!” he said, “I shall see you alive and well for many long years to come.”

Two months later Adrian Borlsover died.

II

Eustace Borlsover was in Naples at the time. He read the obituary notice in the Morning Post on the day announced for the funeral.

“Poor old fellow!” he said. “I wonder where I shall find room for all his books.”

The question occurred to him again with greater force when three days later he found himself standing in the library at Borlsover Conyers, a huge room built for use, and not for beauty, in the year of Waterloo by a Borlsover who was an ardent admirer of the great Napoleon. It was arranged on the plan of many college libraries, with tall, projecting bookcases forming deep recesses of dusty silence, fit graves for the old hates of forgotten controversy, the dead passions of forgotten lives. At the end of the room, behind the bust of some unknown eighteenth-century divine, an ugly iron corkscrew stair led to a shelf-lined gallery. Nearly every shelf was full.

“I must talk to Saunders about it,” said Eustace. “I suppose that it will be necessary to have the billiard-room fitted up with bookcases.”

The two men met for the first time after many weeks in the dining-room that evening.

“Hullo!” said Eustace, standing before the fire with his hands in his pockets. “How goes the world, Saunders? Why these dress togs?” He himself was wearing an old shooting-jacket. He did not believe in mourning, as he had told his uncle on his last visit; and though he usually went in for quiet-coloured ties, he wore this evening one of an ugly red, in order to shock Morton the butler, and to make them thrash out the whole question of mourning for themselves in the servants’ hall. Eustace was a true Borlsover. “The world,” said Saunders, “goes the same as usual, confoundedly slow. The dress togs are accounted for by an invitation from Captain Lockwood to bridge.”

“How are you getting there?”

“I’ve told your coachman to drive me in your carriage. Any objection?”

“Oh, dear me, no! We’ve had all things in common for far too many years for me to raise objections at this hour of the day.”

“You’ll find your correspondence in the library,” went on Saunders. “Most of it I’ve seen to. There are a few private letters I haven’t opened. There’s also a box with a rat, or something, inside it that came by the evening post. Very likely it’s the six-toed beast Terry was sending us to cross with the four-toed albino. I didn’t look, because I didn’t want to mess up my things, but I should gather from the way it’s jumping about that it’s pretty hungry.”

“Oh, I’ll see to it,” said Eustace, “while you and the Captain earn an honest penny.”

Dinner over and Saunders gone, Eustace went into the library. Though the fire had been lit the room was by no means cheerful.

“We’ll have all the lights on at any rate,” he said, as he turned the switches. “And, Morton,” he added, when the butler brought the coffee, “get me a screwdriver or something to undo this box. Whatever the animal is, he’s kicking up the deuce of a row. What is it? Why are you dawdling?”

“If you please, sir, when the postman brought it he told me that they’d bored the holes in the lid at the post-office. There were no breathin’ holes in the lid, sir, and they didn’t want the animal to die. That is all, sir.”

“It’s culpably careless of the man, whoever he was,” said Eustace, as he removed the screws, “packing an animal like this in a wooden box with no means of getting air. Confound it all! I meant to ask Morton to bring me a cage to put it in. Now I suppose I shall have to get one myself.”

He placed a heavy book on the lid from which the screws had been removed, and went into the billiard-room. As he came back into the library with an empty cage in his hand he heard the sound of something falling, and then of something scuttling along the floor.

“Bother it! The beast’s got out. How in the world am I to find it again in this library!”

To search for it did indeed seem hopeless. He tried to follow the sound of the scuttling in one of the recesses where the animal seemed to be running behind the books in the shelves, but it was impossible to locate it. Eustace resolved to go on quietly reading. Very likely the animal might gain confidence and show itself. Saunders seemed to have dealt in his usual methodical manner with most of the correspondence. There were still the private letters.

What was that? Two sharp clicks and the lights in the hideous candelabra that hung from the ceiling suddenly went out.

“I wonder if something has gone wrong with the fuse,” said Eustace, as he went to the switches by the door. Then he stopped. There was a noise at the other end of the room, as if something was crawling up the iron corkscrew stair. “If it’s gone into the gallery,” he said, “well and good.” He hastily turned on the lights, crossed the room, and climbed up the stair. But he could see nothing. His grandfather had placed a little gate at the top of the stair, so that children could run and romp in the gallery without fear of accident. This Eustace closed, and having considerably narrowed the circle of his search, returned to his desk by the fire.

How gloomy the library was! There was no sense of intimacy about the room. The few busts that an eighteenth-century Borlsover had brought back from the grand tour, might have been in keeping in the old library. Here they seemed out of place. They made the room feel cold, in spite of the heavy red damask curtains and great gilt cornices.

With a crash two heavy books fell from the gallery to the floor; then, as Borlsover looked, another and yet another.

“Very well; you’ll starve for this, my beauty!” he said. “We’ll do some little experiments on the metabolism of rats deprived of water. Go on! Chuck them down! I think I’ve got the upper hand.” He turned once again to his correspondence. The letter was from the family solicitor. It spoke of his uncle’s death and of the valuable collection of books that had been left to him in the will.

“There was one request,” he read, “which certainly came as a surprise to me. As you know, Mr. Adrian Borlsover had left instructions that his body was to be buried in as simple a manner as possible at Eastbourne. He expressed a desire that there should be neither wreaths nor flowers of any kind, and hoped that his friends and relatives would not consider it necessary to wear mourning. The day before his death we received a letter cancelling these instructions. He wished his body to be embalmed (he gave us the address of the man we were to employ — Pennifer, Ludgate Hill), with orders that his right hand was to be sent to you, stating that it was at your special request. The other arrangements as to the funeral remained unaltered.”

“Good Lord!” said Eustace; “what in the world was the old boy driving at? And what in the name of all that’s holy is that?”

Someone was in the gallery. Someone had pulled the cord attached to one of the blinds, and it had rolled up with a snap. Someone must be in the gallery, for a second blind did the same. Someone must be walking round the gallery, for one after the other the blinds sprang up, letting in the moonlight.

“I haven’t got to the bottom of this yet,” said Eustace, “but I will before the night is very much older,” and he hurried up the corkscrew stair. He had just got to the top when the lights went out a second time, and he heard again the scuttling along the floor. Quickly he stole on tiptoe in the dim moonshine in the direction of the noise, feeling as he went for one of the switches. His fingers touched the metal knob at last. He turned on the electric light.

About ten yards in front of him, crawling along the floor, was a man’s hand. Eustace stared at it in utter astonishment. It was moving quickly, in the manner of a geometer caterpillar, the five fingers humped up one moment, flattened out the next; the thumb appeared to give a crab-like motion to the whole. While he was looking, too surprised to stir, the hand disappeared round the corner. Eustace ran forward. He no longer saw it, but he could hear it as it squeezed its way behind the books on one of the shelves. A heavy volume had been displaced. There was a gap in the row of books where it had got in. In his fear lest it should escape him again, he seized the first book that came to his hand and plugged it into the hole. Then, emptying two shelves of their contents, he took the wooden boards and propped them up in front to make his barrier doubly sure.

“I wish Saunders was back,” he said; “one can’t tackle this sort of thing alone.” It was after eleven, and there seemed little likelihood of Saunders returning before twelve. He did not dare to leave the shelf unwatched, even to run downstairs to ring the bell. Morton the butler often used to come round about eleven to see that the windows were fastened, but he might not come. Eustace was thoroughly unstrung. At last he heard steps down below.

“Morton!” he shouted; “Morton!”

“Sir?”

“Has Mr. Saunders got back yet?”

“Not yet, sir.”

“Well, bring me some brandy, and hurry up about it. I’m up here in the gallery, you duffer.”

“Thanks,” said Eustace, as he emptied the glass. “Don’t go to bed yet, Morton. There are a lot of books that have fallen down by accident; bring them up and put them back in their shelves.”

Morton had never seen Borlsover in so talkative a mood as on that night. “Here,” said Eustace, when the books had been put back and dusted, “you might hold up these boards for me, Morton. That beast in the box got out, and I’ve been chasing it all over the place.”

“I think I can hear it chawing at the books, sir. They’re not valuable, I hope? I think that’s the carriage, sir; I’ll go and call Mr. Saunders.”

It seemed to Eustace that he was away for five minutes, but it could hardly have been more than one when he returned with Saunders. “All right, Morton, you can go now. I’m up here, Saunders.”

“What’s all the row?” asked Saunders, as he lounged forward with his hands in his pockets. The luck had been with him all the evening. He was completely satisfied, both with himself and with Captain Lockwood’s taste in wines. “What’s the matter? You look to me to be in an absolute blue funk.”

“That old devil of an uncle of mine,” began Eustace — “oh, I can’t explain it all. It’s his hand that’s been playing old Harry all the evening. But I’ve got it cornered behind these books. You’ve got to help me catch it.”

“What’s up with you, Eustace? What’s the game?”

“It’s no game, you silly idiot! If you don’t believe me take out one of those books and put your hand in and feel.”

“All right,” said Saunders; “but wait till I’ve rolled up my sleeve. The accumulated dust of centuries, eh?” He took off his coat, knelt down, and thrust his arm along the shelf.

“There’s something there right enough,” he said. “It’s got a funny stumpy end to it, whatever it is, and nips like a crab. Ah, no, you don’t!” He pulled his hand out in a flash. “Shove in a book quickly. Now it can’t get out.”

“What was it?” asked Eustace.

“It was something that wanted very much to get hold of me. I felt what seemed like a thumb and forefinger. Give me some brandy.”

“How are we to get it out of there?”

“What about a landing net?”

“No good. It would be too smart for us. I tell you, Saunders, it can cover the ground far faster than I can walk. But I think I see how we can manage it. The two books at the end of the shelf are big ones that go right back against the wall. The others are very thin. I’ll take out one at a time, and you slide the rest along until we have it squashed between the end two.”

It certainly seemed to be the best plan. One by one, as they took out the books, the space behind grew smaller and smaller. There was something in it that was certainly very much alive. Once they caught sight of fingers pressing outward for a way of escape. At last they had it pressed between the two big books.

“There’s muscle there, if there isn’t flesh and blood,” said Saunders, as he held them together. “It seems to be a hand right enough, too. I suppose this is a sort of infectious hallucination. I’ve read about such cases before.”

“Infectious fiddlesticks!” said Eustace, his face white with anger; “bring the thing downstairs. We’ll get it back into the box.”

It was not altogether easy, but they were successful at last. “Drive in the screws,” said Eustace, “we won’t run any risks. Put the box in this old desk of mine. There’s nothing in it that I want. Here’s the key. Thank goodness, there’s nothing wrong with the lock.”

“Quite a lively evening,” said Saunders. “Now let’s hear more about your uncle.”

They sat up together until early morning. Saunders had no desire for sleep. Eustace was trying to explain and to forget: to conceal from himself a fear that he had never felt before — the fear of walking alone down the long corridor to his bedroom.

III

“Whatever it was,” said Eustace to Saunders on the following morning, “I propose that we drop the subject. There’s nothing to keep us here for the next ten days. We’ll motor up to the Lakes and get some climbing.”

“And see nobody all day, and sit bored to death with each other every night. Not for me, thanks. Why not run up to town? Run’s the exact word in this case, isn’t it? We’re both in such a blessed funk. Pull yourself together, Eustace, and let’s have another look at the hand.”

“As you like,” said Eustace; “there’s the key.” They went into the library and opened the desk. The box was as they had left it on the previous night.

“What are you waiting for?” asked Eustace.

“I am waiting for you to volunteer to open the lid. However, since you seem to funk it, allow me. There doesn’t seem to be the likelihood of any rumpus this morning, at all events.” He opened the lid and picked out the hand.

“Cold?” asked Eustace.

“Tepid. A bit below blood-heat by the feel. Soft and supple too. If it’s the embalming, it’s a sort of embalming I’ve never seen before. Is it your uncle’s hand?”

“Oh, yes, it’s his all right,” said Eustace. “I should know those long thin fingers anywhere. Put it back in the box, Saunders. Never mind about the screws. I’ll lock the desk, so that there’ll be no chance of its getting out. We’ll compromise by motoring up to town for a week. If we get off soon after lunch we ought to be at Grantham or Stamford by night.”

“Right,” said Saunders; “and tomorrow — Oh, well, by tomorrow we shall have forgotten all about this beastly thing.”

If when the morrow came they had not forgotten, it was certainly true that at the end of the week they were able to tell a very vivid ghost story at the little supper Eustace gave on Hallow E’en.

“You don’t want us to believe that it’s true, Mr. Borlsover? How perfectly awful!”

“I’ll take my oath on it, and so would Saunders here; wouldn’t you, old chap?”

“Any number of oaths,” said Saunders. “It was a long thin hand, you know, and it gripped me just like that.”

“Don’t, Mr. Saunders! Don’t! How perfectly horrid! Now tell us another one, do. Only a really creepy one, please!”

“Here’s a pretty mess!” said Eustace on the following day as he threw a letter across the table to Saunders. “It’s your affair, though. Mrs. Merrit, if I understand it, gives a month’s notice.”

“Oh, that’s quite absurd on Mrs. Merrit’s part,” Saunders replied. “She doesn’t know what she’s talking about. Let’s see what she says.”

“Dear Sir,” he read, “this is to let you know that I must give you a month’s notice as from Tuesday the 13th. For a long time I’ve felt the place too big for me, but when Jane Parfit and Emma Laidlaw go off with scarcely as much as an ‘if you please,’ after frightening the wits out of the other girls, so that they can’t turn out a room by themselves or walk alone down the stairs for fear of treading on half-frozen toads or hearing it run along the passages at night, all I can say is that it’s no place for me. So I must ask you, Mr. Borlsover, sir, to find a new housekeeper that has no objection to large and lonely houses, which some people do say, not that I believe them for a minute, my poor mother always having been a Wesleyan, are haunted.

“Yours faithfully,

Elizabeth Merrit

“P. S. — I should be obliged if you would give my respects to Mr. Saunders. I hope that he won’t run no risks with his cold.”

“Saunders,” said Eustace, “you’ve always had a wonderful way with you in dealing with servants. You mustn’t let poor old Merrit go.”

“Of course she shan’t go,” said Saunders. “She’s probably only angling for a rise in salary. I’ll write to her this morning.”

“No; there’s nothing like a personal interview. We’ve had enough of town. We’ll go back tomorrow, and you must work your cold for all it’s worth. Don’t forget that it’s got on to the chest, and will require weeks of feeding up and nursing.”

“All right. I think I can manage Mrs. Merrit.”

But Mrs. Merrit was more obstinate than he had thought. She was very sorry to hear of Mr. Saunders’s cold, and how he lay awake all night in London coughing; very sorry indeed. She’d change his room for him gladly, and get the south room aired. And wouldn’t he have a hot basin of bread and milk last thing at night? But she was afraid that she would have to leave at the end of the month.

“Try her with an increase of salary,” was the advice of Eustace.

It was no use. Mrs. Merrit was obdurate, though she knew of a Mrs. Handyside who had been housekeeper to Lord Gargrave, who might be glad to come at the salary mentioned.

“What’s the matter with the servants, Morton?” asked Eustace that evening when he brought the coffee into the library. “What’s all this about Mrs. Merrit wanting to leave?”

“If you please, sir, I was going to mention it myself. I have a confession to make, sir. When I found your note asking me to open that desk and take out the box with the rat, I broke the lock as you told me, and was glad to do it, because I could hear the animal in the box making a great noise, and I thought it wanted food. So I took out the box, sir, and got a cage and was going to transfer it, when the animal got away.”

“What in the world are you talking about? I never wrote any such note.”

“Excuse me, sir, it was the note I picked up here on the floor on the day you and Mr. Saunders left. I have it in my pocket now.”

It certainly seemed to be in Eustace’s handwriting. It was written in pencil, and began somewhat abruptly.

“Get a hammer, Morton,” he read, “or some other tool, and break open the lock in the old desk in the library. Take out the box that is inside. You need not do anything else. The lid is already open. Eustace Borlsover.”

“And you opened the desk?”

“Yes, sir; and as I was getting the cage ready the animal hopped out.”

“What animal?”

“The animal inside the box, sir.”

“What did it look like?”

“Well, sir, I couldn’t tell you,” said Morton nervously; “my back was turned, and it was half-way down the room when I looked up.”

“What was its colour?” asked Saunders; “black?”

“Oh, no, sir, a greyish white. It crept along in a very funny way, sir. I don’t think it had a tail.”

“What did you do then?”

“I tried to catch it, but it was no use. So I set the rat-traps and kept the library shut. Then that girl Emma Laidlaw left the door open when she was cleaning, and I think it must have escaped.”

“And you think it was the animal that’s been frightening the maids?”

“Well, no, sir, not quite. They said it was — you’ll excuse me, sir — a hand that they saw. Emma trod on it once at the bottom of the stairs. She thought then it was a half-frozen toad, only white. And then Parfit was washing up the dishes in the scullery. She wasn’t thinking about anything in particular. It was close on dusk. She took her hands out of the water and was drying them absentminded like on the roller towel, when she found that she was drying someone else’s hand as well, only colder than hers.”

“What nonsense!” exclaimed Saunders.

“Exactly, sir; that’s what I told her; but we couldn’t get her to stop.”

“You don’t believe all this?” said Eustace, turning suddenly towards the butler.

“Me, sir? Oh, no, sir! I’ve not seen anything.”

“Nor heard anything?”

“Well, sir, if you must know, the bells do ring at odd times, and there’s nobody there when we go; and when we go round to draw the blinds of a night, as often as not somebody’s been there before us. But as I says to Mrs. Merrit, a young monkey might do wonderful things, and we all know that Mr. Borlsover has had some strange animals about the place.”

“Very well, Morton, that will do.”

“What do you make of it?” asked Saunders when they were alone. “I mean of the letter he said you wrote.”

“Oh, that’s simple enough,” said Eustace. “See the paper it’s written on? I stopped using that years ago, but there were a few odd sheets and envelopes left in the old desk. We never fastened up the lid of the box before locking it in. The hand got out, found a pencil, wrote this note, and shoved it through the crack on to the floor where Morton found it. That’s plain as daylight.”

“But the hand couldn’t write?”

“Couldn’t it? You’ve not seen it do the things I’ve seen,” and he told Saunders more of what had happened at Eastbourne.

“Well,” said Saunders, “in that case we have at least an explanation of the legacy. It was the hand which wrote unknown to your uncle that letter to your solicitor, bequeathing itself to you. Your uncle had no more to do with that request than I. In fact, it would seem that he had some idea of this automatic writing, and feared it.”

“Then if it’s not my uncle, what is it?”

“I suppose some people might say that a disembodied spirit had got your uncle to educate and prepare a little body for it. Now it’s got into that little body and is off on its own.”

“Well, what are we to do?”

“We’ll keep our eyes open,” said Saunders, “and try to catch it. If we can’t do that, we shall have to wait till the bally clockwork runs down. After all, if it’s flesh and blood, it can’t live forever.”

For two days nothing happened. Then Saunders saw it sliding down the banister in the hall. He was taken unawares, and lost a full second before he started in pursuit, only to find that the thing had escaped him. Three days later, Eustace, writing alone in the library at night, saw it sitting on an open book at the other end of the room. The fingers crept over the page, feeling the print as if it were reading; but before he had time to get up from his seat, it had taken the alarm and was pulling itself up the curtains. Eustace watched it grimly as it hung on to the cornice with three fingers, flicking thumb and forefinger at him in an expression of scornful derision.

“I know what I’ll do,” he said. “If I only get it into the open I’ll set the dogs on to it.”

He spoke to Saunders of the suggestion.

“It’s a jolly good idea,” he said; “only we won’t wait till we find it out of doors. We’ll get the dogs. There are the two terriers and the underkeeper’s Irish mongrel that’s on to rats like a flash. Your spaniel has not got spirit enough for this sort of game.” They brought the dogs into the house, and the keeper’s Irish mongrel chewed up the slippers, and the terriers tripped up Morton as he waited at table; but all three were welcome. Even false security is better than no security at all.

For a fortnight nothing happened. Then the hand was caught, not by the dogs, but by Mrs. Merrit’s grey parrot. The bird was in the habit of periodically removing the pins that kept its seed and water tins in place, and of escaping through the holes in the side of the cage. When once at liberty Peter would show no inclination to return, and would often be about the house for days. Now, after six consecutive weeks of captivity, Peter had again discovered a new means of unloosing his bolts and was at large, exploring the tapestried forests of the curtains and singing songs in praise of liberty from cornice and picture rail.

“It’s no use your trying to catch him,” said Eustace to Mrs. Merrit, as she came into the study one afternoon toward dusk with a step-ladder. “You’d much better leave Peter alone. Starve him into surrender, Mrs. Merrit, and don’t leave bananas and seed about for him to peck at when he fancies he’s hungry. You’re far too soft-hearted.”

“Well, sir, I see he’s right out of reach now on that picture rail, so if you wouldn’t mind closing the door, sir, when you leave the room, I’ll bring his cage in tonight and put some meat inside it. He’s that fond of meat, though it does make him pull out his feathers to suck the quills. They do say that if you cook — ”

“Never mind, Mrs. Merrit,” said Eustace, who was busy writing. “That will do; I’ll keep an eye on the bird.”

There was silence in the room, unbroken but for the continuous whisper of his pen.

“Scratch poor Peter,” said the bird. “Scratch poor old Peter!”

“Be quiet, you beastly bird!”

“Poor old Peter! Scratch poor Peter, do.”

“I’m more likely to wring your neck if I get hold of you.” He looked up at the picture rail, and there was the hand holding on to a hook with three fingers, and slowly scratching the head of the parrot with the fourth. Eustace ran to the bell and pressed it hard; then across to the window, which he closed with a bang. Frightened by the noise the parrot shook its wings preparatory to flight, and as it did so the fingers of the hand got hold of it by the throat. There was a shrill scream from Peter as he fluttered across the room, wheeling round in circles that ever descended, borne down under the weight that clung to him. The bird dropped at last quite suddenly, and Eustace saw fingers and feathers rolled into an inextricable mass on the floor. The struggle abruptly ceased as finger and thumb squeezed the neck; the bird’s eyes rolled up to show the whites, and there was a faint, half-choked gurgle. But before the fingers had time to loose their hold, Eustace had them in his own.

“Send Mr. Saunders here at once,” he said to the maid who came in answer to the bell. “Tell him I want him immediately.”

Then he went with the hand to the fire. There was a ragged gash across the back where the bird’s beak had torn it, but no blood oozed from the wound. He noticed with disgust that the nails had grown long and discoloured.

“I’ll burn the beastly thing,” he said. But he could not burn it. He tried to throw it into the flames, but his own hands, as if restrained by some old primitive feeling, would not let him. And so Saunders found him, pale and irresolute, with the hand still clasped tightly in his fingers.

“I’ve got it at last,” he said in a tone of triumph.

“Good; let’s have a look at it.”

“Not when it’s loose. Get me some nails and a hammer and a board of some sort.”

“Can you hold it all right?”

“Yes, the thing’s quite limp; tired out with throttling poor old Peter, I should say.”

“And now,” said Saunders when he returned with the things, “what are we going to do?”

“Drive a nail through it first, so that it can’t get away; then we can take our time over examining it.”

“Do it yourself,” said Saunders. “I don’t mind helping you with guinea-pigs occasionally when there’s something to be learned; partly because I don’t fear a guinea-pig’s revenge. This thing’s different.”

“All right, you miserable skunk. I won’t forget the way you’ve stood by me.”

He took up a nail, and before Saunders had realized what he was doing had driven it through the hand, deep into the board.

“Oh, my aunt,” he giggled hysterically, “look at it now,” for the hand was writhing in agonized contortions, squirming and wriggling upon the nail like a worm upon the hook.

“Well,” said Saunders, “you’ve done it now. I’ll leave you to examine it.”

“Don’t go, in heaven’s name. Cover it up, man, cover it up! Shove a cloth over it! Here!” and he pulled off the antimacassar from the back of a chair and wrapped the board in it. “Now get the keys from my pocket and open the safe. Chuck the other things out. Oh, Lord, it’s getting itself into frightful knots! and open it quick!” He threw the thing in and banged the door.

“We’ll keep it there till it dies,” he said. “May I burn in hell if I ever open the door of that safe again.”

•    •    •

Mrs. Merrit departed at the end of the month. Her successor certainly was more successful in the management of the servants. Early in her rule she declared that she would stand no nonsense, and gossip soon withered and died. Eustace Borlsover went back to his old way of life. Old habits crept over and covered his new experience. He was, if anything, less morose, and showed a greater inclination to take his natural part in country society.

“I shouldn’t be surprised if he marries one of these days,” said Saunders. “Well, I’m in no hurry for such an event. I know Eustace far too well for the future Mrs. Borlsover to like me. It will be the same old story again: a long friendship slowly made — marriage — and a long friendship quickly forgotten.”

IV

But Eustace Borlsover did not follow the advice of his uncle and marry. He was too fond of old slippers and tobacco. The cooking, too, under Mrs. Handyside’s management was excellent, and she seemed, too, to have a heaven-sent faculty in knowing when to stop dusting.

Little by little the old life resumed its old power. Then came the burglary. The men, it was said, broke into the house by way of the conservatory. It was really little more than an attempt, for they only succeeded in carrying away a few pieces of plate from the pantry. The safe in the study was certainly found open and empty, but, as Mr. Borlsover informed the police inspector, he had kept nothing of value in it during the last six months.

“Then you’re lucky in getting off so easily, sir,” the man replied. “By the way they have gone about their business, I should say they were experienced cracksmen. They must have caught the alarm when they were just beginning their evening’s work.”

“Yes,” said Eustace, “I suppose I am lucky.”

“I’ve no doubt,” said the inspector, “that we shall be able to trace the men. I’ve said that they must have been old hands at the game. The way they got in and opened the safe shows that. But there’s one little thing that puzzles me. One of them was careless enough not to wear gloves, and I’m bothered if I know what he was trying to do. I’ve traced his finger-marks on the new varnish on the window sashes in every one of the downstairs rooms. They are very distinctive ones too.”

“Right hand or left, or both?” asked Eustace.

“Oh, right every time. That’s the funny thing. He must have been a foolhardy fellow, and I rather think it was him that wrote that.” He took out a slip of paper from his pocket. “That’s what he wrote, sir. ‘I’ve got out, Eustace Borlsover, but I’ll be back before long.’ Some jail bird just escaped, I suppose. It will make it all the easier for us to trace him. Do you know the writing, sir?”

“No,” said Eustace; “it’s not the writing of anyone I know.”

“I’m not going to stay here any longer,” said Eustace to Saunders at luncheon. “I’ve got on far better during the last six months than ever I expected, but I’m not going to run the risk of seeing that thing again. I shall go up to town this afternoon. Get Morton to put my things together, and join me with the car at Brighton on the day after tomorrow. And bring the proofs of those two papers with you. We’ll run over them together.”

“How long are you going to be away?”

“I can’t say for certain, but be prepared to stay for some time. We’ve stuck to work pretty closely through the summer, and I for one need a holiday. I’ll engage the rooms at Brighton. You’ll find it best to break the journey at Hitchin. I’ll wire to you there at the Crown to tell you the Brighton address.”

The house he chose at Brighton was in a terrace. He had been there before. It was kept by his old college gyp, a man of discreet silence, who was admirably partnered by an excellent cook. The rooms were on the first floor. The two bedrooms were at the back, and opened out of each other. “Saunders can have the smaller one, though it is the only one with a fireplace,” he said. “I’ll stick to the larger of the two, since it’s got a bathroom adjoining. I wonder what time he’ll arrive with the car.”

Saunders came about seven, cold and cross and dirty. “We’ll light the fire in the dining-room,” said Eustace, “and get Prince to unpack some of the things while we are at dinner. What were the roads like?”

“Rotten; swimming with mud, and a beastly cold wind against us all day. And this is July. Dear old England!”

“Yes,” said Eustace, “I think we might do worse than leave dear old England for a few months.”

They turned in soon after twelve.

“You oughtn’t to feel cold, Saunders,” said Eustace, “when you can afford to sport a great cat-skin lined coat like this. You do yourself very well, all things considered. Look at those gloves, for instance. Who could possibly feel cold when wearing them?”

“They are far too clumsy though for driving. Try them on and see,” and he tossed them through the door on to Eustace’s bed, and went on with his unpacking. A minute later he heard a shrill cry of terror. “Oh, Lord,” he heard, “it’s in the glove! Quick, Saunders, quick!” Then came a smacking thud. Eustace had thrown it from him. “I’ve chucked it into the bathroom,” he gasped, “it’s hit the wall and fallen into the bath. Come now if you want to help.” Saunders, with a lighted candle in his hand, looked over the edge of the bath. There it was, old and maimed, dumb and blind, with a ragged hole in the middle, crawling, staggering, trying to creep up the slippery sides, only to fall back helpless.

“Stay there,” said Saunders. “I’ll empty a collar box or something, and we’ll jam it in. It can’t get out while I’m away.”

“Yes, it can,” shouted Eustace. “It’s getting out now. It’s climbing up the plug chain. No, you brute, you filthy brute, you don’t! Come back, Saunders, it’s getting away from me. I can’t hold it; it’s all slippery. Curse its claw! Shut the window, you idiot! The top too, as well as the bottom. You utter idiot! It’s got out!” There was the sound of something dropping on to the hard flagstones below, and Eustace fell back fainting.

•    •    •

For a fortnight he was ill.

“I don’t know what to make of it,” the doctor said to Saunders. “I can only suppose that Mr. Borlsover has suffered some great emotional shock. You had better let me send someone to help you nurse him. And by all means indulge that whim of his never to be left alone in the dark. I would keep a light burning all night if I were you. But he must have more fresh air. It’s perfectly absurd — this hatred of open windows.”

Eustace, however, would have no one with him but Saunders. “I don’t want the other men,” he said. “They’d smuggle it in somehow. I know they would.”

“Don’t worry about it, old chap. This sort of thing can’t go on indefinitely. You know I saw it this time as well as you. It wasn’t half so active. It won’t go on living much longer, especially after that fall. I heard it hit the flags myself. As soon as you’re a bit stronger we’ll leave this place; not bag and baggage, but with only the clothes on our backs, so that it won’t be able to hide anywhere. We’ll escape it that way. We won’t give any address, and we won’t have any parcels sent after us. Cheer up, Eustace! You’ll be well enough to leave in a day or two. The doctor says I can take you out in a chair tomorrow.”

“What have I done?” asked Eustace. “Why does it come after me? I’m no worse than other men. I’m no worse than you, Saunders; you know I’m not. It was you who were at the bottom of that dirty business in San Diego, and that was fifteen years ago.”

“It’s not that, of course,” said Saunders. “We are in the twentieth century, and even the parsons have dropped the idea of your old sins finding you out. Before you caught the hand in the library it was filled with pure malevolence — to you and all mankind. After you spiked it through with that nail it naturally forgot about other people, and concentrated its attention on you. It was shut up in that safe, you know, for nearly six months. That gives plenty of time for thinking of revenge.”

Eustace Borlsover would not leave his room, but he thought that there might be something in Saunders’s suggestion to leave Brighton without notice. He began rapidly to regain his strength.

“We’ll go on the first of September,” he said.

•    •    •

The evening of August 31st was oppressively warm. Though at midday the windows had been wide open, they had been shut an hour or so before dusk. Mrs. Prince had long since ceased to wonder at the strange habits of the gentlemen on the first floor. Soon after their arrival she had been told to take down the heavy window curtains in the two bedrooms, and day by day the rooms had seemed to grow more bare. Nothing was left lying about.

“Mr. Borlsover doesn’t like to have any place where dirt can collect,” Saunders had said as an excuse. “He likes to see into all the corners of the room.”

“Couldn’t I open the window just a little?” he said to Eustace that evening. “We’re simply roasting in here, you know.”

“No, leave well alone. We’re not a couple of boarding-school misses fresh from a course of hygiene lectures. Get the chessboard out.”

They sat down and played. At ten o’clock Mrs. Prince came to the door with a note. “I am sorry I didn’t bring it before,” she said, “but it was left in the letter-box.”

“Open it, Saunders, and see if it wants answering.”

It was very brief. There was neither address nor signature.

“Will eleven o’clock tonight be suitable for our last appointment?”

“Who is it from?” asked Borlsover.

“It was meant for me,” said Saunders. “There’s no answer, Mrs. Prince,” and he put the paper into his pocket. “A dunning letter from a tailor; I suppose he must have got wind of our leaving.”

It was a clever lie, and Eustace asked no more questions. They went on with their game.

On the landing outside Saunders could hear the grandfather’s clock whispering the seconds, blurting out the quarter-hours.

“Check!” said Eustace. The clock struck eleven. At the same time there was a gentle knocking on the door; it seemed to come from the bottom panel.

“Who’s there?” asked Eustace.

There was no answer.

“Mrs. Prince, is that you?”

“She is up above,” said Saunders; “I can hear her walking about the room.”

“Then lock the door; bolt it too. Your move, Saunders.”

While Saunders sat with his eyes on the chessboard, Eustace walked over to the window and examined the fastenings. He did the same in Saunders’s room and the bathroom. There were no doors between the three rooms, or he would have shut and locked them too.

“Now, Saunders,” he said, “don’t stay all night over your move. I’ve had time to smoke one cigarette already. It’s bad to keep an invalid waiting. There’s only one possible thing for you to do. What was that?”

“The ivy blowing against the window. There, it’s your move now, Eustace.”

“It wasn’t the ivy, you idiot. It was someone tapping at the window,” and he pulled up the blind. On the outer side of the window, clinging to the sash, was the hand.

“What is it that it’s holding?”

“It’s a pocket-knife. It’s going to try to open the window by pushing back the fastener with the blade.”

“Well, let it try,” said Eustace. “Those fasteners screw down; they can’t be opened that way. Anyhow, we’ll close the shutters. It’s your move, Saunders. I’ve played.”

But Saunders found it impossible to fix his attention on the game. He could not understand Eustace who seemed all at once to have lost his fear. “What do you say to some wine?” he asked. “You seem to be taking things coolly, but I don’t mind confessing that I’m in a blessed funk.”

“You’ve no need to be. There’s nothing supernatural about that hand, Saunders. I mean it seems to be governed by the laws of time and space. It’s not the sort of thing that vanishes into thin air or slides through oaken doors. And since that’s so, I defy it to get in here. We’ll leave the place in the morning. I for one have bottomed the depths of fear. Fill your glass, man! The windows are all shuttered, the door is locked and bolted. Pledge me my uncle Adrian! Drink, man! What are you waiting for?”

Saunders was standing with his glass half raised. “It can get in,” he said hoarsely; “it can get in! We’ve forgotten. There’s the fireplace in my bedroom. It will come down the chimney.”

“Quick!” said Eustace, as he rushed into the other room; “we haven’t a minute to lose. What can we do? Light the fire, Saunders. Give me a match, quick!”

“They must be all in the other room. I’ll get them.”

“Hurry, man, for goodness’ sake! Look in the bookcase! Look in the bathroom! Here, come and stand here; I’ll look.”

“Be quick!” shouted Saunders. “I can hear something!”

“Then plug a sheet from your bed up the chimney. No, here’s a match.” He had found one at last that had slipped into a crack in the floor.

“Is the fire laid? Good, but it may not burn. I know — the oil from that old reading-lamp and this cotton-wool. Now the match, quick! Pull the sheet away, you fool! We don’t want it now.”

There was a great roar from the grate as the flames shot up. Saunders had been a fraction of a second too late with the sheet. The oil had fallen on to it. It, too, was burning.

“The whole place will be on fire!” cried Eustace, as he tried to beat out the flames with a blanket. “It’s no good! I can’t manage it. You must open the door, Saunders, and get help.”

Saunders ran to the door and fumbled with the bolts. The key was stiff in the lock.

“Hurry!” shouted Eustace; “the whole place is ablaze!”

The key turned in the lock at last. For half a second Saunders stopped to look back. Afterwards he could never be quite sure as to what he had seen, but at the time he thought that something black and charred was creeping slowly, very slowly, from the mass of flames toward Eustace Borlsover. For a moment he thought of returning to his friend, but the noise and the smell of the burning sent him running down the passage crying, “Fire! Fire!” He rushed to the telephone to summon help, and then back to the bathroom — he should have thought of that before — for water. As he burst open the bedroom door there came a scream of terror which ended suddenly, and then the sound of a heavy fall.

This is the story which I heard on successive Saturday evenings from the senior mathematical master at a second-rate suburban school. For Saunders has had to earn a living in a way which other men might reckon less congenial than his old manner of life. I had mentioned by chance the name of Adrian Borlsover, and wondered at the time why he changed the conversation with such unusual abruptness. A week later, Saunders began to tell me something of his own history — sordid enough, though shielded with a reserve I could well understand, for it had to cover not only his failings but those of a dead friend. Of the final tragedy he was at first especially loath to speak, and it was only gradually that I was able to piece together the narrative of the preceding pages. Saunders was reluctant to draw any conclusions. At one time he thought that the fingered beast had been animated by the spirit of Sigismund Borlsover, a sinister eighteenth-century ancestor, who, according to legend, built and worshipped in the ugly pagan temple that overlooked the lake. At another time Saunders believed the spirit to belong to a man whom Eustace had once employed as a laboratory assistant, “a black-haired spiteful little brute,” he said, “who died cursing his doctor because the fellow couldn’t help him to live to settle some paltry score with Borlsover.”

From the point of view of direct contemporary evidence, Saunders’s story is practically uncorroborated. All the letters mentioned in the narrative were destroyed, with the exception of the last note which Eustace received, or rather which he would have received had not Saunders intercepted it. That I have seen myself. The handwriting was thin and shaky, the handwriting of an old man. I remember the Greek “e” was used in “appointment.” A little thing that amused me at the time was that Saunders seemed to keep the note pressed between the pages of his Bible.

I had seen Adrian Borlsover once. Saunders, I learnt to know well. It was by chance, however, and not by design, that I met a third person of the story, Morton the butler. Saunders and I were walking in the Zoological Gardens one Sunday afternoon, when he called my attention to an old man who was standing before the door of the reptile house.

“Why, Morton!” he said, clapping him on the back. “How is the world treating you?”

“Poorly, Mr. Saunders,” said the old fellow, though his face lighted up at the greeting. “The winters drag terribly nowadays. There don’t seem no summers or springs.”

“You haven’t found what you were looking for, I suppose?”

“No, sir, not yet; but I shall someday. I always told them that Mr. Borlsover kept some queer animals.”

“And what is he looking for?” I asked, when we had parted from him.

“A beast with five fingers,” said Saunders. “This afternoon, since he has been in the reptile house, I suppose it will be a reptile with a hand. Next week it will be a monkey with practically no body. The poor old chap is a born materialist.

“It’s a queer coincidence, by the way, that you should have known Adrian Borlsover and that you should have received a blessing at his hand. Has it brought you any luck?”

“No,” I answered slowly, as I looked back over a life of inconspicuous failure, “I don’t think it has. It was his right hand, you know.”

The New Decameron, Volume the First (1919)

THE GHOST
AT THE BLUE DRAGON

William James Wintle

1921

The Blue Dragon was one of the oldest and best hotels in Saltminster; and that was saying a good deal. Long before Saltminster became popular as a seaside resort; long before people got into the habit of going to the seaside for holidays or for health; the old market town had been a busy place, and its inns were both numerous and good. New ones had sprung up of recent years to meet the needs of the visitors; and as these styled themselves hotels, the older ones had to fall into line and adopt the more ambitious name as well.

But although the Blue Dragon now called itself an hotel, and found itself doing more and better business than ever, it had changed very little in the course of the years. It was still a delightfully old-fashioned place; the quaint old rooms remained unaltered; the old English cookery was still the same; and you would look in vain for anything foreign or newfangled. The French cook and the German waiter had never found entrance; and that was one of the reasons why the place was in such repute. You needed to book your room well in advance if you wished to stay at the “Blue Dragon.”

Now Professor Latham wanted to stay at the Blue Dragon; for he knew a good thing when he found it. At Cambridge, where he occupied the chair of Assyrian History, he was better known for his ability as a judge of port than as a lecturer; and, when he recommended an hotel, you might be quite sure that both table and cellar would prove to be above reproach. So he booked his room well in advance, and made his way to Saltminster in the middle of July to spend a quiet six weeks and incidentally to revise the manuscript of his forthcoming book.

At the Blue Dragon he found that he had been allotted a room which met with his full approval. It was in the quietest and most retired part of the house, at the end of a long corridor, and looked out upon the salt marshes that ran down to the sea. It was well away from the busier parts of the house, and was on the side remote from the road. And it was furnished in the style of our grandparents — exactly the style that Professor Latham admired and loved.

But it had one drawback, which gave the newcomer a distinct shock when he saw it. There were two beds in the room! Having only one body, he had no use for two beds. Nor had he the least intention of sharing his room with anyone else. But mine host quickly reassured him. The room was occasionally let to people who required an extra bed, and thus had been provided with one; but of course it would not be in use while the Professor occupied the room. Mine host trusted the bed would not be in the Professor’s way: it was only kept furnished with the usual bedding because a dismantled bed looked so uncomfortable. The Professor assured him that he did not mind in the least if the bed was not used: it would do to put things on.

So he proceeded to unpack his bag and to throw the contents about the room in the careless style that was the despair of his housekeeper at Cambridge. The spare bed was soon pretty well concealed beneath scattered articles of clothing, books, bundles of manuscript and other things.

Then he went for a walk, located the principal streets and buildings with the aid of the local map which was always his first purchase on arriving at any strange place, noted sundry second-hand book shops and curio shops for further investigation at leisure, and finally made his way down to the shore, gazed with disapproval at the mixed bathing, and then absorbed himself in the alleged history of the town as set forth in a local guide-book.

Now Professor Latham was an authority on history, and had a keen scent for fiction masquerading as fact. So he duly appreciated a detailed account of the visit of Queen Elizabeth to the town, and her stay at the “Blue Dragon,” at a date when she was unquestionably lying ill at the Old Palace at Richmond, which she was never to leave alive. But he cared less for various ghost stories, all of which seemed to be connected in one way or another with the “Blue Dragon.” If they were all to be believed, that famous hostelry must have been a somewhat exciting place to stay at in the olden days.

The Professor did not believe in ghosts. He dealt in facts and had no use for fancies. He had never yet met with a ghost story that would stand looking into, or even telling a second time. Tales of that sort always crumbled to bits when you began to ask questions. Nobody whom he had met had ever seen a ghost, though plenty of them knew other people who had seen one: and he knew the worthlessness of second-hand evidence. Still, it was a little amusing to find that the Blue Dragon had been the scene of so many legends of this kind. It was just as well that he knew better than to trouble about such absurdities; or he might not have slept well. He would be able to tell his friends that he had stayed in a very nest of ghosts, and had proved by experience that there was nothing at all in it.

He returned to the hotel in time to dress for dinner, and at once noticed that the things he had left on the spare bed had been removed and placed carefully on the table. Evidently the chambermaid had been at work in his absence; but he rather wished she would leave things alone. He put them back on the bed and hoped she would take the hint. Then he dressed and went down to dinner.

The dinner met with his entire approval. The turbot was perfection, and the saddle of mutton was exactly as it should be. He sampled the famous fifty-eight port, of which he had heard good accounts; and he fully endorsed the accounts. He also finished the bottle. Professor Latham knew a good thing when he met it, and he never let it go to waste. Then he smoked a leisurely cigar, drank his coffee to the accompaniment of some particularly fine old brandy, and went up to bed on excellent terms with himself and with all the world beside.

When he reached his room, he paused and reflected. Surely he put those things back on the bed before he went down to dinner. And now they were on the table again! Confound that chambermaid! But was he quite sure that he put them back? He thought so — but really that port was uncommonly fine … and the brandy was the genuine article … but did he put those things back, or did he only intend to do so? Really it was too absurd that he could not remember a simple little thing like that … let’s see, what was the date? Fifty-eight, of course: but why should the waiter meddle with his arrangements of the bedroom? No, not the waiter: it must have been the chambermaid. Or were the things on the table after all? Why couldn’t he remember a simple little thing like that? It must be the sea air. Better go to bed and not bother any more about it.

So Professor Latham threw the things back on the bed, except those that fell on the floor, and turned into the other bed. He murmured “fifty-eight” twice, and then slept the sleep of the man who has dined. Not for worlds would we suggest that Professor Latham was either merry, elevated, well oiled, three sheets in the wind, or anything other than as sober as a judge after an assize dinner.

Thus it can only be regarded as remarkable that his sleep should have been disturbed by persistent dreams. And it was still more remarkable that all his dreams had to do with that other bed. He dreamed that it was occupied. He dreamed that he was aroused by the sound of — well, heavy breathing; and the sound came from the other bed. He struck a match and lit the candle that stood by his bedside. When it had left off spluttering he saw that the things he had laid on the other bed were no longer there. But a mountain seemed to have arisen in the midst of the bed. It was occupied! Now, who could have had the confounded impertinence … he would have a few plain words with the landlord in the morning about this.

Then he thought that he got carefully out of bed, said things to himself as his bare foot trod on a collar stud that some fool must have thrown on the floor, and made his way to the other bed to see who the intruder was. He had already noted that the man was an ugly looking fellow, red-headed and provided with a nose whose colour suggested that water disagreed with him. Probably some drunken roisterer who had come home late and had mistaken the room. He would enlighten him on the subject.

He took the candle to the bedside of the intruder, turned back the sheet to reveal the face more completely, and saw — himself! Then he seized himself by the shoulder and shook himself, with the result that himself woke up and hit him in the eye. A tremendous tussle followed. Himself jumped out of bed and knocked him down, but he got up again and tripped himself up and got the head of himself into chancery. When himself got free, it was clear that both of him were in a distinctly nasty temper. A stand-up fight followed, resulting in considerable damage to both himself and him; but finally he knocked himself down with a crash that shook the universe — and woke up Professor Latham.

The Professor was quite annoyed. He usually slept well and was rarely troubled by dreams. He struck a light to see the time; and then noticed that all the things he had thrown on the other bed were now lying in a heap on the floor. Now this was beyond a joke. It could not be the chambermaid this time. Was it possible that when he threw the things on the bed over night his aim was not quite straight? The thought was not an agreeable one to a man like himself of strictly sober habits.

Anyway, the things could not lie on the floor: so he got out and once more put them on the other bed. Then he turned in and dozed and dreamed until the morning. And his dreams were still occupied with that second bed, which seemed fated to destroy his rest.

When he rose next morning, the first thing that met his eye was that troublesome bed: and what he saw made him rub his eyes and wonder if he were awake or asleep. The things he had put on it during the night were now once more scattered about the floor. But this was not all. The bed had apparently been slept in! The bed clothes were thrown back, as if someone had just risen; and there was a depression in the middle of the bed and on the pillow which could only be accounted for by someone having slept there.

But the thing was simply impossible. Professor Latham went straight to the door, and found that it was locked as he had left it over night. No one could have come in. Who then slept in that other bed? It was an uncomfortable kind of question.

There seemed to be only three possible explanations of the affair. He might have risen in his sleep and changed into the other bed. But if so, he must have changed back again, for he was in the right bed when he woke up. He was not addicted to walking in his sleep; and the thing seemed very improbable. Or the bed might have been disturbed without anyone sleeping in it. But, if so, who disturbed it? No one could have done it but himself: so this did not help matters much. The third possible explanation was that someone other than himself had really been lying in that bed at some time during the night, but had gone before he woke up. But, if so, it must have been someone who could enter a locked room and leave it again without making any sign. This was an unpleasant kind of suggestion; and he did not dwell on it. As we have said, he did not believe in ghosts: and besides, who ever heard of a ghost sleeping in a bed — or anywhere else for the matter of that?

He thought and thought; and the more he thought, the less he liked it. Mysteries were not in his line, and he did not want to be mixed up in any. So he dismissed the matter from his mind, with a private resolve to avoid the fifty-eight port at dinner, and went downstairs to breakfast. On his way he met the chambermaid and learnt from her that she had not moved any things off the bed in his room.

After breakfast, he went up to his room in search of a book that he intended to take with him and read out of doors, and was just going to enter when he heard someone talking in the room. He paused and listened. Yes, there was certainly someone there, and he seemed out of temper. What he was saying Professor Latham could not hear; but the tone of the voice was distinctly unamiable. And the oddest thing about it was that it sounded just like his own voice as he had once heard it in a gramophone!

But, whoever the intruder might be, he had no right in that room; and the Professor entered with the full intention of telling him so in unmistakable terms. He went in with a frown on his brow; but this changed at once to a stare of astonishment. The room was empty. But apparently somebody had recently been there, for the very book he had come for had been thrown into the fireplace! And his pet cigar case was lying beside it!

Yet the door of the room had been locked till he opened it. No one could have entered the room, except the chambermaid who was provided with a master key; but inquiry proved that she had been in another part of the house since Professor Latham went down to breakfast. It was of course possible that some thief might have provided himself with a skeleton key; but there was nothing to suggest any attempt at robbery. Nothing had been interfered with, except the articles that were thrown into the fireplace. Besides, the Professor had heard the voice of the intruder immediately before entering the room.

The landlord was called, and he listened to the story with a patient smile. His explanation was a very simple one; but it did not convey much consolation to his guest.

“My dear Sir,” he said, “in an old house like this, full of long passages and odd corners communicating with one another, all kinds of small sounds get carried along and mixed up; so that the echo of a voice or sound in one part of the house seems to come from another. If we were to take any notice of all the slight sounds that one hears when all is quiet at night, we should begin to think that every room in the place was haunted. All those silly tales about this house in the local guide-book have no doubt been started in this way. We simply take no notice of them.”

But this did not explain the removal of the things from the bed, nor the disturbance of the bed clothes, nor the throwing of the book and cigar case into the fireplace; and it did not impress Professor Latham much. So he shrugged his shoulders, took up his book, and started for his walk. And then another queer thing happened.

Passing a photographer’s shop, he was startled to see in the window an excellent portrait of himself! As he had never been to the place before, and had never in his life been photographed with his hat on his head — as this portrait represented him — he was considerably astonished. He went into the shop, and remarked:

“I see you have in your window a photograph of Professor Latham of Cambridge. May I ask when it was taken?”

“I fear you are mistaken, Sir,” said the photographer. “We do not know the name and have certainly not taken any gentleman giving that name. Would you mind pointing out the portrait?”

The bewildered professor indicated the photograph, and received the explanation that it was that of a gentleman who had stayed at the Blue Dragon two years before, and who declined to give any name.

“But it is really a very good portrait of yourself,” said the photographer. “Possibly it is yours, and you have forgotten the occurrence?”

Professor Latham could only assure him that he had never been in Saltminster before, and had certainly not sat for that portrait. It could only be regarded as a very curious and extraordinary coincidence. He wondered if he possessed a double.

Then another odd thing happened. In the course of his walk he met a man who raised his hat and said, “Let me take the opportunity of apologising for my clumsiness in colliding with you in the hotel last night. It was caused by catching my foot in the edge of the carpet.”

The Professor assured him that he was mistaken. No one had collided with him: it must have been someone else. But the man persisted that it was he whom he had knocked against just outside the door of room No. 39, which was that which Professor Latham was occupying. These mistakes were very strange.

But a still more curious mistake awaited him on his return to the hotel. On entering his room, he found the chambermaid putting an extra blanket on the spare bed. He asked what this meant, as the bed was not to be used, and was told that he himself had asked her to do it as he felt cold in the night. The Professor denied this, and pointed out that he slept in the other bed. The maid said that both of the beds had been slept in, which she did not understand, and that she was quite sure she had seen him about half an hour previously, coming out of the room, and that he had been very particular to explain which bed was to have the extra blanket!

The bewildered Professor could not make it out at all. Had all the world gone mad in Saltminster? Or was he in the throes of a nightmare and would presently wake up and find it all a dream? And then came another shock. He presently went to the mirror to brush his hair; and over his shoulder he distinctly saw the exact double of himself going out through the door of the room. He turned quickly and was just in time to see the door close. He ran across the room and flung the door open; but no one was visible in the corridor. Yet he had been so quick, and the corridor was so long, that no one could have got away in the time.

A few minutes later he went down to lunch. As he entered the dining-room, he noticed that the waiter looked at him with some surprise. Then the man asked if he had changed his mind about lunching. The Professor asked what he meant, and was informed that as he went out of the house a few minutes before he had said in answer to the waiter’s inquiry that he would not be in to lunch. Things were getting complicated. Evidently someone was being mistaken for him. This might be accounted for by personal resemblance; but what about the incidents in the bedroom? And these things were not happening after dinner; so that the blame could not be laid at the door of the fifty-eight port.

The rest of the day was uneventful. Professor Latham dined with as much satisfaction as on the day before, but he drank a lighter wine than port; he had a game at billiards after dinner; he avoided the old brandy; and he retired to rest in good time.

The sea air had made him sleepy, and he hoped to make amends for the restlessness of the previous night. On the whole he slept soundly, but twice in the night he was disturbed by dreams that he heard someone breathing heavily in the room. On thinking the matter over afterwards he was not quite sure whether he dreamed this or actually heard it when half awake. He was inclined to think that the latter was the case; for in the morning he found to his disgust that the spare bed had evidently been slept in again.

And there was a fresh development. On a chair beside the spare bed lay a piece of paper, torn out of the Professor’s pocket book as it proved; and on this had been scribbled some verses of a music-hall song of a particularly ribald and vulgar character. And the handwriting was that of Professor Latham! He could not deny it. Though the song was quite unknown to him and was of a kind that he would never think of either writing or repeating, he could not get away from the fact that the handwriting was his own. He began to feel thankful that he had not left his cheque-book about.

But during the day things took a still more unpleasant turn. The landlord sought an interview with him; and after some hesitation told him that he must ask him to find other accommodation. He indignantly inquired the reason, and was told that a gentleman who attempted to kiss the chambermaid on the stairs was not the kind of patron that was desired at the Blue Dragon! Imagine the feelings of Professor Latham, who was the last man in the world to do such a thing! But the chambermaid persisted in her story, in spite of his denials and assurances that it must have been someone else; and the unfortunate man had to agree to leave the next day. By this time he had had more than enough of Saltminster, and decided to return to Cambridge rather than seek other accommodation in the place. But the delay till the next day was to prove very nearly fatal to him.

That same evening, as he went up to bed, he distinctly heard muttered laughter in his room just before he opened the door to go in; and he found that the clothes of the spare bed had been turned back as if someone was about to get into it. He also noticed that one of his razors had been taken out of its case and was lying open on the dressing-table. He put it back — and it was as well for him that he did so.

He undressed and was about to get into bed when he turned to the window to see what kind of weather it was. The moon was shining brightly, and he stood there for a minute of two with the window open. Then he suddenly found himself caught in the grip of someone behind him; and at the same moment an accidental glance at the mirror showed him the face of his antagonist over his shoulder. It was his own face!

He saw at once that it was to be a struggle for life. The horror that had him in its grip was evidently trying to throw him out through the window. For some minutes the issue was uncertain. Twice he was pressed against the windowsill and was almost over; but each time by a supreme effort he managed to get back into the room. Dressing-table and chairs were overturned in the struggle, and no doubt a great noise was thus made; but he was unconscious of everything but the struggle for life.

But the noise was the saving of Professor Latham. It attracted the notice of other guests, who came out of their rooms to see what it was. Then followed a loud knocking at his door; and at the same moment he found himself alone!

He left Saltminster the next morning; and he has expressed no opinion on ghost stories since. Nor has he ever been known to recommend the Blue Dragon as a nice quiet place for a holiday.

Ghost Gleams (1921)

WHISPERING LEAVES

Ellen Glasgow

1923

It was fifteen years ago today; yet I can still see that road stretching through vinelike shadows into the spring landscape.

Though I was never in Virginia before, I had been brought up on the traditions of my mother’s old home on the Rappahannock; and when the invitation came to spend a week with my unknown cousins, the Blantons, at Whispering Leaves, I was filled with a delightful sense of expectancy and adventure. None of my family had ever seen the present owner of the place — one Pelham Blanton, a man of middle age, who was, as far as we were aware, without a history. All I knew of him was that his first wife had died at the birth of a child about seven years before, and that immediately afterward he had married one of his neighbours, a common person, my mother insisted, though she had heard nothing of the second wife except that her name before her marriage was Twine. Whether the child of the first wife had lived or not we did not know, for the letters from the family had stopped, and we had no further news of the place until I wrote from Richmond asking permission to visit the house in which my mother and so many of my grandmothers were born.

The spring came early that year. When I descended from the train into the green and gold of the afternoon, I felt almost as if I were stepping back into some old summer. An ancient family carriage, drawn by two drowsy black horses with flowing tails, was waiting for me under a blossoming locust tree; and as soon as my foot touched the ground I was greeted affectionately by the coloured driver, who still called my mother “Miss Effie.” He was an imposing, ceremonious old man, very nearly as black as the horses, with a mass of white hair, which is unusual in a negro, and a gay bandanna handkerchief crossed over his chest. After an unconscionable wait for the mail, he brought the dilapidated leather pouch from the office, and tossed it on the floor of the carriage. A minute later, as he mounted over the wheel to his seat, he glanced back at me and remarked in an encouraging tone, “dar ain’ nuttin’ to hinder us now.”

“How far is it to Whispering Leaves, Uncle Moab?”

The old negro pondered the question while he flicked the reins over the broad swaying backs of the horses. He was so long in replying that, thinking he had forgotten to answer, I repeated the words more distinctly.

“Can you tell me how far it is to Whispering Leaves?”

At this he turned and looked back at me over his shoulder. “I reckon hit’s sumun like ten miles, or mebbe hit’s gwine on twelve,” he responded.

“When did you leave there?”

Again there was a long silence while we jogged sleepily out of the deeply shaded streets of the little village. “I ain’ been dar dis mawnin’, Miss Effie,” he answered at last.

“Why, I thought you lived there?”

I was so accustomed by this time to the slowness of his responses that I waited patiently until he brought out with hesitation, “I use’ ter.”

“Then you are no longer the family coachman?”

He shook his head above the bandanna handkerchief, and I could see his deep perplexity written in the brown creases of his neck. “Yas’m. I’se still de driver.”

“But how can you be if you don’t live on the place?”

“One er dem w’ite sarvants brungs de car’ige down ter de creek, en I tecks en drives hit along de road,” he replied. “I goes dar in de daytime,” he added impressively after a minute. “Dar’s some un um ain’ never set foot dar sence we all moved off, but I ain’ skeered er nuttin’, sweet Jesus, in de daytime.”

“Do you mean that all the old servants moved off together?”

“Yas’m. Ev’y last one un um. Dey’s all w’ite folks dar now.”

“When did that happen?”

But, as I was beginning to discover, time and space are the flimsiest abstractions in the imagination of the negro. “Hit wuz a long time ago, Miss Effie,” replied Uncle Moab. “Pell, he wa’n much mo’n a baby den. He wuz jes’ in dresses, en he’s done been in breeches now fur a pa’cel er Christmas times.”

“Pell? It that the child of the first Mrs. Blanton?”

“Yas’m. He’s Miss Clarissa’s chile. Miss Hannah Twine, she’s got a heap er chillun; dar’s two pa’cel er twins en den de baby dat wuz bo’n las’ winter. But Pell, he ain’t ’er chile.”

I was beginning to see light. “Then Pell must be about seven years old, and you moved off the place while he was still in short dresses. That must have been just four or five years ago.”

“Dat’s hit, honey, dat’s hit.”

“And all the coloured servants moved away at the same time?”

“De same day. Dar wa’n’t er one un um lef’ dar by sundown.”

“And they’ve had to have white servants ever since?”

“Dey’s all w’ite ones dat stays on atter sundown. De coloured folks dey goes back in de daytime, but dey don’t stay on twel supper. Naw’m, dar ain’ noner dem but de w’ite folks dat stays on ter git supper.”

While I questioned him the drowsy horses trotted slowly through the sun and shadow on the dun-coloured road. The air was fragrant with mingled wood scents and honeysuckle. A sky of flowerlike blue shone overhead. Now and then a redbird, flying low, darted across the road, and far off in the trees there was the sound of a joyous chorus.

“I never saw so many redbirds, Uncle Moab.”

“Yas’m. Dar sutney is er plenty er dem dis yeah. Hit’s a bird yeah, sho nuff. Hit pears ter me like I cyarn’ put my foot outside er my do’ dat I don’t moughty near step on er robin, en I ain’ never hearn tell er sech er number uv blue jays. De blue jay he’s de meanest bird dat ever wuz, but he sutney is got er heap er sense. He knows jes ez well on w’ich side his bread is buttered ez ef’n he wuz sho nuff folks. Hi! Don’ you begin ter study ’bout birds twel you git to W’isperin’ Leaves. Hit seems dat ’are place wuz jes made ter drive folks bird crazy. Dey’s ev’rywhar’ dose birds. De wrens en de phoebes dey’s in de po’ch, en de swallows dey’s in de chimleys, en de res’ un um is calling ter you en pesterin’ de life outer you in de trees.”

Well, I liked birds! If there were nothing more dangerous than birds at Whispering Leaves, I could be happy there.

While we jogged on there crept over me the feeling of restlessness, of wistful yet indefinable desire, which is the very essence of spring. My thoughts had been brushed for an instant by that magic spirit of beauty; and I saw the wide landscape, with its flushed meadows sinking into the grapelike bloom of the distance, as if it were a part, not of the actual world, but of a universe painted on air, as transparent as the faintly coloured shadows across the road. In the thick woods on the left, delicate green appeared to rise and fall like the foam of the sea. Accustomed as I was to the late northern season, there was an intoxication in this spring which was as flowery as June. A bird year, the old coachman had called it; but a miraculous spring it seemed to me, with its bright soft winds, as sweet as honey, and its far, serene sky. And from the fragrant woods and rosy meadows there floated always the joyous piping of invisible birds; of birds hidden in low thickets; of birds high in the misty woods; of birds by the silver stream in the pasture; of birds flying swiftly into the impalpable shadows.

“I thought birds were quiet in the afternoon, Uncle Moab?”

“Dey am’ never quiet heah, honey. Dey chatters even in de night time. Dey don’ hol’ dere tongues fur nuttin’, not even w’en de snow is on de groun’.”

Gradually, after what seemed to me to be hours of that monotonous pace, the light on the road faded slowly to a delicate primrose. The sun was setting beyond the rich woods on the horizon, and a thin clear veil, like silver tissue, was dropping over the spring landscape. Presently, as we came under the gloom of arching boughs, the old negro turned the heads of the horses and scrambled down from the coachman’s seat.

“I ain’ gwine no furder den dis, Miss Effie,” he explained; and then, as the gate swung open, I saw that a young white man had run forward to unfasten it. When the old negro, with a pull at his front lock, had shuffled off in the direction of the sunset, the young man made a bound into the driver’s seat and jerked up the reins.

“Does Uncle Moab live near here?” I inquired.

“About a mile up the road, miss. Mr. Blanton gave him the cabin at the fork when he moved away.”

“I wonder why he moved?”

The young man broke into a cheery laugh. “When a darkey once gets a notion in his head, the only way to get it out is with an ax,” he retorted; and a minute later he added: “I reckon you don’t know much about the darkeys up North?”

“Very little,” I conceded, and we drove on in silence.

The road into which we had turned was a narrow private way, very steep and rocky, which led between rotting “worm” fences and neglected fields to a dense avenue of cedars on the brow of the hill. As we went on, I wondered why the fields so near the house should be abandoned. The remains of last year’s harvest still strewed the ragged furrows, and against the skyline on the top of the hill there was a desolate row of corn stubble. Presently, as the carriage jolted over the rocky road, I heard the sound of barking, or, as it seemed to me at that sombre hour, the kind of baying to which hounds give voice on moonlit nights. Then, when we reached the high ground at last, I found that two black and yellow hounds were sitting amid the naked cornstalks and barking at our approach.

“Won’t these fields be planted this year?” I asked in surprise.

“We can’t get any of the darkeys to work here,” replied the driver. “They are too near the house.”

As we came to the brow of the hill the dogs ran to meet us, and then, after a few barks of welcome, turned and padded on noiselessly beside the horses. Between us and the beginning of the cedar avenue there was a clear space of road, and when we reached this the veil over the sunset parted suddenly like a curtain, and a glow, which I can compare to nothing except clouded amber, suffused the horizon and the abandoned cornfields. In this glow I discerned the gigantic shape of an old mulberry tree near the avenue; and the next instant I made out, amid the foliage on the high boughs, the lightly poised figure of a little boy in a blue cotton suit, with a mass of streaming ruddy curls.

“Why, he might slip and fall,” I thought; and the words had scarcely formed themselves in my mind, when the little figure turned sharply, as if in terror, and uttered a cry of alarm.

“Mammy, I am falling!” he called out, as his feet slipped from the bough.

I had already made a spring from the carriage, with the sunset dazzling my eyes, when an old negro woman emerged swiftly from the underbrush by the fence, and caught the child in her arms. In that instant of terror, while my eyes were still filled with the sunset, I observed only that the woman was tall and straight like an Indian, and that her face, framed in a red turban, was as brown and wrinkled as a November leaf. Then, as she placed the child on his feet, I saw that her features were irradiated by a passion of tenderness which gave it a strange glow like the burning light of the sunset.

“You saved his life!” I started to cry; but before I could utter the words she vanished into the shadow of the mulberry tree, and left the boy standing alone in the road.

“You might have been killed,” I said sternly as I reached him, for I was still trembling from the fright he had given me.

The boy looked up with a strange elfin glee — there is no other word for it — in his face. “I knew Mammy would catch me,” he responded defiantly.

“Suppose she hadn’t been here?” As I spoke I looked about me for the old negress.

At this the child laughed shrilly, with a sound that was like the ironic mirth of an old man. “She is always where I am,” he replied.

He was a queer child, I thought as I gazed at him, ugly and pinched, and yet with a charm which I felt from the first moment my eyes fell on him. There was a defiant shyness in his manner, and his little face, under the flaming curls, was too thin and pale for healthy childhood. But, in spite of his strangeness, I had never in my life been so strongly attracted, so completely drawn, to a child.

“You must be Pell!” I exclaimed, after a pause in which I had watched him in silence.

He stared at me critically. “Yes, I am Pell. How did you know?”

“Oh, I’ve heard about you. Uncle Moab told me on the way over.”

At the name of Uncle Moab his face grew less blank and hard. “Where is he?” he asked, turning to the driver. “I was going down to the gate to meet him. I want him to mend my kite.”

“Uncle Moab went on to his cabin,” answered the young man, and I noticed that he subdued his tone as he might have done to an ill person or a startled colt.

“Then I’ll go after him,” replied the child. “I am not afraid.”

With a bound he started down the steep road, running in restless leaps, with his bright curls blown out like an aureole round his head. The two black and yellow hounds, jumping up from the stubble, followed, as noiseless as shadows, on his trail; and in a few minutes the three shapes melted into the obscurity of the fields.

When I was in the carriage again I remarked inquiringly to the driver: “For a delicate child he does not appear to be timid.”

“Not out of doors. He is never afraid out of doors. In the house they have a good deal of trouble with him.”

“Do the other children look so thin and pale?”

“Oh, no, ma’am. The other children are healthy enough. They don’t get on well with this one, and that’s why he stays out of the house whenever they’ll let him, even when it is raining. Pell is the child of the first Mrs. Blanton.”

“Yes, I know. Were you here in her time?”

“No, I came afterward. The year the darkeys moved away. But anybody can see how different she must have been from this one, who is the daughter of old Mr. Twine, the miller. She kept house for Mr. Blanton after his first wife died.” This was news to me, for I was absolutely ignorant of the family circumstances. I was eager to learn more of the story; but I could not gossip about my relatives with a stranger, so I said merely,

“Then she brought up the child — Pell, I mean?”

Though the driver’s back was turned to me, I could see by the stubborn shake of his head that my question had aroused an unpleasant train of reflections. “No, Pell’s mammy took care of him until he was five years old. She had nursed his mother before him. I reckon she belonged to the family of the first Mrs. Blanton and came to Whispering Leaves with the bride. I never saw her. She died before my time here; but they say that as long as the old woman lived Pell never knew what it was to miss his mother. Mammy Rhody — that was her name — had promised the first Mrs. Blanton when she was dying that she would never let the child out of her sight; and they say she kept her promise to the dead as long as she lived. Whenever you saw Pell there was Mammy Rhody, sure enough, with her eyes on him. She slept in the room with him, and she always stood behind his high chair when they had him down to the table. Darkeys are like that, I reckon. A vow’s a vow. When she swore she’d never take her eyes off him, she meant just what she said.”

“The child must miss her terribly?”

Again I saw that stubborn shake of his head. “The queer part is that the boy insists she ain’t dead. Nothing they can do to him — Mrs. Blanton has talked to him by the hour — will make him admit that Mammy Rhody is dead. He says she plays with him just as she used to, and that all these birds you hear about Whispering Leaves are the ones that she tamed for him. Birds! Well, there never was, they say, such a hand with birds as Mammy Rhody. She could tame anything going from an eagle to a wren, I’ve heard, and some of the darkeys have got the notion that the woods about here are still full of the ghosts of Mammy Rhody’s pets. They say it ain’t natural for birds to call in and out of season as they do around Whispering Leaves.”

“And does Pell believe this also?”

“Nobody knows, ma’am, just how much Pell believes. They’ve tried to stop all that foolishness because it turns the heads of the darkeys. You can’t get one of them to stay on the place after sunset, not for love or money. It all started with the way Pell goes about talking to himself. Holy Moses! I ain’t skeery myself, ma’am, for a big fellow like me, but it gives me the creeps sometimes when I watch that child playing by himself in the shrubbery and hear him talking to somebody that ain’t there. He does the queerest things, too, just like climbing out on that high limb and calling out to his mammy that he was going to fall.”

“He might have been badly hurt if somebody hadn’t caught him,” I said.

The driver laughed politely, as if I had made a poor joke which he accepted on faith though he missed the humor. “He goes on pretending like that all the time,” he returned.

“But the old coloured woman, the one who caught him? Who is she?” I asked.

At this the man turned sharply, letting the reins fall on the backs of the horses. “The old coloured woman?” he repeated inquiringly.

“I mean the tall one in the black dress, with the white apron and the red turban on her head.” There was a slight asperity in my tone, for it seemed to me the man was incredibly stupid.

The blankness — or was it suspicion? — in his face deepened. “I don’t know. I didn’t see anybody,” he answered presently.

Turning his head away from me again, he gathered up the reins and urged the horses with a clucking noise into the long avenue of cedars.

Dusk, dusk, dusk. As we drove on rapidly beneath the high, closely woven arch of the cedars, I was conscious again of a deep intuitive feeling that the world in which I moved was as unreal as the surroundings in a dream. Dreamlike, too, were my own sensations as I passed into that greenish twilight which shut out the light of the afterglow. Feathery branches edged with brighter green brushed my cheeks like the wings of a bird; and though I knew it must be only my fancy, I seemed to hear a hundred jubilant notes in the enchanted gloom of the trees.

Presently, as if the thought were suggested by that imaginary music, I found myself returning to the old negress. Surely, if she had merely hastened on in front of us, we must overtake her before we reached the end of the avenue. Wherever the shadows crowded more thickly, wherever there was a sudden stir in the underbrush, I peered eagerly into the obscurity, hoping that we had at last come up with the old woman, and that I might offer her a place in the carriage. Though I had had only the briefest glimpse of her, I had found her serene leaf-brown face strangely attractive, almost, I thought oddly enough, as if her mysterious black eyes, under the heavy brows, had penetrated to some secret chamber of my memory. I had never seen her before, and yet I felt as if I had known her all my life, particularly in some half-forgotten childhood which haunted me like a dream. Could it be that she had nursed my mother and my grandmother, and that she saw a resemblance to the children she had trained in her youth? Stranger still, I felt not only that she recognized me, but that she possessed some secret which she wished to confide to me, that she was charged with a profoundly significant message which, sooner or later, she would find an opportunity to deliver.

As we went on, the hope that we should overtake her increased with every foot of the road. I stared into the mass of shadows. I started at every rustle on the scented ground. But still I caught no further glimpse of her; and at last, while I was gazing breathlessly beneath the cedars, we came out of the avenue on the edge of an open lawn, which was sown with small star-shaped flowers of palest blue. In front of me there were other ancient cedars, seven in number; and farther off, beyond the row of cedars, there was a long white house standing against the pomegranate-coloured afterglow, where a little horned moon was sailing.

I can shut my eyes now, after all these years, and summon back the scene as vividly as I saw it when we emerged from the long stretch of twilight. I can still see the blue glimmer of the flowers in the grass; the low house, with deep wings, where the stucco was peeling from the red brick beneath a delicate tracery of Virginia creeper; the seven pyramidal cedars guarding the hooded roof of grey shingles; and the clear afterglow in which the little moon sailed like a ship. Fifteen years ago! And I have not forgotten so much as the spiral pattern the Virginia creeper made on the pinkish white of the wall.

“Are there no trees,” I asked, “except cedars?”

The driver lifted his whip and pointed over the roof. “You never saw such elms. I reckon there ain’t any finer trees in the country, but they’re all at the back, every last one of ’em. Mr. Blanton’s grandfather had a notion that cedars didn’t mix, and he wouldn’t have any other trees planted in front.”

I understood as I looked, in the flushed evening air, at the dark trees presiding over the approach to the house, with its Ionic columns and its quaint wings, added, one could see, long after the original walls were built. The drooping eaves, I knew, sheltered a multitude of wrens and phoebes, and the whole place was alive with swallows, which dipped and wheeled under the glowing sky.

We turned briskly into the circular drive, and a few minutes later, when we stopped before the walk of sunken flagstones, the driver jumped down and assisted me to descend. As I reached the porch, the door opened in a leisurely manner, and my cousin Pelham, a tall, relaxed, indolent-looking man of middle age, with grey hair, brilliant dark eyes and an air of pensive resignation, came out to receive me. I had heard, or had formed some vague idea, that the family had “run to seed,” as they say in the South, and my first view of Cousin Pelham helped to fix this impression more firmly in my mind. He looked, I thought, a man who had ceased to desire anything intensely except physical comfort.

“So this is Cousin Effie’s daughter,” he remarked by way of greeting, as he stooped and placed a perfunctory kiss on my cheek.

Beyond him I saw a large angular woman, with massive features and hair of ambiguous brown, and I inferred, from the baby in her arms and four sturdy children at her skirts, that she was the “Miss Hannah,” for whom Uncle Moab had prepared me. She appeared to me then and afterward to be a woman who was proficient in the art of making a man comfortable, and who hadn’t, as the phrase goes, “a nerve in her body.”

After greeting me cordially enough in her dry fashion, she directed the driver to take my bag upstairs to “the red room.”

“I hope you can do without your trunk until tomorrow,” she added. “All the teams have been plowing today, and we couldn’t send over to the station.”

I replied that I could do very well without it since I had brought my traveling bag. Then, after a few questions from Cousin Pelham about my mother, whom he had not seen since they were both children at Whispering Leaves, Mrs. Blanton led me into the wide hall, where I saw a picture, framed in the open back door, of clustering elms and a flagged walk which ran down into a sunken garden. A minute later, while we ascended the circular staircase, with its beautifully carved balustrade, I found my eyes turning toward that vision of spring which I had seen through the open door.

“How white it looks out there in the garden,” I said. “It seems carpeted with moonlight.”

She bent her head indifferently to glance over the balustrade. “That’s narcissus. It’s in full bloom now,” she answered. “The first Mrs. Blanton” (she might have been speaking of someone she had just left on the porch) “planted the whole garden in those flowers, and we have never got rid of them. The poet’s narcissus, Mr. Blanton calls it.”

“There are lilacs, too,” I responded, for the cool dim hall was filled with the fragrance which seemed to me to be the secret of spring.

“Oh, yes, there are a great many lilacs about the wings, but they are thickest out by the kitchen.”

The upstairs hall, like the one below, was large and dim, and while we crossed it, my companion called my attention to a loosened board or two in the floor. “The rats are bad,” she observed. “I hope they won’t bother you. They make a good deal of noise at night.” And then almost immediately: “I don’t know how you’ll manage without a bathroom, but Mr. Blanton would never have water put in the house.”

As she spoke, she opened a door at the front and ushered me into an immense bedroom, which was hung in a last-century fashion with faded calico. So far as I could distinguish in the dim light, there was not so much as a touch of red in the room. The furniture was all of rich old mahogany, made in too heavy a style for the taste that has been formed on Chippendale or Sheraton, and much of it looked as if it were dropping to pieces for lack of proper care. There was a high tester-bed, hung with the dingy calico; there was an elaborately carved bureau, with a greenish mirror which reflected my features in a fog; and there was a huge screen, papered in a design of castles and peacocks, which concealed an old-fashioned washstand. Yes, it was primitive. The touch about the water belonged to the dark ages; and yet the place possessed, for me at least, an inexpressible charm.

When Mrs. Blanton had left me alone, after telling me that supper would be served in half an hour, I made a few hurried preparations, while I tried in vain to get a glimpse of myself in the mirror, where my reflection floated like a leaf in a lily pond. Then, stealing cautiously from the room and across the deserted hall, with its musty smell of old spices, I crept down the staircase and out of the open back door. Here that provocative fragrance, the aroma of vanished springs, seized me again; and running down the worn steps of the porch, I passed the bower of lilacs beside the whitewashed kitchen wall, and followed the flagged walk to the sunken garden.

At the end of the walk, a primitive wooden stile, like an illustration in Mother Goose, led into the garden; and when I passed it, I found myself in a flowery space, which was surrounded by banks of honeysuckle instead of a wall. A few old fruit trees, now well past blooming, stood in the centre; and edging the grassy paths, there were all the shrubs with quaint-sounding names of which I had dreamed in my childhood — guelder rose, bridal wreath, mock orange, flowering quince, and calycanthus. Over all there hung a mist which had floated up from the low ground by the river; and it seemed to me that this moisture released the scents of a hundred springs. Never until that moment had I known what the rapture of smell could be. And the starry profusion of the narcissi! From bank to bank of honeysuckle the garden looked as if the Milky Way had fallen over it and been caught in the high grass.

Suddenly, in that enchanted silence, I heard the sound of a bell. In a house where there were no bathrooms, I surmised that bells were probably still rung for meals; and turning reluctantly, I started back to the stile. I had gone but a step or two when a light flashing through the windows of the house arrested my gaze; and the next instant, when I glanced round again, I saw the figure of the old negress, in her white apron and red turban, standing motionless under the boughs of a pear tree. In the twilight I saw her eyes fixed upon me, as I had seen them at sunset, with a look of entreaty like the inarticulate appeal in the eyes of the dumb. While I returned her gaze I felt, as I had felt at our first meeting, that she was speaking to me in some inaudible language which I did not yet understand, that she bore a message to me which, sooner or later, she would find a way to deliver. What could she mean? Why had she sought out me, a stranger, when she appeared to avoid the family and even the servants? Quickening my steps, I hastened toward her with a question on my lips; but before I reached her the bell rang again with a chiming sound, and when I withdrew my eyes from the old woman’s face, I noticed that the little boy was running down the flagged walk to the stile. Bitterly I regretted the moment’s inadvertence, for when I looked back, the negress had slipped beyond some of the flowering shrubs, and the garden appeared to be deserted. Well, next time I would be more careful, I resolved. And with this resolution in my mind, I hurried to meet Pell at the stile.

“She says you must come to supper,” began the boy as soon as I came within reach of his voice. It was the first time I had heard him allude to his stepmother, and never, during the week I spent at Whispering Leaves, did he speak of her, in my presence, by any more intimate name.

I held out my arms, and he came to me shyly but trustingly. Though I could see that he was a nervous and sensitive child, the victim, I fancied, of an excitable imagination, I felt that it would not be difficult to win his confidence, if only one started about it in the right way. For the first time in my life I was drawn to a child, and I knew that the boy returned my liking in spite of his reserved manner.

“It is so beautiful I hate to go in,” I said, with my arm about him.

“I wish I could never go in,” he answered, turning back to the garden. “It is so lonely inside the house.”

“Lonely?” I repeated, for the word struck me as a queer one for a child to use. “Aren’t your little brothers and sisters there to play with you?”

He shook his head impatiently. “But they don’t like Mammy to come in.”

As I glanced down at his grave little face I wondered if he could be not quite right in his mind? Beneath his vivid hair, his wide-set greenish-blue eyes held a burning ardour that was unusual in so young a child. I could see that he was delicate in frame, and I inferred that his intelligence was dangerously advanced for his years.

“Do you come to the table?” I asked.

He nodded with uncanny glee. “Ever since I was four years old. I had a high chair then. Bobbie uses it now.”

“Is Bobbie one of the twins?”

“One of the littlest twins. Janie is the other. Jack and Gerty, they are the big ones.” Then he laughed slyly. “I’m glad I’m not a twin! I’d hate to have a girl tagging round after me.”

We had reached the back steps, and I turned, before going in, to have a last look at the garden.

The twilight was the colour of white grapes, and the wisp of moon was scarcely more than a thread in the paling sky. Above the kitchen roof there was a flight of bats. An instant later I asked myself if I were dreaming, or if I actually saw the glimmer of the old negress’s apron by the stile. Then the boy waved his arm in an affectionate good night, and I knew that my imagination had not played a trick on me.

“Who is it, Pell?” I asked.

He glanced at me with his unchildish mirth. “Don’t you see her at the stile over yonder?”

“The old coloured woman? Yes. I’ve seen her twice before. Who is she?”

Again he laughed. For some indefinable reason the laugh grated on my nerves. “If I tell you, will you promise not to let them know?”

I pressed his thin little body to my heart. “I’ll never repeat anything you ask me not to, Pell.”

His hand, so like a bird’s claw, went up to my cheek with a caress; and he was on the point of replying when a step sounded in the hall, and one of the white servants came out on the porch to remind us that Mr. Blanton was waiting. To keep Cousin Pelham waiting for his meals was, I soon discovered, an unforgivable offence.

II

In the dining room, which was lighted by tallow candles, I found an obviously exasperated host and hostess. When I entered Cousin Pelham was fussing about a mahogany cellaret, while Mrs. Blanton was pinning a bib of checked gingham round the neck of a little girl in a high chair. With my English ideas of bringing up children, I thought it an odd custom to have the row of high chairs and trays at the table, and to allow such mere babies to appear at the evening meal.

“This is Gertrude,” said Mrs. Blanton, after my apologies had been contritely offered and graciously accepted by Cousin Pelham, “and that,” nodding to a little boy of the same age, “is John. The other two are Robert and Jane.” They were robust, healthy-looking children, with dark hair and high colour, as unlike their delicate half-brother as one could well imagine.

At supper there was little conversation, for Cousin Pelham, who, I surmised, could talk delightfully when he made the effort, appeared to be absorbed in the food that was placed before him. This was of excellent quality. Evidently, I decided, the second Mrs. Blanton was the right wife for him. Vain, spoiled, selfish, amiable as long as he was given everything that he wanted, and still good-looking in an obvious and somewhat flashing style, he had long ago passed into that tranquil state of mind which follows a complete surrender to the habits of life. I wondered how that first wife, Clarissa of the romantic name and the flaming hair, had endured existence in this lonely neighbourhood with the companionship of a man who thought of nothing but food and drink. Perhaps he was different then; and yet was it possible for such abnormal egoism to develop in the years since her death? He ate immoderately, I observed, and even before he left the table I could see that the drowsiness which afflicts the overfed was descending upon him.

“The garden is charming,” I said. “I have never seen one like it, so irregular and apparently neglected, and yet with a formal soul of its own.”

Cousin Pelham stared at me over the dish of fried chicken from which he was carefully selecting the brownest and tenderest piece. “The garden? Oh, yes, we’ve had to let that go. It was kept up as long as Clarissa lived. She had a passion for flowers; but we can’t get any of the darkeys to work it now.” Then he appealed directly to his wife, who was engaged in teaching Gertrude how to hold her fork properly. “There hasn’t been a spade stuck in the garden this spring, has there, Hannah?”

Mrs. Blanton shook her head, without removing her eyes from the little girl. “Nor last spring, nor the one before that,” she rejoined. “Nobody sets foot in it now except Pell, and he oughtn’t to go there. I tell him there might be snakes in the long grass; but he won’t mind what I say. It takes as much work as we can manage to plow the fields and the kitchen beds. We can’t spare any for that old garden you have to spade.”

“Perhaps that’s a part of the charm,” I responded. “It expresses itself, not some human being’s idea of planting.”

She looked at me as if she did not know what I meant, and on my other side Cousin Pelham chuckled softly. “That sounds like Clarissa,” he said, and there was no trace of sadness in his voice.

Across the table little Pell was eating delicately, pretending to be a bird. Now and then his stepmother turned away from the younger children to scold him about his fastidious appetite, or his odd manner of using his knife and fork, as if they were a superior kind of chopsticks. Her tone was not harsh. It was no sharper indeed than the one she used to her own children; yet, whenever she spoke to him, I felt rather than saw that he winced and shrank away from her. The child’s nerves were overstrung, I could tell that just by watching him with his stepmother; and to her, who could see nothing that was not directly before her eyes, his sensitiveness appeared deliberate perversity. Yet he was an attractive child in spite of his elfin ways. If he could only find the sympathy and understanding he needed so desperately, I felt that he might become very lovable.

Though I was sorry for the child then, I had barely touched the edge of the passion which presently filled my heart. The hardest hour of all, and one of the most trying moments in my life, came when we passed into the library, and Mrs. Blanton summoned the children to bed. The younger children, already nodding, obeyed without protest; but when it came to Pell’s turn to kiss his father good night, he began to shake and whimper with terror. For a minute I did not understand; then turning to Cousin Pelham, I asked, with a sympathy so acute that it stabbed like a knife,

“Is Pell afraid of the dark?”

Cousin Pelham, sunk in the softest old leather chair, was beyond the sound of my voice; but his wife answered immediately in her firm and competent tone.

“We are trying to break him of it. It would be dreadful for his father’s son to be a coward.”

“Does he sleep in the nursery?”

“He used to, but we had to move his bed across the hall because he kept the other children awake. He gets, or pretends to get, the most ridiculous notions into his head, and he carries on so that the other children don’t get any sleep when they are in the room with him.”

“Where does he stay now?”

“In the spare room next to yours. We moved him there a few weeks ago, and you would think from the way he behaved that we were sending him to his grave.”

“But doesn’t that seem the wrong way, to frighten a nervous child into hysterics?”

At this she turned on me the most exasperating force in the universe, impregnable common sense.

“We’ve got to break him of it,” she retorted, “or he will be a baby all his life.”

“I think you’re wrong,” was all I could say feebly in denial; and my words had as little effect as the dash of hail on a windowpane. But, while I answered, I was telling myself that I had found out where the boy slept, and that I would go to his room as soon as I had bidden the family good night. Cousin Pelham and his wife stayed downstairs, I knew, in what they called “the chamber” behind the drawing room, so I should have to guard against only the stupid-looking nurse who had a room, I supposed, near the children.

Bending over, I pressed the boy to my heart. “I am near you, and I will take care of you,” I whispered. Then, releasing him, I stood back and watched him walk, wincing and trembling, after the sturdy children of his stepmother.

It seemed to me that the evening would never end. Every minute I was straining my ears for a sound from the floor above, while Cousin Pelham dozed through the processes of digestion, and Mrs. Blanton and I discussed such concrete facts as wood and stones and preserves and the best way to build a road or to cut down a tree. At last, when I was exhausted beyond belief, though it was only a little after nine o’clock, she laid down her mending, rose from her chair, and, with her hand on her husband’s shoulder, wished me good night.

“You will find a candle in the hall,” she said. “We never use lamps in the chambers.” Her use of the archaic word struck me at the time as poetic. It was the only poetic touch I ever observed about her.

On a table in the hall, I found a row of tallow dips in old brass candlesticks; and after lighting one, I took it in my hand and ascended the circular staircase. Ahead of me the light flitted like a moth up the worn steps, which the feet of generations had hollowed out in the centre as water hollows out a stairway of rock. The hall above was empty — it occurred to me at the moment that I had never seen such empty-looking halls — and was quite dark except for the flickering light of my candle. As I crossed the floor the green mist which I had left in the garden floated in and enveloped me, and that wistful fragrance became intolerably sweet. I had suddenly the feeling that the dim corners and winding recesses of the hall were crowded with intangible shapes.

After glancing through my open door to assure myself that I had not made a mistake, I stole across the hall and hesitated before the threshold of what Mrs. Blanton had pointed out to me as “the spare room.” If the child were sleeping, I did not wish to arouse him, but all idea that he slept was banished as I pushed the door wider and heard him talking aloud to himself. Then, while the pointed flame of my candle pierced the obscurity, I saw that he was not, as I had first thought, alone. The old coloured woman in the black alpaca dress, with the white apron and the red turban, was bending over him. When I approached she turned slowly and looked at me; and I felt that her dark, compassionate face was love made manifest to my eyes. So she had looked down on the child, and so, for one miraculous instant, she gazed directly into my heart. For one miraculous instant! Then, while I stood there, transfixed as by an arrow, she passed, with that slow movement, across the room to the door which I had left open. Before I could stir, before I could utter a word to detain her, she had disappeared; and the boy, sitting up in the heavily draped bed, was staring at me with wondering eyes.

“Mammy was telling me a story,” he said.

“I didn’t know that you had a mammy now.” This was the best that I could do at the moment.

“Oh, yes, I have!” He smiled with charming archness, and I noticed that the fear had passed out of his voice.

“When did she come?” I asked.

“She has been here always, ever since,” he hesitated, “since before I was.”

“Does she look after the other children too?”

He laughed, cuddling down into the middle of the feather bed. “They don’t know about her. They have never seen her.”

“But how can she come and go in the house without anybody seeing her?”

At this the laughter stopped. “She has a way,” he answered enigmatically. “She never comes into the house except when I’m afraid.”

I bent over and kissed him. “Well, you’re not frightened any longer?”

“Oh, no. I’m all right now,” he replied, stroking my hand. “The next time it gets dark Mammy says she will come back and finish her story.”

“And I am next door,” I said. “Whenever you begin to feel frightened you can come and sleep on the big couch by the window.”

“By the window,” he repeated eagerly, “where Mammy’s wrens are under the eaves. That would be fun.”

Then, as I arranged the bedclothes over him, he turned his cheek to the pillow, and settled himself for the night. A moment later, when I went out of the room, I began wondering again about the old negress. Was she a faithful servant who had sacrificed her superstition to her affection for Clarissa’s child, and had stayed on at Whispering Leaves when the other negroes had gone away? In the morning I would make some inquiries. Meanwhile I liked to remember the glory — there is no other word to describe it — that I had seen in her dark face when she bent over the boy.

In the morning, when I came out of doors, it was into a world of maize-coloured sunshine. There was new green on the cedars, and the little blue flowers in the grass looked as formal as the blossoms in a Gothic tapestry. Suddenly a harsh scream sounded a little way to the right, and a peacock, with flaunting plumage, marched across the lawn, through the sunlight and shadow. As I stood there, entranced by the colour of the morning, it seemed to me that this circle of sunlight and shadow became alive with the quiver of innumerable gauzy wings, the bright ghosts of all the birds that had ever sung in this place.

When, presently, I turned in the direction of the garden, I saw that Pell was playing in a row of flowering quince near the stile. He was on his knees, building a castle of rocks, which he had brought in a little wagon from the road in the pasture; and while I approached, I observed that he was talking aloud to himself as children talk in their play. Then, before I reached him, I found my gaze arrested by a glimmer of red amid the smoke-grey boughs of a crepe myrtle tree; and it seemed to my startled fancy that I made out the figure of the old negress. But the next minute a scarlet tanager flashed out of the branches, and the image proved to be one of those grotesque shapes which crepe myrtle bushes, like ancient olive trees, frequently assume.

The child was playing happily by himself. When my shadow fell over him, he looked up with his expression of secret wisdom. Kneeling there, with his red curls and his blue-green eyes enkindled by the sunshine, he reminded me of some unearthly flower of light.

“It will be a fine castle,” I said.

He glanced hastily over his shoulder; and I noticed that his manner was shy and furtive, though it expressed also a childish pleasure that was very appealing.

“I’ve got something better than a castle,” he answered. “I found it yesterday down by the ice pond. Will you promise not to tell if I let you look?”

“I promise,” I assured him gravely; and, with another suspicious glance in the direction of the house, he sprang to his feet and caught me by the hand. Leading me round the shrubbery and over the stile, he showed me a hollow he had made in the tall grasses beneath a cluster of lilac bushes. Lying there on a bed of dry fern I saw a black and white mongrel puppy, a delightful, audacious, independent puppy, half terrier and half unknown, with an engaging personality and a waggish black ear that dropped over one sparkling eye. Fastened securely by a strip of red cotton to the shrub, beside a partly gnawed bone and a saucer of water, he sat surveying me with an expectant, inquisitive look.

“Isn’t he a beauty?” asked Pell, enraptured, as he went down on his knees and flung his arms about the puppy.

“A beauty,” I repeated; and I also went down on my knees to embrace boy and dog.

“He hadn’t had anything to eat for ever so long when I found him. Martha gives me scraps for him, and William lets him sleep in the stable.” Then he looked straight into my eyes. “You won’t tell?” he pleaded. “She wouldn’t let him stay if she knew. She doesn’t like dogs.”

Of course she didn’t like dogs. Hadn’t I felt from the first that she wouldn’t? Why, there wasn’t a dog on the place, except the two black and yellow hounds I had seen half a mile away in the cornfield, and they belonged doubtless to one of the negroes.

“No, I won’t tell,” I promised. “I’ll help you take care of him.”

His eyes shone. “Can you teach him to do tricks? He knows how to beg already. Mammy taught him.”

I released the child quickly and rose to my feet. “Where is your Mammy, Pell?”

His rapid glance flew down the garden walk, and across the narcissi, to the twisted pear tree. “She’s just gone,” he answered. “She went when she saw you coming.”

“Where does she live?”

At this he broke into a laugh. “Oh, she lives away, way over yonder,” he responded, with a sweep of his hand.

For the next week Pell and I were cheerful conspirators. When I look back on it now, after so many years, I can still recall those cautious trips to the barn or the little bed of ferns under the lilacs. We fed Wop, that was the name we chose at last, until he grew as round as a ball; and he was just passing into the second stage of his education when Mrs. Blanton discovered his presence, as I was sure that she would be obliged to do sooner or later.

I had been away for the afternoon to visit some relatives at a distance; and as we drove home about sunset, we passed on the road the old coloured woman whom Pell had called Mammy. I could not be mistaken, I told myself. I should have recognized her anywhere, not only by the quaint turban she wore bound about her head, but by that indescribable light which shone in her face.

At the time we were driving through a stretch of burned pines, and when I first noticed her she had stopped to rest and was sitting on a charred stump by the roadside, with the red disc of the sun at her back. The light was in my eyes; but, as I leaned out and smiled at her, she gave me again that long deep look so filled with inarticulate yearning. I knew then, as I had known the first afternoon, that she was trying to make me understand, that she was charged with some message she could not utter. While her eyes met mine I was smitten — that is the only word for the sensation — into silence; but after we had driven on, I recovered myself sufficiently to say to the cousin who was taking me home:

“If she is going a long way, don’t you think we might give her a lift?”

My cousin, an obtuse young man, gazed at me vacantly. “If who is going a long way?”

“The old coloured woman by the roadside. Didn’t you see her?”

He shook his head. “No, I wasn’t looking. I didn’t see anybody.”

While he was still speaking, I leaned out with an exclamation of surprise. “Why, there she is now in front of us! She must have run ahead of us through the pines. She is waiting by the dead tree at the fork of the road.”

My cousin was laughing now. “The sunset makes you see double. There isn’t anybody there. Can you see anything except the blasted oak at the fork of the road, Jacob?”

A few minutes later, when we reached the place where the road branched, I saw that it was deserted. The red blaze of the sun could play tricks with one’s vision, I knew; but it was odd that on both occasions, at precisely the same hour, I should be visited by this hallucination. That it was an hallucination, I no longer doubted when, looking up a short while afterward, I saw again the old woman’s figure ahead of me. This time, however, I kept silent, for the first thing one learns from such visitations is the danger of talking to people of things which they cannot understand. But I drove on with my heart in my throat. In front of me in the blue air was that vision; and in my mind there was a voiceless apprehension. Then, as we reached the lawn, the old woman vanished, and a moment later the sound of a child’s crying fell on my ears.

Alone on the front steps, Pell sat weeping inconsolably, with his face hidden in his thin little hands. When I sprang from the carriage, he rushed into my arms.

“She has sent him away! She has sent him away to be drowned!” he cried in a heartbreaking voice.

As I drew him close, the door opened, and Mrs. Blanton looked out.

“Come in, Pell,” she called, not unkindly, but unseeingly. “You will fret yourself into a fever. The circus is coming next week, and if you make yourself sick, you won’t be able to go to it.”

At this Pell turned on her a white and quivering face. “I don’t want to go to the circus,” he said. “I don’t want any supper. I want Wop, and I wish you were dead!”

“Pell, dear!” I cried, but Mrs. Blanton only laughed good-naturedly, a laugh that was as common as her features.

“He’s got his mother’s temper all right,” she remarked to me over the child’s head. “If you don’t want any supper,” she added, dragging him indoors, while he struggled to free himself from the grasp of her large firm hand which seemed as inexorable as her purpose, “you must go straight upstairs to bed.”

When we had entered the house the boy broke away from her, and marched, without a tremor of hesitation, across the hall and into the thick dusk of the staircase.

“Let me go after him,” I said. “He is so afraid of the dark, and the candles are not lighted upstairs.”

Mrs. Blanton detained me by a gesture. “He is the sort of child you have to be firm with,” she returned, and then immediately, “Mr. Blanton” — she always addressed her husband as “Mr. Blanton” — “is waiting for us in the dining room. It frets him to be kept waiting.”

After this there was nothing to do but follow her, with a heavy heart, into the room, where Cousin Pelham stood, ponderously frowning at the door. I could not this evening meet his annoyance with my usual playful apology; and a little later, when the excellent supper was served, I found that I was unable to swallow a morsel. The fact that I was leaving the next day, that I should, perhaps, not see Pell again for years, had turned my heart to lead.

When supper was over I escaped as soon as I could and ran upstairs to the room where Pell slept. A candle was burning by his bed, and to my amazement the child was sleeping peacefully, with a smile on his face where the traces of tears were scarcely dried. While I looked down on him, he stirred and opened his eyes.

“I thought you were Mammy,” he murmured, with a drowsy laugh.

“Has Mammy been here?” I asked.

He was so sleepy that he could barely answer; but, as he nestled down into the middle of the feather bed, he replied without the faintest sign of his recent distress:

“She was here when I came up. She told me it was all right about Wop. Uncle Moab is keeping him for me.”

“Uncle Moab is keeping him?” I pressed my hand on his forehead under the vivid hair; but there was no hint of fever.

“She says she gave Wop to Uncle Moab. Mammy wouldn’t let anybody hurt him.”

Then his eyes closed while the smile quivered on his lips. “Mammy says you must take me with you when you go away,” he murmured. His face changed to an almost unearthly loveliness, and before I could answer, before I could even take in the words he had spoken, he had fallen asleep.

For a minute I stood looking down on him. Then leaving the candle still burning, I went out, closing the door softly, and ran against the maid, a young Irish woman, whose face I liked.

“I was just going to see if Pell had fallen asleep,” she explained a little nervously. “I have a message for him. You won’t tell Mrs. Blanton I brought it?”

“No. I won’t tell Mrs. Blanton.”

For an instant the girl hesitated. “She is so strict,” she blurted out, and then more guardedly, “William wouldn’t have drowned the child’s puppy. He just took it away and gave it to Uncle Moab who was going along the road.”

“I am glad,” I said eagerly. “Uncle Moab will look after it?”

“He sent Pell a message not to worry. I was going in to tell him.”

“But he knows it already,” I replied indiscreetly. “Somebody told him.”

A puzzled look came into her face. “But nobody knew. William just came back a minute ago, and there hasn’t been another soul on the place this afternoon.”

I saw my slip at once and hastened to remedy it. “Then I was mistaken of course. The child must have imagined it.”

“Yes, he does imagine things,” she responded readily; and after a word of good night, she turned back to the stairs while I crossed the hall to my room.

There, as soon as I had closed the door, I put down my candle, and turned to the open window to think over what I had heard. There was nothing really strange, I told myself, in the incident of the puppy and Uncle Moab. It was natural enough that William should have refused to obey an order he thought was cruel; it was natural enough also that Uncle Moab should have been going by in the road at that hour. Everything was easily explained except the singular change in the child, and the happy smile on his little tear-stained face when he murmured, “Mammy says you must take me with you when you go away.” Over and over again I heard those words as I sat there by the window. So insistent was the repetition that I might have deluded myself into the belief that they were spoken aloud in the darkness outside. How could I take the child away with me? I asked at last, as if I were disputing with some invisible presence at my side. What room was there for a child in my active life? I loved Pell; I hated to leave him; but how could I possibly take him with me when I went away in the morning? Yet, even after I had undressed, climbed into the canopied bed, and blown out my candle, I still heard that phrase again and again in my mind. I was still hearing it hours afterward when I fell asleep and dreamed of the old coloured woman sitting on the charred stump by the roadside.

Dreams. The old coloured woman by the roadside. The song of far-off birds coming nearer. The jade-green mist of the twilight changing suddenly to opal. Light growing out of darkness. Light turning from clear gold to flame colour. Still the song of birds that became so loud it was like the torrent of waters — or of fire. Dreams. Dreams. Nothing more….

Starting awake, I was aware first of that opal-coloured light; then of the fact that I was stifling, that a grey cloud had swept in from the window, or the open door, and enveloped me. The next instant, with a cry, I sprang up and caught at the dressing-gown on a chair by my bed. From outside, mingled with that dream of singing birds and rushing torrents, the sound of voices was reaching me. The words I could not hear, but I needed no words to tell me that these were voices of warning. Whispering Leaves was burning while I dreamed. Whispering Leaves was burning, and I must fight my way to safety through the smoke that rushed in at my open door!

“Pell!” I called in terror, as I ran out into the hall. But there was no answer to my cry, and the next minute, when I looked into the child’s room, I saw that the bed was empty. They had saved him and forgotten me. Well, at least they had saved him!

Of the next few minutes, which seemed an eternity of terror, I can recall nothing now except a struggle for air. I must have fought my way through the smoke upstairs. I must have passed that savage light so close that it scorched my face, which was blistered afterward, though I felt no pain at the moment. I must have heard that rush of flames so near that it deafened me; but of this I can remember nothing today. Yet I can still feel the air blowing in my face on the lawn outside. I can still see the little green leaves on the cedars standing out illuminated in that terrible glow. I can still hear the cry that rang out:

“Pell! Where is Pell? Didn’t you bring Pell with you?”

Fifteen years ago. Fire and ashes, pain and happiness, have passed and are forgotten; but that question, as I heard it then, still sounds in my ears.

“Where is Pell? Didn’t you bring Pell with you?”

“I thought he was safe,” my voice was so thick that the words were scarcely articulate. “His room was empty.”

“He isn’t with the other children. We thought he had gone to you.” The speaker I have forgotten — Cousin Pelham or his wife, or the nurse, it is no matter — but the words are still living.

“I will go back.” This was Cousin Pelham, I knew, for he had turned to enter the burning house.

“It is too late now.” This was not one, but several voices together. As they spoke the windows of the house shone like the sunrise while a torrent of flame swept through the hall.

“Oh, Pell! Pell!” I cried out in agony. “Cannot you come to me?”

For a minute — it was scarcely longer — after I called, there was no answer. We stood in that red glare, and round us and beyond us closed the mysterious penumbra of the darkness. Without the circle, where we clung together in our horror, there was the freshness and the sweetness of the spring, and all the little quiet stirs that birds make when they nest at night. And it was out of this bird-hunted darkness that a shape moved suddenly past me into the flames, a shape which as the light edged it round I saw to be that of the old negress.

“She is looking for him,” I cried now. “Oh, don’t you see her?”

They gathered anxiously round me. “The fire has blinded her,” I heard them say. “She is looking straight at the flames.”

Yes, I was looking straight at the flames, for beyond the flames, past the unburned wing of the house, from the window of an old storeroom, which was never opened, they had told me, I saw the shape of the old negress pass again like a shadow. The next instant my heart melted with joy, for I saw that she was bringing the child in her arms. The little face was pale as death; the red curls were singed to black; but it was the child that she held. Even the unperceiving eyes about me, though they could see only material things, knew that Pell had come unharmed out of the fire. To them it was merely a shadow, a veil of smoke, which surrounded him. I alone saw the dark arms that enfolded him. I alone, among all those standing there in that awful light, recognized that dark compassionate face.

Her eyes found me at last, and I knew, in that moment of vision, what the message was that she had for me. Without a word I stepped forward, and held out my arms. As I did so, I saw a glory break in the dim features. Then, even while I gave my voiceless answer, the face melted from me into spirals of smoke. Was it a dream, after all? Was the only reality the fact that I held the child safe and unharmed in my arms?

“Harper’s Monthly Magazine,” Jan, Feb 1923

THE STAIRCASE

Sir Hugh Walpole

1933

It doesn’t matter in the least where this old house is. There were once many houses like it. Now there are very few.

It was born in 1540 (you can see the date of its birth over the lintel of the porch, cut into the stone). It is E-shaped with central porch and wings at each end. Its stone is now, in its present age, weathered to a beautiful colour of pearl-grey, purple-shadowed. This stone makes the house seem old, but it is not old; its heart and veins are strong and vigorous, only its clothes now are shabby.

It is a small house as Tudor manor-houses go, but its masonry is very solid, and it was created by a spirit who cared that it should have every grace of proportion and strength. The wings have angle buttresses, and the porch rises to twisted terminals; there are twisted terminals with cupola tops also upon the gables, and the chimneys too are twisted. The mullioned windows have arched heads, and the porch has a Tudor arch. The arch is an entrance to a little quadrangle, and there are rooms above and gables on either side. Here and there is rich carving very fancifully designed.

It is set upon a little hill, and the lawn runs down to a small formal garden with box-hedges mounted by animals fancifully cut, a sun-dial, a little stone temple. Fields spread on either side of it and are bordered completely by a green tangled wood. The trees climb skywards on every side, but they are not too close about the house. They are too friendly to it to hurt it in any way. Over the arched porch a very amiable gargoyle hangs his head. He has one eye closed and a protruding chin from which the rain drips on a wet day, and in the winter icicles hang from it.

All the country about the house is very English, and the villages have names like Croxton, Little Pudding, Big Pudding, Engleheart and Applewain. A stream runs at the end of the lower field, runs through the wood, under the road, by other fields, so far as Bonnet where it becomes a river and broadens under bridges at Peckwit, the country town.

The house is called Candil Place and is very proud of its name. Its history for the last hundred years has been very private and personal. No one save myself and the house knows the real crises of its history, just as no one knows the real crisis of your history save yourself. You have doubtless been often surprised that neighbours think that such and such events have been the dramatic changing moments in your life — as when you lost your wife or your money or had scarlet fever — when in reality it was the blowing of a window curtain, the buying of a ship in silver, or the cry of a child on the stair.

So it has been with this house which has had its heart wrung by the breaking of a bough in the wind, a spark flying from the chimney, or a mouse scratching in the wainscot. From its birth it has had its own pride, its own reserve, its own consequence. Everything that has happened in it, every person who has come to it or gone from it, every song that has been sung in it, every oath sworn in it, every shout, every cry, every prayer, every yawn has found a place in its history.

Its heart has been always kindly, hospitable, generous; it has had as many intentions as we have all had, towards noble ends and fine charities. But life is not so easy as that.

Its first days were full of light and colour. Of course it was always a small house; Sir Mortimer Candil, who helped to create it, loved it, and the house gave him its heart. The house knew that he did for it what he could with his means; the house suffered with him when his first wife died of the plague, rejoiced with him when he married again so beautiful a lady, suffered with him once more when the beautiful lady ran away to Spain with a rascal.

There is a little room, the Priest’s Room, where Sir Mortimer shut himself in and cried, one long summer day, his heart away. When he came out of there he had no heart any more, and the house, the only witness of that scene, put its arms about him, loved him more dearly than it had ever done, and mourned him most bitterly when he died.

The house after that had a very especial tenderness for the Priest’s Room, which was first hung with green tapestry, and then had dark panelling, and then was whitewashed, and then had a Morris wall-paper, and then discovered its dark panelling again, changing its clothes but never forgetting anything.

But the house was never a sentimental weakling. It was rather ironic in spirit because of the human nature that it saw and the vanity of all human wishes.

As to this business of human wishes and desires, the house has never understood them, having a longer vision and a quieter, more tranquil heart. After the experience that it has had of these strange, pathetic, obstinate, impulsive, short-sighted beings it has decided, perhaps, that they are bent on self-ruin and seem to wish for that.

This has given the house an air of rather chuckling tenderness.

Considering such oddities, its chin in its hand and the wood gathering round to listen, whether there should be anything worth listening to (for the house when it likes is a good story-teller), the eye of its mind goes back to a number of puzzling incidents and, most puzzling of all, to the story of Edmund Candil and his lady Dorothy, the events of a close summer evening in 1815, the very day that the house and its inhabitants had the news of Waterloo.

Sir Edmund Candil was a very restless, travelling gentleman, and all the trouble began with that.

The house could never understand what pleasure he found in all these tiresome foreign tours that he prosecuted when there was the lovely English country for him to spend his days in. His wife Dorothy could not understand this either.

There was a kind of fated air about them from the moment of their marriage. The house noticed it on their very wedding-day, and the Priest’s Room murmured to the Parlour: “Here’s an odd pair!” and the Staircase whispered to the little dark Hall with the family pictures: “This doesn’t look too well,” and the Powder-Closet repeated to the Yellow Bedroom: “No, this doesn’t look well at all.”

They had, of course, all known Edmund from his birth. He was a swarthy, broad-shouldered baby, unusually long in the leg, and from the very beginning he was known for his tender heart and his obstinate will. These two qualities made him very silent. His tender heart caused him to be afraid of giving himself away, his obstinate will made him close his mouth and jut out his chin so that nobody could possibly say that his resolve showed signs of weakening.

He had a sister Henrietta, who was the cause of all the later trouble. The house never from the beginning liked Henrietta. It considered that always she had been of a sly, mean, greedy disposition. There is nothing like a house for discovering whether people are mean or greedy. Chests of drawers, open fireplaces, chairs and tables, staircases and powder-closets, these are the wise recipients of impressions whose confidence and knowledge you can shake neither by lies nor arrogances.

The house was willing to grant that Henrietta loved her brother, but in a mean, grasping, greedy manner, and jealousy was her other name.

They were children of a late marriage and their parents died of the smallpox when Edmund was nineteen and Henrietta twenty-one. After that Henrietta ruled the house because Edmund was scarcely ever there, and the house disliked exceedingly her rule. This house was, as I have said, a loyal and faithful friend and servant of the Candil family. Some houses are always hostile to their owners, having a great unreasoning pride of their own and considering the persons who inhabit them altogether unworthy of their good fortune. But partly for the sake of Sir Mortimer, who had created and loved it, and partly because it was by nature kindly, and partly because it always hoped for the best, the house had always chosen only the finest traits in the Candil character and refused to look at any other.

But, if there is one thing that a house resents, it is to be shabbily and meanly treated. When a carpet is worn, a window rattling in the breeze, a pipe in rebellion, a chair on the wobble, the house does everything towards drawing the attention of its master. This house had been always wonderfully considerate of expense and the costliness of all repair. It knew that its masters were not men of great wealth and must go warily with their purposes, but, until Henrietta, the Candils had been generous within their powers. They had had a pride in the house which made them glad to be generous. Henrietta had no such pride. She persisted in what she called an “adequate economy,” declaring that it was her duty to her brother who drove her, but as the house (who was never deceived about anything) very well knew, this so-called “economy” became her god and to save money her sensual passion.

She grew into a long bony woman with a faint moustache on her upper lip and a strange, heavy, flat-footed way of walking. The Staircase, a little conceited perhaps because of its lovely banisters that were as delicate as lace, hated her tread and declared that she was so common that she could not be a Candil. Several times the Staircase tripped her up out of sheer maliciousness. The Store-room hated her more than did any other part of the house. Every morning she was there, skimping and cheese-paring, making this last and doing without that, wondering whether this were not too expensive and that too “outrageous.” Of course her maidservants would not stay with her. She found it cheapest to engage little charity-girls, and when she had them she starved them. It is true that she also starved herself, but that was no virtue; the house would see the little charity-girls crying from sheer hunger in their beds, and its heart would ache for them.

This was of course to some degree different when Edmund came home from his travels, but not very different, because he was always considerably under his sister’s influence. He was soft-hearted and she was hard, and, as the house very well knew, the hard ones always win.

Henrietta loved her brother, but she was also afraid of him. She was very proud of him but yet more proud of her domination over him. When he was thirty and she thirty-two she was convinced that he would never marry. It had been once her terror that he should, and she would lie awake thinking one moment of the household accounts and the next of wicked girls who might entrap her brother. But it seemed that he was never in love; he returned from every travel as virgin as before.

She said to him one morning, smiling her rather grim smile: “Well, brother, you are a bachelor for life, I think.”

It was then that he told her that he was shortly to marry Miss Dorothy Preston of Cathwick Hall.

He spoke very quietly, but, as the armchair in the Adam Room noticed, he was not quite at his ease. They were speaking in the Adam Room at the time, and this armchair had only recently been purchased by Edmund Candil. The room was not known then as the Adam Room (it had that title later) but it was the room of Edmund’s heart. The fireplace was in the Adam style and so were the ceiling, and the furniture, the chairs, the table, the sofa, the commode Edmund had had made for him in London.

Very lovely they were, of satin-wood and mahogany, with their general effect of straight line but modified by lovely curves, delicate and shining. In the centre of the commode was a painted vase of flowers, on the ceiling a heavenly tracing of shell-like circles. Everywhere grace and strength and the harmony of perfect workmanship.

This room was for Edmund the heart of England, and he would stand in it, his dark eyes glowing, fingering his stock, slapping his tight thigh with his riding-whip, a glory at his heart. Many things he had brought with him from foreign countries. There was the Chinese room, and the little dining-room was decorated with Italian pictures. In his own room that he called the Library there was an ink-horn that had been (they said) Mirabeau’s, a letter of Marie Antoinette’s, a yellow lock cut from the hair of a mermaid and some of the feathers from the head-dress of an African chieftain. Many more treasures than these. But it was the Parlour with the fine furniture bought by him in London that was England, and it was of this room that he thought when he was tossing on the Bay of Biscay or studying pictures in Florence or watching the ablutions of natives in the Sacred River.

It was in this room that he told his sister that he intended marriage.

She made no protest. She knew well enough when her brother’s mind was made up. But it was a sunny morning when he told her, and as the sun, having embraced merrily the box-hedge peacocks and griffins, looked in to wish good-morning to the sofa and the round shining satin-wood table that balanced itself so beautifully on its slim delicate legs, it could tell that the table and chairs were delighted about something.

“What is it?” said the sun, rubbing its chin on the window-sill.

“There’s a new mistress coming,” said the table and chairs.

And, when she came, they all fell at once in love with her. Was there ever anyone so charming and delicate in her primrose-coloured gown, her pretty straw bonnet and the grey silk scarf about her shoulders? Was there ever anyone so charming?

Of course Henrietta did not think so. This is an old story, this one of the family relations greeting so suspiciously the new young bride, but it is always actual enough in its tragedy and heartbreak however often it may have happened before.

Is it sentimental to be sorry because the new Lady Candil was sad and lonely and cried softly for hours at night while her husband slept beside her? At that time at least the house did not think so. Possibly by now it has grown more cynical. It cannot, any more than the humans who inhabit it, altogether be unaware of the feeling and colour of its time.

In any case the house loved Dorothy Candil and was deeply grieved at her trouble. That trouble was, one must realise, partly of her own making.

Her husband loved her, nay, he adored her with all the tenderness and tenacity that were part of his character. He adored her and was bored by her: as everyone knows, this is a most aggravating state of feeling. He thought her beautiful, good, amiable and honest, but he had nothing at all to say to her. For many a man she would have been exactly fitting, for it was not so much that she was stupid as that she had no education and no experience. He gave her none of these things as he should have done. Nor did he realise that this life, in the depths of English country, removed from all the enterprise and movement of the town, removed also by the weather from any outside intercourse for weeks at a time, was for someone without any great resources in herself depressing and enervating.

And then she was frightened of him. How well the house understood this! It too was, at times, afraid of him, of his silences, his obstinacy and easy capacity of semi-liveliness, a sensitiveness that his reticence forbade him to express.

How often in the months that followed the marriage did the house long to advise her as to her treatment of him. The sofa in the parlour was especially wise in such cases. Long before it had been covered with its gay cherry-coloured silk it had been famous among friends and neighbours for its delicacy in human tactics.

There came a morning when Lady Candil sat on a corner of it, her lovely little hand (she was delicate, slim, fragile, her body had the consistency of egg-shell china) clenching the shining wood of its strong arm for support, and a word from her would have put everything right. The sofa could feel the throbbing of her heart, and looking across to the thick, stiff, obstinate body of her husband, longed to throw her into his arms. But she could not say the word, and the mischanced moment became history for both of them. Had they not loved so truly it might have been easier for them; as it was, shyness and obstinacy built the barrier.

And of course Henrietta assisted. How grimly was she pleased as she sat in her ugly old russet gown, pretending to read Lord Clarendon’s History (for she made a great pretence of improving her mind), but in reality listening to the unhappy silences between them and watching for the occasion when a word from her to her brother would skilfully widen the breach. For she hated poor Dorothy. She must in any case have done so out of jealousy and disappointment, but Dorothy was also precisely the example in woman whom she most despised. A weak, feckless, helpless thing whose pretty looks were an insult!

Then Dorothy felt her peril and rose to meet it. The house may have whispered in her ear!

Yes, she rose to meet it, but, as life only too emphatically teaches us, it is no good crying for the moon — and it is no good, however urgent we may be, begging for qualities that we have not got. She had a terrible habit of being affectionate at the wrong time. A kind of fate pursued her in this. He would return from his afternoon’s ride, pleasantly weary, eager for his wife and happy in the thought of a little romantic dalliance, and she, fancying that he would not be disturbed, would leave him to snore beside the fire. Or a neighbour squire would visit him and he be off with him for the afternoon and she feel neglected. Or he would be absorbed in a newsletter with a lively account of French affairs and she choose that moment to sit on his knee and tug his hair.

Dorothy was in truth one of those unfortunate persons — and they are among the most unfortunate in the world — who are insensitive to the moods and atmospheres of others. These err not through egotism nor stupidity, but rather through a sort of colour-blindness so that they see their friend red when he is yellow and green when he is blue. Neither Dorothy nor Edmund had any gift of words.

So, a year and a half after his marriage, Edmund, with an ache in his heart, although he would own this to nobody, went once again to foreign parts. The house implored him not to go: he almost heard its protests.

On one of his last evenings there — a windy spring evening — he came in from a dark twilight walk, splashed with the mud of the country paths, the sense of the pale hedgerow primroses yet in his eye, the chatter of birds in his ear, and standing in the hall heard the William and Mary clock with the moon and stars, the banisters of the staircase, the curtains of the long hall window whisper to him:

“Don’t go! Don’t go! Don’t go!”

He stood there and thought: “By Gemini, I’ll not leave this!” Dorothy came down the stairs to greet him and, seeing him lost in thought, stole upstairs again. In any case he had taken his seat in the coach, and his place in the packet-boat was got for him by a friend in London.

“Don’t go!” said the portrait of old Uncle Candil.

He strode upstairs and Dorothy was reading Grandison by the fire, and although her heart was beating with love for him, was too timid to say so.

So to foreign parts he went again and, loving her so dearly, wrote letters to her which he tore up without sending lest she should think him foolish — such being the British temperament.

How the house suffered then, that Dorothy should be left to the harsh economies of sister Henrietta. Henrietta was not a bad woman, but she was mean, selfish, proud and stupid. She was also jealous. Very quickly and with little show of rebellion Dorothy submitted to her ways. If true love is in question absence does indeed make the heart grow fonder, and Dorothy thought of her husband night, morning, and night again.

She was snubbed, starved, and given a thorough sense of her insufficiencies. It is surprising how completely one human being can convince another of incompetence, ignorance and silly vanity if they be often alone together and one of them a woman. Women are more whole-hearted than men in what they do, whether for good or ill, and Henrietta was very whole-hearted indeed in this affair.

She convinced Dorothy before her husband’s return that she was quite unworthy of his love, that he found her dull and unresponsive, that he was deeply disappointed in the issue of his marriage, and that she had deceived him most basely. You may say that she was a poor-spirited little thing, but she was very lonely, half-starved, and her love made her defenceless.

The appetite grows with what it feeds on, and Henrietta found that “educating Dorothy,” as she called it, was a very worthy and soul-satisfying occupation. Dorothy began to be frightened, not only of herself and of Henrietta but of everything around her, the house, the gardens, the surrounding country.

The house did its utmost to reassure her. When she lay awake in her bed at night the house would hush any noise that might disturb her, the furniture of her room, the hangings above her bed, the old chest of Cromwell’s time, the Queen Anne wardrobe, the warming-pan, the fire-irons that had the heads of grinning dogs, the yellow rug from Turkey, the Italian lamp beside her bed, they all crowded about her to tell her that they loved her. After a while she was conscious of their affection. Her bedroom and the parlour were for her the happiest places in the house, the only places indeed where she was not afraid.

She did not know that they were saying anything to her — she had not that kind of perception — but she felt reassured by them, and she would lock herself into her bedroom and sit there for hours thinking of her husband and wondering where he might be.

She became so painfully aware of Henrietta that she saw her when she wasn’t there. She saw her always just around a corner, behind a tree, on the other side of the rose-garden wall, peering over the sun-dial, hiding behind the curtain. She became a slave to her, doing all that she was told, going where she was bid. The house considered it a disgusting business.

One evening she broke into a flash of rebellion.

“Edmund loves me!” she cried, her little breasts panting, her small hands clenched. “And you hate me! Why do you hate me? I have never done you any harm.”

Henrietta looked at her severely.

“Hate! Hate! I have other things to do — and if he loves you, why does he stay so long away?”

Ah! why indeed? The house echoed the question, the very floors trembling with agitation. The stupid fool! Could he not see the treasure that he had? Did he think that such glories were to be picked up anywhere, any day, for the asking? The fire spat a piece of coal on to the hearthrug in contempt of human blindness.

When the time arrived at last for Edmund’s return, Dorothy was in a fitting condition of miserable humility. Edmund did not love her. He was bored with her too dreadfully. But indeed how could he love her? How could anybody love her, poor incompetent stupid thing that she was! And yet in her heart she knew that she was not so stupid. Did Edmund love her only a little she could jump all the barriers and be really rather brilliant — much more brilliant than Henrietta, who was certainly not brilliant at all. It was this terrible shyness that held her back, that and Henrietta’s assurance that Edmund did not love her. And indeed he did not seem to. It was but too likely that Henrietta was right.

As the time approached for Edmund’s return Henrietta was in a fine bustle and the house was in one too. The house smiled contemptuously at Henrietta’s parsimonious attempts to freshen it up. As though the house could not do that a great deal better than Henrietta ever could! Beeswaxing the floors, rubbing the furniture, shining up the silver — what were these little superficialities compared with the inner spiritual shake that the house gave itself when it wanted to? A sort of glow stole over windows, stairs and hall; a silver shine, a richer colour crept into the amber curtains, the cherry-coloured sofa; the faces in the portraits smiled, the fire-irons glittered, the mahogany shone again. Edmund had been away too long; the house would not let him go so easily next time.

The night before his return Dorothy did not sleep, but lay there, her eyes burning, her heart thickly beating, determining on the bold demonstrative person she would be. She would show Henrietta whether he loved her or no. But at the thought of Henrietta she shivered and drew the bed-clothes closely about her. She seemed to be standing beside the bed, illumined in the darkness by her own malignant fires, her yellow skin drawn tightly across the supercilious bones, her hands curving over some fresh mean economy, her ridiculous head-dress wagging like a mocking spirit above her small red-rimmed eyes. Yes, if only Henrietta were not there …

And the old chest murmured softly: “If only Henrietta were not there …”

The post-chaise came up to the door darkly like a ghost, for it had been snowing all day and the house was wrapped in silence. The animals on the box-tree hedge stood out fantastically against the silver-grey of the evening sky, and the snow fell like the scattering feathers of a heavenly geese-flock.

Edmund stepped into the hall and had Dorothy in his arms. At that moment they knew how truly they loved one another. He wondered as he flung his mind back in an instant’s retrospect over a phantasmagoria of Indian Moguls, Chinese rivers and the flaming sunsets of Arabia how it could be that he had not known that his life was here, here with his beloved house above him, his adored wife in his arms. His head up like a conqueror’s, he mounted the stairs, almost running into his wonderful parlour, to see once again the vase of flowers on the commode, the slender beautiful legs of his chair, the charming circles of his delicate ceiling. “How could I have stayed away?” he thought. “I will never leave this again!”

And that night, clasped in one another’s arms, they discovered one another again: shyness fled and heart was open to heart.

Nevertheless there remained Henrietta. Would you believe that one yellow-faced old maid could direct and dominate two normal healthy creatures? You know that she can, and is doing it somewhere or other at this very moment. And all for their good. No one ever did anything mean to anyone else yet save for their good, and so it will be until the end of this frail planet.

She told Edmund that she had been “educating Dorothy.” He would find her greatly improved; she feared that her worst fault was Hardness of Heart. Hardness of Heart! A sad defect!

During those snowy days Henrietta tried to show her brother that no one in the world truly loved him but herself. She had shown him this before and found the task easy; now it was more difficult. Dorothy’s shyness had been melted by this renewed contact; he could not doubt the evidence of his eyes and the many little unconscious things that spoke for her when she had no idea that they were speaking. Now they rode and walked together and he explained to her how he was, how that at a time his thoughts would be far, far away in Cairo or Ispahan and that she must not think that he did not care for her because he was dreaming, and she told him that when he had frightened her she had been stupid, but that now that he frightened her no longer she would soon be brilliant….

So Henrietta’s task was difficult.

And then in the spring, when the daffodils blew among the long grasses and the white violets were shining in the copse, a chance word of hers showed her the way. She hated Dorothy now because she suspected that Dorothy was planning to be rid of her. The fear that she would be turned out of the house never left her, and so, as fear always does, it drove her to baser things than belonged truly to her nature. She hinted that in Edmund’s absence Dorothy had found a neighbouring squire “good company.” And there had been perhaps another or two …

men

… At that word every frustrated instinct in Henrietta’s body turned in rebellion. She had not spoken before she believed it true. She had this imaginative gift, common to lonely persons. She was herself amazed at the effect of her words on Edmund. If she had ever doubted Edmund’s love for his wife (and she had not really doubted it) she was certain of the truth at last. Dorothy … Dorothy … His stout body trembled; his eyes were wounded; he turned from his sister as though he were ashamed both of her and of himself. After that there was no peace.

It was now that the house wondered most deeply at these strange human beings. The little things that upset them, the odd things that, at a moment, they would believe! Here, for instance, was their Edmund, whom they so truly admired, loving his Dorothy and entirely trusting her. Now, at a moment’s word from a sour-faced virgin, there is a fire of torment in his heart. He looks on every male with an eager restless suspicion. While attempting to appear natural he watches Dorothy at every corner and counters in his mind her lightest word.

“Why,” said the Italian lamp (which from its nationality knew everything about jealousy) to the Cromwellian chest, “I have never known so foolish a suspicion,” to which the Cromwellian chest replied in its best Roundhead manner: “Woman … the devil’s bait … always has been … always will be.”

He attacked his sister again and again. “With whom has she been? Has she ever stayed from the house a night? What friends has she made?”

To which Henrietta would indignantly reply: “Brother, brother. What are you about? This jealousy is most unbecoming. I have suggested no impropriety … only a little foolishness born of idleness.”

But it did not need time for Dorothy to discover that something was once again terribly amiss.

This strange husband of hers, so unable to express himself — she had but just won him back to her and now he was away again! With the courage born of their new relationship she asked him what was the trouble. And he told her: “Nothing…. Nothing! Nothing at all! Why should there be trouble? You are forever imagining …”

And then looked at her so strangely that she blushed and turned away as though she were indeed guilty. Guilty of what? She had not the least idea. But what she did know was that it was dear sister Henrietta who was responsible, and now, as May came with a flourish of birds and blossom and star-lit nights, she began to hate Henrietta with an intensity quite new to her gentle nature.

So, with jealousy and hatred, alive and burning, the house grew very sad. It hated these evil passions and had said long ago that they ruined with their silly bitterness every good house in the world. The little Chinese cabinet with the purple dragons on its doors said that in China everything was much simpler — you did not drag a situation to infinity as these sluggish English do, but simply called Death in to make a settlement — a much simpler way. In any case the house began to watch and to listen with the certainty that the moment was approaching when it must interfere.

Jealousy always heightens love, and so, if Edmund had loved Dorothy at the first, that cool, placid anticipation was nothing to the fevered passion which he now felt. When he was away from her he longed to have her in his arms, covering her with kisses and assuring her that he had never doubted her, and when he was with her he suspected her every look, her every word. And she, miserable now and angry and ill, could not tell what possessed him, her virtue being so secure that she could not conceive that anyone should suspect it. Only she was well aware that Henrietta was to blame.

These were also days of national anxiety and unrest; the days when Napoleon jumping from Elba alighted in France and for a moment promised to stay there. Warm, stuffy, breathless days, when everyone was waiting, the house with the rest.

On the staircase one summer evening Dorothy told Henrietta something of her mind. “If I had my way,” she ended in a shaking rage, “you would not be here plotting against us!”

So that was it! At last Henrietta’s suspicions were confirmed. In a short while Dorothy would have her out of the house; and then where would she go? The thought of her desolation, loneliness, loss of power, gripped her heart like a cat’s claws. The two little charity-girls had a time of it during those weeks and cried themselves to sleep in their attic that smelt of mice and apples, dreaming afterwards of strong lovers who beat their mistress into a pulp.

“Give me proof!” said Edmund, so bitterly tormented. “If it is true, give me proof!”

And Henrietta answered, sulkily: “I have never said anything,” and a window-sash fell on his fingers and bruised them just to teach him not to be so damnable a fool.

Nevertheless Henrietta had her proof. She had been cherishing it for a year at least. This was a letter written by a young Naval Lieutenant, cousin of a neighbouring squire, after he had danced with Dorothy at a Christmas ball. It was only a happy careless boy’s letter, he in love with Dorothy’s freshness, and because he was never more than a moment in any one place, careless of consequences. He said in his letter that she was the most beautiful of God’s creatures, that he would dream of her at sea, and the rest. Dorothy kept it. Henrietta stole it….

The day came when the coach brought the news of the Waterloo victory. On that summer evening rockets were breaking into the pale sky above the dark soft shelter of the wood; on Bendon Hill they were waiting for dark to light the bonfire. You could hear the shouting and singing from the high-road. The happiness at the victory and the sense that England was delivered blew some of the cobwebs from Edmund’s brain; he took Dorothy into the garden and there, behind the sun-dial, put his arms around her and kissed her.

Henrietta, watching the rockets strike the sky from her window, saw them, and fear, malice, loneliness, greed, hurt pride and jealousy all rose in her together. She turned over the letter in her drawer and vowed that her brother should not go to bed that night before he had heard of it.

“Look out! Look out!” cried her room to the rest of the house. “She will make mischief with the letter. We must prevent her …”

“She has done mischief enough,” chattered the clock from the hall. “She must be prevented …”

whistled the chimneys. Something must be done and at once. But how? By whom?

She is coming. She stands outside her door, glancing about the dim sunset passage. The picture of Ranelagh above her head wonders — shall it fall on her? The chairs along the passage watch her anxiously as she passes them. But what can they do? Each must obey his own laws.

Stop her! Stop her! Stop her! Edmund and Dorothy are coming in from the garden. The sun is sinking, the shadows lengthening across the lawn. One touch on his arm: “Brother, may I have a word?” and all the harm is done — misery and distress, unhappiness in the house, separation and loneliness. Stop her! Stop her!

All the house is quivering with agitation. The curtains are blowing, the chimneys are twisting, the tables and chairs are creaking: Stop her! Stop her! Stop her!

The order has gone out. She is standing now at the head of the staircase leading to the hall. She waits, her head bent a little, listening. Something seems to warn her. Edmund and Dorothy are coming in from the garden. The fireworks are beginning beyond the wood, and their gold and crimson showers are rivalling the stars.

Henrietta, nodding her head as though in certainty, has taken her step, some roughness in the wood has caught her heel (was it there a moment ago?), she stumbles, she clutches at the balustrade, but it is slippery and refuses to aid her. She is falling; her feet are away in air, her head strikes the board; she screams, once and then again; a rush, a flash of huddled colour, and her head has struck the stone of the hall floor.

How odd a silence followed! Dorothy and Edmund were still a moment lingering by the door looking back to the shower of golden stars, hearing the happy voices singing in the road. Henrietta was dead and so made no sound.

But all through the house there was a strange humming as though everything from top to bottom were whispering.

Everything in the house is moving save the woman at the bottom of the stairs.

All Soul’s Night (1933)