A Book of Ghosts: 37
Author: Various authors
Date: 1891-12-31T15:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Ghost Stories; Supernatural Fiction; Weird Fiction; Horror
Description: Thirteen tales to chill your blood.. ~ ~ ~ ~ Compiled by ECM..
Publisher: MobileRead.com
Rights: Public domain where copyright is “Life+70” or less.

A BOOK OF GHOSTS
– 37 –

THINGS THAT GO BUMP
IN THE NIGHT

MobileRead Edition
2023

Thirteen tales to chill your blood, by various authors.
Compiled by ECM.

Contents were originally published 1892 ~ 1943. This book is in the public domain where copyright is “Life+70” or less.

CONTENTS:

- The Yellow Wallpaper
– 1892
by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
(1860–1935)

- The Dead Smile
– 1899
by F. Marion Crawford
(1854–1909)

- The Fog
– 1908
by Morley Roberts
(1857–1942)

- Afterward
– 1910
by Edith Wharton
(1862–1937)

- Casting the Runes
– 1911
by M. R. James
(1862–1936)

- Transition
– 1913
by Algernon Blackwood
(1869–1951)

- The Three Sisters
– 1914
by W. W. Jacobs
(1863–1943)

- Unseen — Unfeared
– 1919
by “Francis Stevens”
(Getrude Barrows Bennet)
(1883–1948)

- Outside the House
– 1920
by Bessie Kyffin-Taylor
(?–1922)

- In the Woods
– 1921
by Amyas Northcote
(1864–1923)

- The Outcast
– 1922
by E. F. Benson
(1867–1940)

- The Inn
– 1932
by Guy Preston
(?–?)

- Between Sunset
and Moonrise
– 1943
by R. H. Malden
(1879–1951)

THE YELLOW WALLPAPER

Charlotte Perkins Gilman

1892

It is very seldom that mere ordinary people like John and myself secure ancestral halls for the summer.

A colonial mansion, a hereditary estate, I would say a haunted house, and reach the height of romantic felicity — but that would be asking too much of fate!

Still I will proudly declare that there is something queer about it.

Else, why should it be let so cheaply? And why have stood so long untenanted?

John laughs at me, of course, but one expects that in marriage.

John is practical in the extreme. He has no patience with faith, an intense horror of superstition, and he scoffs openly at any talk of things not to be felt and seen and put down in figures.

John is a physician, and perhaps — (I would not say it to a living soul, of course, but this is dead paper and a great relief to my mind) — perhaps that is one reason I do not get well faster.

You see, he does not believe I am sick!

And what can one do?

If a physician of high standing, and one’s own husband, assures friends and relatives that there is really nothing the matter with one but temporary nervous depression — a slight hysterical tendency — what is one to do?

My brother is also a physician, and also of high standing, and he says the same thing.

So I take phosphates or phosphites — whichever it is, and tonics, and journeys, and air, and exercise, and am absolutely forbidden to “work” until I am well again.

Personally, I disagree with their ideas.

Personally, I believe that congenial work, with excitement and change, would do me good.

But what is one to do?

I did write for a while in spite of them; but it does exhaust me a good deal — having to be so sly about it, or else meet with heavy opposition.

I sometimes fancy that in my condition if I had less opposition and more society and stimulus — but John says the very worst thing I can do is to think about my condition, and I confess it always makes me feel bad.

So I will let it alone and talk about the house.

The most beautiful place! It is quite alone, standing well back from the road, quite three miles from the village. It makes me think of English places that you read about, for there are hedges and walls and gates that lock, and lots of separate little houses for the gardeners and people.

There is a delicious garden! I never saw such a garden — large and shady, full of box-bordered paths, and lined with long grape-covered arbours with seats under them.

There were greenhouses, too, but they are all broken now.

There was some legal trouble, I believe, something about the heirs and co-heirs; anyhow, the place has been empty for years.

That spoils my ghostliness, I am afraid; but I don’t care — there is something strange about the house — I can feel it.

I even said so to John one moonlight evening, but he said what I felt was a draught, and shut the window.

I get unreasonably angry with John sometimes. I’m sure I never used to be so sensitive. I think it is due to this nervous condition.

But John says if I feel so I shall neglect proper self-control; so I take pains to control myself — before him, at least — and that makes me very tired.

I don’t like our room a bit. I wanted one downstairs that opened on the piazza and had roses all over the window, and such pretty old-fashioned chintz hangings! but John would not hear of it.

He said there was only one window and not room for two beds, and no near room for him if he took another.

He is very careful and loving, and hardly lets me stir without special direction.

I have a schedule prescription for each hour in the day; he takes all care from me, and so I feel basely ungrateful not to value it more.

He said we came here solely on my account, that I was to have perfect rest and all the air I could get. “Your exercise depends on your strength, my dear,” said he, “and your food somewhat on your appetite; but air you can absorb all the time.” So we took the nursery, at the top of the house.

It is a big, airy room, the whole floor nearly, with windows that look all ways, and air and sunshine galore. It was nursery first and then playground and gymnasium, I should judge; for the windows are barred for little children, and there are rings and things in the walls.

The paint and paper look as if a boys’ school had used it. It is stripped off — the paper — in great patches all around the head of my bed, about as far as I can reach, and in a great place on the other side of the room low down. I never saw a worse paper in my life.

One of those sprawling flamboyant patterns committing every artistic sin.

It is dull enough to confuse the eye in following, pronounced enough to constantly irritate, and provoke study, and when you follow the lame, uncertain curves for a little distance they suddenly commit suicide — plunge off at outrageous angles, destroy themselves in unheard-of contradictions.

The colour is repellent, almost revolting; a smouldering, unclean yellow, strangely faded by the slow-turning sunlight.

It is a dull yet lurid orange in some places, a sickly sulphur tint in others.

No wonder the children hated it! I should hate it myself if I had to live in this room long.

There comes John, and I must put this away — he hates to have me write a word.

•   •   •

We have been here two weeks, and I haven’t felt like writing before, since that first day.

I am sitting by the window now, up in this atrocious nursery, and there is nothing to hinder my writing as much as I please, save lack of strength.

John is away all day, and even some nights when his cases are serious.

I am glad my case is not serious!

But these nervous troubles are dreadfully depressing.

John does not know how much I really suffer. He knows there is no reason to suffer, and that satisfies him.

Of course it is only nervousness. It does weigh on me so not to do my duty in any way!

I meant to be such a help to John, such a real rest and comfort, and here I am a comparative burden already!

Nobody would believe what an effort it is to do what little I am able — to dress and entertain, and order things.

It is fortunate Mary is so good with the baby. Such a dear baby!

And yet I cannot be with him, it makes me so nervous.

I suppose John never was nervous in his life. He laughs at me so about this wallpaper!

At first he meant to repaper the room, but afterwards he said that I was letting it get the better of me, and that nothing was worse for a nervous patient than to give way to such fancies.

He said that after the wallpaper was changed it would be the heavy bedstead, and then the barred windows, and then that gate at the head of the stairs, and so on.

“You know the place is doing you good,” he said, “and really, dear, I don’t care to renovate the house just for a three months’ rental.”

“Then do let us go downstairs,” I said, “there are such pretty rooms there.”

Then he took me in his arms and called me a blessed little goose, and said he would go down cellar if I wished, and have it whitewashed into the bargain.

But he is right enough about the beds and windows and things.

It is as airy and comfortable a room as anyone need wish, and, of course, I would not be so silly as to make him uncomfortable just for a whim.

I’m really getting quite fond of the big room, all but that horrid paper.

Out of one window I can see the garden, those mysterious deep-shaded arbours, the riotous old-fashioned flowers, and bushes and gnarly trees.

Out of another I get a lovely view of the bay and a little private wharf belonging to the estate. There is a beautiful shaded lane that runs down there from the house. I always fancy I see people walking in these numerous paths and arbours, but John has cautioned me not to give way to fancy in the least. He says that with my imaginative power and habit of story-making a nervous weakness like mine is sure to lead to all manner of excited fancies, and that I ought to use my will and good sense to check the tendency. So I try.

I think sometimes that if I were only well enough to write a little it would relieve the press of ideas and rest me.

But I find I get pretty tired when I try.

It is so discouraging not to have any advice and companionship about my work. When I get really well John says we will ask Cousin Henry and Julia down for a long visit; but he says he would as soon put fireworks in my pillowcase as to let me have those stimulating people about now.

I wish I could get well faster.

But I must not think about that. This paper looks to me as if it knew what a vicious influence it had!

There is a recurrent spot where the pattern lolls like a broken neck and two bulbous eyes stare at you upside-down.

I get positively angry with the impertinence of it and the everlastingness. Up and down and sideways they crawl, and those absurd, unblinking eyes are everywhere. There is one place where two breadths didn’t match, and the eyes go all up and down the line, one a little higher than the other.

I never saw so much expression in an inanimate thing before, and we all know how much expression they have! I used to lie awake as a child and get more entertainment and terror out of blank walls and plain furniture than most children could find in a toy-store.

I remember what a kindly wink the knobs of our big old bureau used to have, and there was one chair that always seemed like a strong friend.

I used to feel that if any of the other things looked too fierce I could always hop into that chair and be safe.

The furniture in this room is no worse than inharmonious, however, for we had to bring it all from downstairs. I suppose when this was used as a playroom they had to take the nursery things out, and no wonder! I never saw such ravages as the children have made here.

The wallpaper, as I said before, is torn off in spots, and it sticketh closer than a brother — they must have had perseverance as well as hatred.

Then the floor is scratched and gouged and splintered, the plaster itself is dug out here and there, and this great heavy bed, which is all we found in the room, looks as if it had been through the wars.

But I don’t mind it a bit — only the paper.

There comes John’s sister. Such a dear girl as she is, and so careful of me! I must not let her find me writing.

She is a perfect, and enthusiastic housekeeper, and hopes for no better profession. I verily believe she thinks it is the writing which made me sick!

But I can write when she is out, and see her a long way off from these windows.

There is one that commands the road, a lovely, shaded, winding road, and one that just looks off over the country. A lovely country, too, full of great elms and velvet meadows.

This wallpaper has a kind of sub-pattern in a different shade, a particularly irritating one, for you can only see it in certain lights, and not clearly then.

But in the places where it isn’t faded, and where the sun is just so, I can see a strange, provoking, formless sort of figure, that seems to sulk about behind that silly and conspicuous front design.

There’s sister on the stairs!

•   •   •

Well, the Fourth of July is over! The people are gone and I am tired out. John thought it might do me good to see a little company, so we just had mother and Nellie and the children down for a week.

Of course I didn’t do a thing. Jennie sees to everything now.

But it tired me all the same.

John says if I don’t pick up faster he shall send me to Weir Mitchell in the fall.

But I don’t want to go there at all. I had a friend who was in his hands once, and she says he is just like John and my brother, only more so!

Besides, it is such an undertaking to go so far.

I don’t feel as if it was worth while to turn my hand over for anything, and I’m getting dreadfully fretful and querulous.

I cry at nothing, and cry most of the time.

Of course I don’t when John is here, or anybody else, but when I am alone.

And I am alone a good deal just now. John is kept in town very often by serious cases, and Jennie is good and lets me alone when I want her to.

So I walk a little in the garden or down that lovely lane, sit on the porch under the roses, and lie down up here a good deal.

I’m getting really fond of the room in spite of the wallpaper. Perhaps because of the wallpaper.

It dwells in my mind so!

I lie here on this great immovable bed — it is nailed down, I believe — and follow that pattern about by the hour. It is as good as gymnastics, I assure you. I start, we’ll say, at the bottom, down in the corner over there where it has not been touched, and I determine for the thousandth time that I will follow that pointless pattern to some sort of a conclusion.

I know a little of the principle of design, and I know this thing was not arranged on any laws of radiation, or alternation, or repetition, or symmetry, or anything else that I ever heard of.

It is repeated, of course, by the breadths, but not otherwise.

Looked at in one way each breadth stands alone, the bloated curves and flourishes — a kind of “debased Romanesque” with delirium tremens — go waddling up and down in isolated columns of fatuity.

But, on the other hand, they connect diagonally, and the sprawling outlines run off in great slanting waves of optic horror, like a lot of wallowing seaweeds in full chase.

The whole thing goes horizontally, too, at least it seems so, and I exhaust myself in trying to distinguish the order of its going in that direction.

They have used a horizontal breadth for a frieze, and that adds wonderfully to the confusion.

There is one end of the room where it is almost intact, and there, when the cross-lights fade and the low sun shines directly upon it, I can almost fancy radiation after all — the interminable grotesques seem to form around a common centre and rush off in headlong plunges of equal distraction.

It makes me tired to follow it. I will take a nap, I guess.

•   •   •

I don’t know why I should write this.

I don’t want to.

I don’t feel able.

And I know John would think it absurd. But I must say what I feel and think in some way — it is such a relief!

But the effort is getting to be greater than the relief.

Half the time now I am awfully lazy, and lie down ever so much.

John says I mustn’t lose my strength, and has me take cod-liver oil and lots of tonics and things, to say nothing of ale and wine and rare meat.

Dear John! He loves me very dearly, and hates to have me sick. I tried to have a real earnest reasonable talk with him the other day, and tell him how I wish he would let me go and make a visit to Cousin Henry and Julia.

But he said I wasn’t able to go, nor able to stand it after I got there; and I did not make out a very good case for myself, for I was crying before I had finished.

It is getting to be a great effort for me to think straight. Just this nervous weakness, I suppose.

And dear John gathered me up in his arms, and just carried me upstairs and laid me on the bed, and sat by me and read to me till it tired my head.

He said I was his darling and his comfort and all he had, and that I must take care of myself for his sake, and keep well.

He says no one but myself can help me out of it, that I must use my will and self-control and not let any silly fancies run away with me.

There’s one comfort, the baby is well and happy, and does not have to occupy this nursery with the horrid wallpaper.

If we had not used it that blessed child would have! What a fortunate escape! Why, I wouldn’t have a child of mine, an impressionable little thing, live in such a room for worlds.

I never thought of it before, but it is lucky that John kept me here after all. I can stand it so much easier than a baby, you see.

Of course I never mention it to them any more — I am too wise — but I keep watch of it all the same.

There are things in that paper that nobody knows but me, or ever will.

Behind that outside pattern the dim shapes get clearer every day.

It is always the same shape, only very numerous.

And it is like a woman stooping down and creeping about behind that pattern. I don’t like it a bit. I wonder — I begin to think — I wish John would take me away from here!

•   •   •

It is so hard to talk with John about my case, because he is so wise, and because he loves me so.

But I tried it last night.

It was moonlight. The moon shines in all around, just as the sun does.

I hate to see it sometimes, it creeps so slowly, and always comes in by one window or another.

John was asleep and I hated to waken him, so I kept still and watched the moonlight on that undulating wallpaper till I felt creepy.

The faint figure behind seemed to shake the pattern, just as if she wanted to get out.

I got up softly and went to feel and see if the paper did move, and when I came back John was awake.

“What is it, little girl?” he said. “Don’t go walking about like that — you’ll get cold.”

I thought it was a good time to talk, so I told him that I really was not gaining here, and that I wished he would take me away.

“Why darling!” said he, “our lease will be up in three weeks, and I can’t see how to leave before.

“The repairs are not done at home, and I cannot possibly leave town just now. Of course if you were in any danger I could and would, but you really are better, dear, whether you can see it or not. I am a doctor, dear, and I know. You are gaining flesh and colour, your appetite is better. I feel really much easier about you.”

“I don’t weigh a bit more,” said I, “nor as much; and my appetite may be better in the evening, when you are here, but it is worse in the morning when you are away.”

“Bless her little heart!” said he with a big hug; “she shall be as sick as she pleases! But now let’s improve the shining hours by going to sleep, and talk about it in the morning!”

“And you won’t go away?” I asked gloomily.

“Why, how can I, dear? It is only three weeks more and then we will take a nice little trip of a few days while Jennie is getting the house ready. Really, dear, you are better!”

“Better in body perhaps” — I began, and stopped short, for he sat up straight and looked at me with such a stern, reproachful look that I could not say another word.

“My darling,” said he, “I beg of you, for my sake and for our child’s sake, as well as for your own, that you will never for one instant let that idea enter your mind! There is nothing so dangerous, so fascinating, to a temperament like yours. It is a false and foolish fancy. Can you not trust me as a physician when I tell you so?”

So of course I said no more on that score, and we went to sleep before long. He thought I was asleep first, but I wasn’t — I lay there for hours trying to decide whether that front pattern and the back pattern really did move together or separately.

On a pattern like this, by daylight, there is a lack of sequence, a defiance of law, that is a constant irritant to a normal mind.

The colour is hideous enough, and unreliable enough, and infuriating enough, but the pattern is torturing.

You think you have mastered it, but just as you get well under way in following, it turns a back somersault and there you are. It slaps you in the face, knocks you down, and tramples upon you. It is like a bad dream.

The outside pattern is a florid arabesque, reminding one of a fungus. If you can imagine a toadstool in joints, an interminable string of toadstools, budding and sprouting in endless convolutions — why, that is something like it.

That is, sometimes!

There is one marked peculiarity about this paper, a thing nobody seems to notice but myself, and that is that it changes as the light changes.

When the sun shoots in through the east window — I always watch for that first long, straight ray — it changes so quickly that I never can quite believe it.

That is why I watch it always.

By moonlight — the moon shines in all night when there is a moon — I wouldn’t know it was the same paper.

At night in any kind of light, in twilight, candlelight, lamplight, and worst of all by moonlight, it becomes bars! The outside pattern I mean, and the woman behind it is as plain as can be.

I didn’t realize for a long time what the thing was that showed behind — that dim sub-pattern — but now I am quite sure it is a woman.

By daylight she is subdued, quiet. I fancy it is the pattern that keeps her so still. It is so puzzling. It keeps me quiet by the hour.

I lie down ever so much now. John says it is good for me, and to sleep all I can.

Indeed, he started the habit by making me lie down for an hour after each meal.

It is a very bad habit, I am convinced, for, you see, I don’t sleep.

And that cultivates deceit, for I don’t tell them I’m awake — oh, no!

The fact is, I am getting a little afraid of John.

He seems very queer sometimes, and even Jennie has an inexplicable look.

It strikes me occasionally, just as a scientific hypothesis, that perhaps it is the paper!

I have watched John when he did not know I was looking, and come into the room suddenly on the most innocent excuses, and I’ve caught him several times looking at the paper! And Jennie too. I caught Jennie with her hand on it once.

She didn’t know I was in the room, and when I asked her in a quiet, a very quiet voice, with the most restrained manner possible, what she was doing with the paper she turned around as if she had been caught stealing, and looked quite angry — asked me why I should frighten her so!

Then she said that the paper stained everything it touched, that she had found yellow smooches on all my clothes and John’s, and she wished we would be more careful!

Did not that sound innocent? But I know she was studying that pattern, and I am determined that nobody shall find it out but myself!

•   •   •

Life is very much more exciting now than it used to be. You see I have something more to expect, to look forward to, to watch. I really do eat better, and am more quiet than I was.

John is so pleased to see me improve! He laughed a little the other day, and said I seemed to be flourishing in spite of my wallpaper.

I turned it off with a laugh. I had no intention of telling him it was because of the wallpaper — he would make fun of me. He might even want to take me away.

I don’t want to leave now until I have found it out. There is a week more, and I think that will be enough.

•   •   •

I’m feeling ever so much better! I don’t sleep much at night, for it is so interesting to watch developments; but I sleep a good deal in the daytime.

In the daytime it is tiresome and perplexing.

There are always new shoots on the fungus, and new shades of yellow all over it. I cannot keep count of them, though I have tried conscientiously.

It is the strangest yellow, that wallpaper! It makes me think of all the yellow things I ever saw — not beautiful ones like buttercups, but old foul, bad yellow things.

But there is something else about that paper — the smell! I noticed it the moment we came into the room, but with so much air and sun it was not bad. Now we have had a week of fog and rain, and whether the windows are open or not, the smell is here.

It creeps all over the house.

I find it hovering in the dining-room, skulking in the parlour, hiding in the hall, lying in wait for me on the stairs.

It gets into my hair.

Even when I go to ride, if I turn my head suddenly and surprise it — there is that smell!

Such a peculiar odour, too! I have spent hours in trying to analyse it, to find what it smelled like.

It is not bad — at first, and very gentle, but quite the subtlest, most enduring odour I ever met.

In this damp weather it is awful. I wake up in the night and find it hanging over me.

It used to disturb me at first. I thought seriously of burning the house — to reach the smell.

But now I am used to it. The only thing I can think of that it is like is the colour of the paper! A yellow smell.

There is a very funny mark on this wall, low down, near the mop-board. A streak that runs round the room. It goes behind every piece of furniture, except the bed, a long, straight, even smooch, as if it had been rubbed over and over.

I wonder how it was done and who did it, and what they did it for. Round and round and round — round and round and round — it makes me dizzy!

•   •   •

I really have discovered something at last.

Through watching so much at night, when it changes so, I have finally found out.

The front pattern does move — and no wonder! The woman behind shakes it!

Sometimes I think there are a great many women behind, and sometimes only one, and she crawls around fast, and her crawling shakes it all over.

Then in the very bright spots she keeps still, and in the very shady spots she just takes hold of the bars and shakes them hard.

And she is all the time trying to climb through. But nobody could climb through that pattern — it strangles so; I think that is why it has so many heads.

They get through, and then the pattern strangles them off and turns them upside-down, and makes their eyes white!

If those heads were covered or taken off it would not be half so bad.

•   •   •

I think that woman gets out in the daytime!

And I’ll tell you why — privately — I’ve seen her!

I can see her out of every one of my windows!

It is the same woman, I know, for she is always creeping, and most women do not creep by daylight.

I see her on that long shaded lane, creeping up and down. I see her in those dark grape arbours, creeping all around the garden.

I see her on that long road under the trees, creeping along, and when a carriage comes she hides under the blackberry vines.

I don’t blame her a bit. It must be very humiliating to be caught creeping by daylight!

I always lock the door when I creep by daylight. I can’t do it at night, for I know John would suspect something at once.

And John is so queer now, that I don’t want to irritate him. I wish he would take another room! Besides, I don’t want anybody to get that woman out at night but myself.

I often wonder if I could see her out of all the windows at once.

But, turn as fast as I can, I can only see out of one at one time.

And though I always see her she may be able to creep faster than I can turn!

I have watched her sometimes away off in the open country, creeping as fast as a cloud shadow in a high wind.

•   •   •

If only that top pattern could be gotten off from the under one! I mean to try it, little by little.

I have found out another funny thing, but I shan’t tell it this time! It does not do to trust people too much.

There are only two more days to get this paper off, and I believe John is beginning to notice. I don’t like the look in his eyes.

And I heard him ask Jennie a lot of professional questions about me. She had a very good report to give.

She said I slept a good deal in the daytime.

John knows I don’t sleep very well at night, for all I’m so quiet!

He asked me all sorts of questions, too, and pretended to be very loving and kind.

As if I couldn’t see through him!

Still, I don’t wonder he acts so, sleeping under this paper for three months.

It only interests me, but I feel sure John and Jennie are secretly affected by it.

•   •   •

Hurrah! This is the last day, but it is enough. John is to stay in town over night, and won’t be out until this evening.

Jennie wanted to sleep with me — the sly thing! but I told her I should undoubtedly rest better for a night all alone.

That was clever, for really I wasn’t alone a bit! As soon as it was moonlight, and that poor thing began to crawl and shake the pattern, I got up and ran to help her.

I pulled and she shook, I shook and she pulled, and before morning we had peeled off yards of that paper.

A strip about as high as my head and half around the room.

And then when the sun came and that awful pattern began to laugh at me I declared I would finish it today!

We go away tomorrow, and they are moving all my furniture down again to leave things as they were before.

Jennie looked at the wall in amazement, but I told her merrily that I did it out of pure spite at the vicious thing.

She laughed and said she wouldn’t mind doing it herself, but I must not get tired.

How she betrayed herself that time!

But I am here, and no person touches this paper but me — not alive!

She tried to get me out of the room — it was too patent! But I said it was so quiet and empty and clean now that I believed I would lie down again and sleep all I could; and not to wake me even for dinner — I would call when I woke.

So now she is gone, and the servants are gone, and the things are gone, and there is nothing left but that great bedstead nailed down, with the canvas mattress we found on it.

We shall sleep downstairs tonight, and take the boat home tomorrow.

I quite enjoy the room, now it is bare again.

How those children did tear about here!

This bedstead is fairly gnawed!

But I must get to work.

I have locked the door and thrown the key down into the front path.

I don’t want to go out, and I don’t want to have anybody come in, till John comes.

I want to astonish him.

I’ve got a rope up here that even Jennie did not find. If that woman does get out, and tries to get away, I can tie her!

But I forgot I could not reach far without anything to stand on!

This bed will not move!

I tried to lift and push it until I was lame, and then I got so angry I bit off a little piece at one corner — but it hurt my teeth.

Then I peeled off all the paper I could reach standing on the floor. It sticks horribly and the pattern just enjoys it! All those strangled heads and bulbous eyes and waddling fungus growths just shriek with derision!

I am getting angry enough to do something desperate. To jump out of the window would be admirable exercise, but the bars are too strong even to try.

Besides I wouldn’t do it. Of course not. I know well enough that a step like that is improper and might be misconstrued.

I don’t like to look out of the windows even — there are so many of those creeping women, and they creep so fast.

I wonder if they all come out of that wallpaper as I did?

But I am securely fastened now by my well-hidden rope — you don’t get me out in the road there!

I suppose I shall have to get back behind the pattern when it comes night, and that is hard!

It is so pleasant to be out in this great room and creep around as I please!

I don’t want to go outside. I won’t, even if Jennie asks me to.

For outside you have to creep on the ground, and everything is green instead of yellow.

But here I can creep smoothly on the floor, and my shoulder just fits in that long smooch around the wall, so I cannot lose my way.

Why, there’s John at the door!

It is no use, young man, you can’t open it!

How he does call and pound!

Now he’s crying for an axe.

It would be a shame to break down that beautiful door!

“John dear!” said I in the gentlest voice, “the key is down by the front steps, under a plantain leaf!”

That silenced him for a few moments.

Then he said — very quietly indeed, “Open the door, my darling!”

“I can’t,” said I. “The key is down by the front door under a plantain leaf!”

And then I said it again, several times, very gently and slowly, and said it so often that he had to go and see, and he got it, of course, and came in. He stopped short by the door.

“What is the matter?” he cried. “For God’s sake, what are you doing!”

I kept on creeping just the same, but I looked at him over my shoulder.

“I’ve got out at last,” said I, “in spite of you and Jane! And I’ve pulled off most of the paper, so you can’t put me back!”

Now why should that man have fainted? But he did, and right across my path by the wall, so that I had to creep over him every time!

“New England Magazine”, Jan. 1892

THE DEAD SMILE

F. Marion Crawford

1899

I

Sir Hugh Ockram smiled as he sat by the open window of his study, in the late August afternoon; and just then a curiously yellow cloud obscured the low sun, and the clear summer light turned lurid, as if it had been suddenly poisoned and polluted by the foul vapours of a plague. Sir Hugh’s face seemed, at best, to be made of fine parchment drawn skin-tight over a wooden mask, in which two eyes were sunk out of sight, and peered from far within through crevices under the slanting, wrinkled lids, alive and watchful like two toads in their holes, side by side and exactly alike. But as the light changed, then a little yellow glare flashed in each. Nurse Macdonald said once that when Sir Hugh smiled he saw the faces of two women in hell — two dead women he had betrayed. (Nurse Macdonald was a hundred years old.) And the smile widened, stretching the pale lips across the discoloured teeth in an expression of profound self-satisfaction, blended with the most unforgiving hatred and contempt for the human doll. The hideous disease of which he was dying had touched his brain. His son stood beside him, tall, white and delicate as an angel in a primitive picture; and though there was deep distress in his violet eyes as he looked at his father’s face, he felt the shadow of that sickening smile stealing across his own lips and parting them and drawing them against his will. And it was like a bad dream, for he tried not to smile and smiled the more. Beside him, strangely like him in her wan, angelic beauty, with the same shadowy golden hair, the same sad violet eyes, the same luminously pale face, Evelyn Warburton rested one hand upon his arm. And as she looked into her uncle’s eyes, and could not turn her own away, she knew that the deathly smile was hovering on her own red lips, drawing them tightly across her little teeth, while two bright tears ran down her cheeks to her mouth, and dropped from the upper to the lower lip while she smiled — and the smile was like the shadow of death and the seal of damnation upon her pure, young face.

“Of course,” said Sir Hugh very slowly, and still looking out at the trees, “if you have made up your mind to be married, I cannot hinder you, and I don’t suppose you attach the smallest importance to my consent—”

“Father!” exclaimed Gabriel reproachfully.

“No; I do not deceive myself,” continued the old man, smiling terribly. “You will marry when I am dead, though there is a very good reason why you had better not — why you had better not,” he repeated very emphatically, and he slowly turned his toad eyes upon the lovers.

“What reason?” asked Evelyn in a frightened voice.

“Never mind the reason, my dear. You will marry just as if it did not exist.” There was a long pause. “Two gone,” he said, his voice lowering strangely, “and two more will be four — all together — for ever and ever, burning, burning, burning bright.”

At the last words his head sank slowly back, and the little glare of the toad eyes disappeared under the swollen lids; and the lurid cloud passed from the westering sun, so that the earth was green again and the light pure. Sir Hugh had fallen asleep, as he often did in his last illness, even while speaking.

Gabriel Ockram drew Evelyn away, and from the study they went out into the dim hall, softly closing the door behind them, and each audibly drew breath, as though some sudden danger had been passed. They laid their hands each in the other’s, and their strangely-like eyes met in a long look, in which love and perfect understanding were darkened by the secret terror of an unknown thing. Their pale faces reflected each other’s fear.

“It is his secret,” said Evelyn at last. “He will never tell us what it is.”

“If he dies with it,” answered Gabriel, “let it be on his own head!”

“On his head!” echoed the dim hall. It was a strange echo, and some were frightened by it, for they said that if it were a real echo it should repeat everything and not give back a phrase here and there, now speaking, now silent. But Nurse Macdonald said that the great hall would never echo a prayer when an Ockram was to die, though it would give back curses ten for one.

“On his head!” it repeated quite softly, and Evelyn started and looked round.

“It is only the echo,” said Gabriel, leading her away.

They went out into the late afternoon light, and sat upon a stone seat behind the chapel, which was built across the end of the east wing. It was very still, not a breath stirred, and there was no sound near them. Only far off in the park a song-bird was whistling the high prelude to the evening chorus.

“It is very lonely here,” said Evelyn, taking Gabriel’s hand nervously, and speaking as if she dreaded to disturb the silence. “If it were dark, I should be afraid.”

“Of what? Of me?” Gabriel’s sad eyes turned to her.

“Oh no! How could I be afraid of you? But of the old Ockrams — they say they are just under our feet here in the north vault outside the chapel, all in their shrouds, with no coffins, as they used to bury them.”

“As they always will — as they will bury my father, and me. They say an Ockram will not lie in a coffin.”

“But it cannot be true — these are fairy tales — ghost stories!” Evelyn nestled nearer to her companion, grasping his hand more tightly, and the sun began to go down.

“Of course. But there is the story of old Sir Vernon, who was beheaded for treason under James II. The family brought his body back from the scaffold in an iron coffin with heavy locks, and they put it in the north vault. But ever afterwards, whenever the vault was opened to bury another of the family, they found the coffin wide open, and the body standing upright against the wall, and the head rolled away in a corner, smiling at it.”

“As Uncle Hugh smiles?” Evelyn shivered.

“Yes, I suppose so,” answered Gabriel, thoughtfully. “Of course I never saw it, and the vault has not been opened for thirty years — none of us have died since then.”

“And if — if Uncle Hugh dies — shall you—” Evelyn stopped, and her beautiful thin face was quite white.

“Yes. I shall see him laid there too — with his secret, whatever it is.” Gabriel sighed and pressed the girl’s little hand.

“I do not like to think of it,” she said unsteadily. “O Gabriel, what can the secret be? He said we had better not marry — not that he forbade it — but he said it so strangely, and he smiled — ugh!” Her small white teeth chattered with fear, and she looked over her shoulder while drawing still closer to Gabriel. “And, somehow, I felt it in my own face—”

“So did I,” answered Gabriel in a low, nervous voice. “Nurse Macdonald—” He stopped abruptly.

“What? What did she say?”

“Oh — nothing. She has told me things — they would frighten you, dear. Come, it is growing chilly.” He rose, but Evelyn held his hand in both of hers, still sitting and looking up into his face.

“But we shall be married, just the same — Gabriel! Say that we shall!”

“Of course, darling — of course. But while my father is so very ill, it is impossible—”

“O Gabriel, Gabriel, dear! I wish we were married now!” cried Evelyn in sudden distress. “I know that something will prevent it and keep us apart.”

“Nothing shall!”

“Nothing?”

“Nothing human,” said Gabriel Ockram, as she drew him down to her.

And their faces, that were so strangely alike, met and touched — and Gabriel knew that the kiss had a marvellous savour of evil, but on Evelyn’s lips it was like the cool breath of a sweet and mortal fear. And neither of them understood, for they were innocent and young. Yet she drew him to her by her lightest touch, as a sensitive plant shivers and waves its thin leaves, and bends and closes softly upon what it wants; and he let himself be drawn to her willingly, as he would if her touch had been deadly and poisonous; for she strangely loved that half voluptuous breath of fear, and he passionately desired the nameless evil something that lurked in her maiden lips.

“It is as if we loved in a strange dream,” she said.

“I fear the waking,” he murmured.

“We shall not wake, dear — when the dream is over it will have already turned into death, so softly that we shall not know it. But until then—”

She paused, and her eyes sought his, and their faces slowly came nearer. It was as if they had thoughts in their red lips that foresaw and foreknew the deep kiss of each other.

“Until then—” she said again, very low, and her mouth was nearer to his.

“Dream — till then,” murmured his breath.

II

Nurse Macdonald was a hundred years old. She used to sleep sitting all bent together in a great old leathern armchair with wings, her feet in a bag footstool lined with sheepskin, and many warm blankets wrapped about her, even in summer. Beside her a little lamp always burned at night by an old silver cup, in which there was something to drink.

Her face was very wrinkled, but the wrinkles were so small and fine and near together that they made shadows instead of lines. Two thin locks of hair, that was turning from white to a smoky yellow again, were drawn over her temples from under her starched white cap. Every now and then she woke, and her eyelids were drawn up in tiny folds like little pink silk curtains, and her queer blue eyes looked straight before her through doors and walls and worlds to a far place beyond. Then she slept again, and her hands lay one upon the other on the edge of the blanket; the thumbs had grown longer than the fingers with age, and the joints shone in the low lamplight like polished crab-apples.

It was nearly one o’clock in the night, and the summer breeze was blowing the ivy branch against the panes of the window with a hushing caress. In the small room beyond, with the door ajar, the girl-maid who took care of Nurse Macdonald was fast asleep. All was very quiet. The old woman breathed regularly, and her indrawn lips trembled each time as the breath went out, and her eyes were shut.

But outside the closed window there was a face, and violet eyes were looking steadily at the ancient sleeper, for it was like the face of Evelyn Warburton, though there were eighty feet from the sill of the window to the foot of the tower. Yet the cheeks were thinner than Evelyn’s, and as white as a gleam, and the eyes stared, and the lips were not red with life; they were dead, and painted with new blood.

Slowly Nurse Macdonald’s wrinkled eyelids folded themselves back, and she looked straight at the face at the window while one might count ten.

“Is it time?” she asked in her little old, faraway voice.

While she looked the face at the window changed, for the eyes opened wider and wider till the white glared all round the bright violet, and the bloody lips opened over gleaming teeth, and stretched and widened and stretched again, and the shadowy golden hair rose and streamed against the window in the night breeze. And in answer to Nurse Macdonald’s question came the sound that freezes the living flesh.

That low-moaning voice that rises suddenly, like the scream of storm, from a moan to a wail, from a wail to a howl, from a howl to the fear-shriek of the tortured dead — he who has heard knows, and he can bear witness that the cry of the banshee is an evil cry to hear alone in the deep night. When it was over and the face was gone, Nurse Macdonald shook a little in her great chair, and still she looked at the black square of the window, but there was nothing more there, nothing but the night, and the whispering ivy branch. She turned her head to the door that was ajar, and there stood the girl in her white gown, her teeth chattering with fright.

“It is time, child,” said Nurse Macdonald. “I must go to him, for it is the end.”

She rose slowly, leaning her withered hands upon the arms of the chair, and the girl brought her a woollen gown and a great mantle, and her crutch-stick, and made her ready. But very often the girl looked at the window and was unjointed with fear, and often Nurse Macdonald shook her head and said words which the maid could not understand.

“It was like the face of Miss Evelyn,” said the girl at last, trembling.

But the ancient woman looked up sharply and angrily, and her queer blue eyes glared. She held herself by the arm of the great chair with her left hand, and lifted up her crutch-stick to strike the maid with all her might. But she did not.

“You are a good girl,” she said, “but you are a fool. Pray for wit, child, pray for wit — or else find service in another house than Ockram Hall. Bring the lamp and help me under my left arm.”

The crutch-stick clacked on the wooden floor, and the low heels of the woman’s slippers clappered after her in slow triplets, as Nurse Macdonald got toward the door. And down the stairs each step she took was a labour in itself, and by the clacking noise the waking servants knew that she was coming, very long before they saw her.

No one was sleeping now, and there were lights, and whisperings, and pale faces in the corridors near Sir Hugh’s bedroom, and now someone went in, and now someone came out, but everyone made way for Nurse Macdonald, who had nursed Sir Hugh’s father more than eighty years ago.

The light was soft and clear in the room. There stood Gabriel Ockram by his father’s bedside, and there knelt Evelyn Warburton, her hair lying like a golden shadow down her shoulders, and her hands clasped nervously together. And opposite Gabriel, a nurse was trying to make Sir Hugh drink. But he would not, and though his lips were parted, his teeth were set. He was very, very thin and yellow now, and his eyes caught the light sideways and were as yellow coals.

“Do not torment him,” said Nurse Macdonald to the woman who held the cup. “Let me speak to him, for his hour is come.”

“Let her speak to him,” said Gabriel in a dull voice.

So the ancient woman leaned to the pillow and laid the feather-weight of her withered hand, that was like a brown moth, upon Sir Hugh’s yellow fingers, and she spoke to him earnestly, while only Gabriel and Evelyn were left in the room to hear.

“Hugh Ockram,” she said, “this is the end of your life; and as I saw you born, and saw your father born before you, I am come to see you die. Hugh Ockram, will you tell me the truth?”

The dying man recognised the little faraway voice he had known all his life, and he very slowly turned his yellow face to Nurse Macdonald; but he said nothing. Then she spoke again.

“Hugh Ockram, you will never see the daylight again. Will you tell the truth?”

His toad-like eyes were not yet dull. They fastened themselves on her face.

“What do you want of me?” he asked, and each word struck hollow upon the last. “I have no secrets. I have lived a good life.”

Nurse Macdonald laughed — a tiny, cracked laugh, that made her old head bob and tremble a little, as if her neck were on a steel spring. But Sir Hugh’s eyes grew red, and his pale lips began to twist.

“Let me die in peace,” he said slowly.

But Nurse Macdonald shook her head, and her brown, moth-like hand left his and fluttered to his forehead.

“By the mother that bore you and died of grief for the sins you did, tell me the truth!”

Sir Hugh’s lips tightened on his discoloured teeth.

“Not on earth,” he answered slowly.

“By the wife who bore your son and died heartbroken, tell me the truth!”

“Neither to you in life, nor to her in eternal death.”

His lips writhed, as if the words were coals between them, and a great drop of sweat rolled across the parchment of his forehead. Gabriel Ockram bit his hand as he watched his father die. But Nurse Macdonald spoke a third time.

“By the woman whom you betrayed, and who waits for you this night, Hugh Ockram, tell me the truth!”

“It is too late. Let me die in peace.”

The writhing lips began to smile across the set yellow teeth, and the toad eyes glowed like evil jewels in his head.

“There is time,” said the ancient woman. “Tell me the name of Evelyn Warburton’s father. Then I will let you die in peace.”

Evelyn started back, kneeling as she was, and stared at Nurse Macdonald, and then at her uncle.

“The name of Evelyn’s father?” he repeated slowly, while the awful smile spread upon his dying face.

The light was growing strangely dim in the great room. As Evelyn looked, Nurse Macdonald’s crooked shadow on the wall grew gigantic. Sir Hugh’s breath came thick, rattling in his throat, as death crept in like a snake and choked it back. Evelyn prayed aloud, high and clear.

Then something rapped at the window, and she felt her hair rise upon her head in a cool breeze, as she looked around in spite of herself. And when she saw her own white face looking in at the window, and her own eyes staring at her through the glass, wide and fearful, and her own hair streaming against the pane, and her own lips dashed with blood, she rose slowly from the floor and stood rigid for one moment, till she screamed once and fell straight back into Gabriel’s arms. But the shriek that answered hers was the fear-shriek of the tormented corpse, out of which the soul cannot pass for shame of deadly sins, though the devils fight in it with corruption, each for their due share.

Sir Hugh Ockram sat upright in his deathbed, and saw and cried aloud:

“Evelyn!” His harsh voice broke and rattled in his chest as he sank down. But still Nurse Macdonald tortured him, for there was a little life left in him still.

“You have seen the mother as she waits for you, Hugh Ockram. Who was this girl Evelyn’s father? What was his name?”

For the last time the dreadful smile came upon the twisted lips, very slowly, very surely now, and the toad eyes glared red, and the parchment face glowed a little in the flickering light. For the last time words came.

“They know it in hell.”

Then the glowing eyes went out quickly, the yellow face turned waxen pale, and a great shiver ran through the thin body as Hugh Ockram died.

But in death he still smiled, for he knew his secret and kept it still, on the other side, and he would take it with him, to lie with him forever in the north vault of the chapel where the Ockrams lie uncoffined in their shrouds — all but one. Though he was dead, he smiled, for he had kept his treasure of evil truth to the end, and there was none left to tell the name he had spoken, but there was all the evil he had not undone left to bear fruit.

As they watched — Nurse Macdonald and Gabriel, who held Evelyn still unconscious in his arms while he looked at the father — they felt the dead smile crawling along their own lips — the ancient crone and the youth with the angel’s face. Then they shivered a little, and both looked at Evelyn as she lay with her head on his shoulder, and, though she was very beautiful, the same sickening smile was twisting her young mouth too, and it was like the foreshadowing of a great evil which they could not understand.

But by and by they carried Evelyn out, and she opened her eyes and the smile was gone. From far away in the great house the sound of weeping and crooning came up the stairs and echoed along the dismal corridors, for the women had begun to mourn the dead master, after the Irish fashion, and the hall had echoes of its own all that night, like the far-off wail of the banshee among forest trees.

When the time was come they took Sir Hugh in his winding-sheet on a trestle bier, and bore him to the chapel and through the iron door and down the long descent to the north vault, with tapers, to lay him by his father. And two men went in first to prepare the place, and came back staggering like drunken men, and white, leaving their lights behind them.

But Gabriel Ockram was not afraid, for he knew. And he went in alone and saw that the body of Sir Vernon Ockram was leaning upright against the stone wall, and that its head lay on the ground near by with the face turned up, and the dried leathern lips smiled horribly at the dried-up corpse, while the iron coffin, lined with black velvet, stood open on the floor.

Then Gabriel took the thing in his hands, for it was very light, being quite dried by the air of the vault, and those who peeped in from the door saw him lay it in the coffin again, and it rustled a little, like a bundle of reeds, and sounded hollow as it touched the sides and the bottom. He also placed the head upon the shoulders and shut down the lid, which fell to with a rusty spring that snapped.

After that they laid Sir Hugh beside his father, with the trestle bier on which they had brought him, and they went back to the chapel.

But when they saw one another’s faces, master and men, they were all smiling with the dead smile of the corpse they had left in the vault, so that they could not bear to look at one another until it had faded away.

III

Gabriel Ockram became Sir Gabriel, inheriting the baronetcy with the half-ruined fortune left by his father, and still Evelyn Warburton lived at Ockram Hall, in the south room that had been hers ever since she could remember anything. She could not go away, for there were no relatives to whom she could have gone, and, besides, there seemed to be no reason why she should not stay. The world would never trouble itself to care what the Ockrams did on their Irish estates, and it was long since the Ockrams had asked anything of the world.

So Sir Gabriel took his father’s place at the dark old table in the dining-room, and Evelyn sat opposite to him, until such time as their mourning should be over, and they might be married at last. And meanwhile their lives went on as before, since Sir Hugh had been a hopeless invalid during the last year of his life, and they had seen him but once a day for a little while, spending most of their time together in a strangely perfect companionship.

But though the late summer saddened into autumn, and autumn darkened into winter, and storm followed storm, and rain poured on rain through the short days and the long nights, yet Ockram Hall seemed less gloomy since Sir Hugh had been laid in the north vault beside his father. And at Christmastide Evelyn decked the great hall with holly and green boughs, and huge fires blazed on every hearth. Then the tenants were all bidden to a New Year’s dinner, and they ate and drank well, while Sir Gabriel sat at the head of the table. Evelyn came in when the port wine was brought, and the most respected of the tenants made a speech to propose her health.

It was long, he said, since there had been a Lady Ockram. Sir Gabriel shaded his eyes with his hand and looked down at the table, but a faint colour came into Evelyn’s transparent cheeks. But, said the grey-haired farmer, it was longer still since there had been a Lady Ockram so fair as the next was to be, and he gave the health of Evelyn Warburton.

Then the tenants all stood up and shouted for her, and Sir Gabriel stood up likewise, beside Evelyn. And when the men gave the last and loudest cheer of all there was a voice not theirs, above them all, higher, fiercer, louder — a scream not earthly, shrieking for the bride of Ockram Hall. And the holly and the green boughs over the great chimney-piece shook and slowly waved as if a cool breeze were blowing over them. But the men turned very pale, and many of them set down their glasses, but others let them fall upon the floor for fear. And looking into one another’s faces, they were all smiling strangely, a dead smile, like dead Sir Hugh’s. One cried out words in Irish, and the fear of death was suddenly upon them all, so that they fled in panic, falling over one another like wild beasts in the burning forest, when the thick smoke runs along before the flame; and the tables were over-set, and drinking glasses and bottles were broken in heaps, and the dark red wine crawled like blood upon the polished floor.

Sir Gabriel and Evelyn stood alone at the head of the table before the wreck of the feast, not daring to turn to see each other, for each knew that the other smiled. But his right arm held her and his left hand clasped her right as they stared before them; and but for the shadows of her hair one might not have told their two faces apart. They listened long, but the cry came not again, and the dead smile faded from their lips, while each remembered that Sir Hugh Ockram lay in the north vault, smiling in his winding-sheet, in the dark, because he had died with his secret.

So ended the tenants’ New Year’s dinner. But from that time on Sir Gabriel grew more and more silent, and his face grew even paler and thinner than before. Often, without warning and without words, he would rise from his seat, as if something moved him against his will, and he would go out into the rain or the sunshine to the north side of the chapel, and sit on the stone bench, staring at the ground as if he could see through it, and through the vault below, and through the white winding-sheet in the dark, to the dead smile that would not die.

Always when he went out in that way Evelyn came out presently and sat beside him. Once, too, as in summer, their beautiful faces came suddenly near, and their lids drooped, and their red lips were almost joined together. But as their eyes met, they grew wide and wild, so that the white showed in a ring all round the deep violet, and their teeth chattered, and their hands were like hands of corpses, each in the other’s, for the terror of what was under their feet, and of what they knew but could not see.

Once, also, Evelyn found Sir Gabriel in the chapel alone, standing before the iron door that led down to the place of death, and in his hand there was the key to the door; but he had not put it into the lock. Evelyn drew him away, shivering, for she had also been driven in waking dreams to see that terrible thing again, and to find out whether it had changed since it had lain there.

“I’m going mad,” said Sir Gabriel, covering his eyes with his hand as he went with her. “I see it in my sleep, I see it when I am awake — it draws me to it, day and night — and unless I see it I shall die!”

“I know,” answered Evelyn, “I know. It is as if threads were spun from it, like a spider’s, drawing us down to it.” She was silent for a moment, and then she started violently and grasped his arm with a man’s strength, and almost screamed the words she spoke. “But we must not go there!” she cried. “We must not go!”

Sir Gabriel’s eyes were half shut, and he was not moved by the agony of her face.

“I shall die, unless I see it again,” he said, in a quiet voice not like his own. And all that day and that evening he scarcely spoke, thinking of it, always thinking, while Evelyn Warburton quivered from head to foot with a terror she had never known.

She went alone, on a grey winter’s morning, to Nurse Macdonald’s room in the tower, and sat down beside the great leathern easy-chair, laying her thin white hand upon the withered fingers.

“Nurse,” she said, “what was it that Uncle Hugh should have told you, that night before he died? It must have been an awful secret — and yet, though you asked him, I feel somehow that you know it, and that you know why he used to smile so dreadfully.”

The old woman’s head moved slowly from side to side.

“I only guess — I shall never know,” she answered slowly in her cracked little voice.

“But what do you guess? Who am I? Why did you ask who my father was? You know I am Colonel Warburton’s daughter, and my mother was Lady Ockram’s sister, so that Gabriel and I are cousins. My father was killed in Afghanistan. What secret can there be?”

“I do not know. I can only guess.”

“Guess what?” asked Evelyn imploringly, and pressing the soft withered hands, as she leaned forward. But Nurse Macdonald’s wrinkled lids dropped suddenly over her queer blue eyes, and her lips shook a little with her breath, as if she were asleep.

Evelyn waited. By the fire the Irish maid was knitting fast, and the needles clicked like three or four clocks ticking against each other. And the real clock on the wall solemnly ticked alone, checking off the seconds of the woman who was a hundred years old, and had not many days left. Outside the ivy branch beat the window in the wintry blast, as it had beaten against the glass a hundred years ago.

Then as Evelyn sat there she felt again the waking of a horrible desire — the sickening wish to go down, down to the thing in the north vault, and to open the winding-sheet, and see whether it had changed; and she held Nurse Macdonald’s hands as if to keep herself in her place and fight against the appalling attraction of the evil dead.

But the old cat that kept Nurse Macdonald’s feet warm, lying always on the bag footstool, got up and stretched itself, and looked up into Evelyn’s eyes, while its back arched, and its tail thickened and bristled, and its ugly pink lips drew back in a devilish grin, showing its sharp teeth. Evelyn stared at it, half fascinated by its ugliness. Then the creature suddenly put out one paw with all its claws spread, and spat at the girl, and all at once the grinning cat was like the smiling corpse far down below, so that Evelyn shivered down to her small feet, and covered her face with her free hand, lest Nurse Macdonald should wake and see the dead smile there, for she could feel it.

The old woman had already opened her eyes again, and she touched her cat with the end of her crutch-stick, whereupon its back went down and its tail shrunk, and it sidled back to its place on the bag footstool. But its yellow eyes looked up sideways at Evelyn, between the slits of its lids.

“What is it that you guess, nurse?” asked the young girl again.

“A bad thing — a wicked thing. But I dare not tell you, lest it might not be true, and the very thought should blast your life. For if I guess right, he meant that you should not know, and that you two should marry, and pay for his old sin with your souls.”

“He used to tell us that we ought not to marry—”

“Yes — he told you that, perhaps — but it was as if a man put poisoned meat before a starving beast, and said ‘do not eat,’ but never raised his hand to take the meat away. And if he told you that you should not marry, it was because he hoped you would; for of all men living or dead, Hugh Ockram was the falsest man that ever told a cowardly lie, and the cruellest that ever hurt a weak woman, and the worst that ever loved a sin.”

“But Gabriel and I love each other,” said Evelyn very sadly.

Nurse Macdonald’s old eyes looked far away, at sights seen long ago, and that rose in the grey winter air amid the mists of an ancient youth.

“If you love, you can die together,” she said, very slowly. “Why should you live, if it is true? I am a hundred years old. What has life given me? The beginning is fire; the end is a heap of ashes; and between the end and the beginning lies all the pain of the world. Let me sleep, since I cannot die.”

Then the old woman’s eyes closed again, and her head sank a little lower upon her breast.

So Evelyn went away and left her asleep, with the cat asleep on the bag footstool; and the young girl tried to forget Nurse Macdonald’s words, but she could not, for she heard them over and over again in the wind, and behind her on the stairs. And as she grew sick with fear of the frightful unknown evil to which her soul was bound, she felt a bodily something pressing her, and pushing her, and forcing her on, and from the other side she felt the threads that drew her mysteriously: and when she shut her eyes, she saw in the chapel behind the altar, the low iron door through which she must pass to go to the thing.

And as she lay awake at night, she drew the sheet over her face, lest she should see shadows on the wall beckoning to her; and the sound of her own warm breath made whisperings in her ears, while she held the mattress with her hands, to keep from getting up and going to the chapel. It would have been easier if there had not been a way thither through the library, by a door which was never locked. It would be fearfully easy to take her candle and go softly through the sleeping house. And the key of the vault lay under the altar behind a stone that turned. She knew the little secret. She could go alone and see.

But when she thought of it, she felt her hair rise on her head, and first she shivered so that the bed shook, and then the horror went through her in a cold thrill that was agony again, like myriads of icy needles boring into her nerves.

IV

The old clock in Nurse Macdonald’s tower struck midnight. From her room she could hear the creaking chains and weights in their box in the corner of the staircase, and overhead the jarring of the rusty lever that lifted the hammer. She had heard it all her life. It struck eleven strokes clearly, and then came the twelfth, with a dull half stroke, as though the hammer were too weary to go on, and had fallen asleep against the bell.

The old cat got up from the bag footstool and stretched itself, and Nurse Macdonald opened her ancient eyes and looked slowly round the room by the dim light of the night lamp. She touched the cat with her crutch-stick, and it lay down upon her feet. She drank a few drops from her cup and went to sleep again.

But downstairs Sir Gabriel sat straight up as the clock struck, for he had dreamed a fearful dream of horror, and his heart stood still, till he awoke at its stopping, and it beat again furiously with his breath, like a wild thing set free. No Ockram had ever known fear waking, but sometimes it came to Sir Gabriel in his sleep.

He pressed his hands to his temples as he sat up in bed, and his hands were icy cold, but his head was hot. The dream faded far, and in its place there came the master thought that racked his life; with the thought also came the sick twisting of his lips in the dark that would have been a smile. Far off, Evelyn Warburton dreamed that the dead smile was on her mouth, and awoke, starting with a little moan, her face in her hands, shivering.

But Sir Gabriel struck a light and got up and began to walk up and down his great room. It was midnight, and he had barely slept an hour, and in the north of Ireland the winter nights are long.

“I shall go mad,” he said to himself, holding his forehead. He knew that it was true. For weeks and months the possession of the thing had grown upon him like a disease, till he could think of nothing without thinking first of that. And now all at once it outgrew his strength, and he knew that he must be its instrument or lose his mind — that he must do the deed he hated and feared, if he could fear anything, or that something would snap in his brain and divide him from life while he was yet alive. He took the candlestick in his hand, the old-fashioned heavy candlestick that had always been used by the head of the house. He did not think of dressing, but went as he was, in his silk night clothes and his slippers, and he opened the door. Everything was very still in the great old house. He shut the door behind him and walked noiselessly on the carpet through the long corridor. A cool breeze blew over his shoulder and blew the flame of his candle straight out from him. Instinctively he stopped and looked round, but all was still, and the upright flame burned steadily. He walked on, and instantly a strong draught was behind him, almost extinguishing the light. It seemed to blow him on his way, ceasing whenever he turned, coming again when he went on — invisible, icy.

Down the great staircase to the echoing hall he went, seeing nothing but the flaring flame of the candle standing away from him over the guttering wax, while the cold wind blew over his shoulder and through his hair. On he passed through the open door into the library, dark with old books and carved bookcases; on through the door in the shelves, with painted shelves on it, and the imitated backs of books, so that one needed to know where to find it — and it shut itself after him with a soft click. He entered the low-arched passage, and though the door was shut behind him and fitted tightly in its frame, still the cold breeze blew the flame forward as he walked. And he was not afraid; but his face was very pale, and his eyes were wide and bright, looking before him, seeing already in the dark air the picture of the thing beyond. But in the chapel he stood still, his hand on the little turning stone tablet in the back of the stone altar. On the tablet were engraved words: “Clavis sepulchri Clarissimorum Dominorum De Ockram” — (“the key to the vault of the most illustrious lords of Ockram”). Sir Gabriel paused and listened. He fancied that he heard a sound far off in the great house where all had been so still, but it did not come again. Yet he waited at the last, and looked at the low iron door. Beyond it, down the long descent, lay his father uncoffined, six months dead, corrupt, terrible in his clinging shroud. The strangely preserving air of the vault could not yet have done its work completely. But on the thing’s ghastly features, with their half-dried, open eyes, there would still be the frightful smile with which the man had died — the smile that haunted—

As the thought crossed Sir Gabriel’s mind, he felt his lips writhing, and he struck his own mouth in wrath with the back of his hand so fiercely that a drop of blood ran down his chin, and another, and more, falling back in the gloom upon the chapel pavement. But still his bruised lips twisted themselves. He turned the tablet by the simple secret. It needed no safer fastening, for had each Ockram been coffined in pure gold, and had the door been open wide, there was not a man in Tyrone brave enough to go down to that place, saving Gabriel Ockram himself, with his angel’s face and his thin, white hands, and his sad unflinching eyes. He took the great old key and set it into the lock of the iron door; and the heavy, rattling noise echoed down the descent beyond like footsteps, as if a watcher had stood behind the iron and were running away within, with heavy dead feet. And though he was standing still, the cool wind was from behind him, and blew the flame of the candle against the iron panel. He turned the key.

Sir Gabriel saw that his candle was short. There were new ones on the altar, with long candlesticks, and he lit one, and left his own burning on the floor. As he set it down on the pavement his lip began to bleed again, and another drop fell upon the stones.

He drew the iron door open and pushed it back against the chapel wall, so that it should not shut of itself, while he was within; and the horrible draught of the sepulchre came up out of the depths in his face, foul and dark. He went in, but though the foetid air met him, yet the flame of the tall candle was blown straight from him against the wind while he walked down the easy incline with steady steps, his loose slippers slapping the pavement as he trod.

He shaded the candle with his hand, and his fingers seemed to be made of wax and blood as the light shone through them. And in spite of him the unearthly draught forced the flame forward, till it was blue over the black wick, and it seemed as if it must go out. But he went straight on, with shining eyes.

The downward passage was wide, and he could not always see the walls by the struggling light, but he knew when he was in the place of death by the larger, drearier echo of his steps in the greater space, and by the sensation of a distant blank wall. He stood still, almost enclosing the flame of the candle in the hollow of his hand. He could see a little, for his eyes were growing used to the gloom. Shadowy forms were outlined in the dimness, where the biers of the Ockrams stood crowded together, side by side, each with its straight, shrouded corpse, strangely preserved by the dry air, like the empty shell that the locust sheds in summer. And a few steps before him he saw clearly the dark shape of headless Sir Vernon’s iron coffin, and he knew that nearest to it lay the thing he sought.

He was as brave as any of those dead men had been, and they were his fathers, and he knew that sooner or later he should lie there himself, beside Sir Hugh, slowly drying to a parchment shell. But he was still alive, and he closed his eyes a moment, and three great drops stood on his forehead.

Then he looked again, and by the whiteness of the winding-sheet he knew his father’s corpse, for all the others were brown with age; and, moreover, the flame of the candle was blown toward it. He made four steps till he reached it, and suddenly the light burned straight and high, shedding a dazzling yellow glare upon the fine linen that was all white, save over the face, and where the joined hands were laid on the breast. And at those places ugly stains had spread, darkened with outlines of the features and of the tight-clasped fingers. There was a frightful stench of drying death.

As Sir Gabriel looked down, something stirred behind him, softly at first, then more noisily, and something fell to the stone floor with a dull thud and rolled up to his feet; he started back and saw a withered head lying almost face upward on the pavement, grinning at him. He felt the cold sweat standing on his face, and his heart beat painfully.

For the first time in all his life that evil thing which men call fear was getting hold of him, checking his heart-strings as a cruel driver checks a quivering horse, clawing at his backbone with icy hands, lifting his hair with freezing breath, climbing up and gathering in his midriff with leaden weight.

Yet presently he bit his lip and bent down, holding the candle in one hand, to lift the shroud back from the head of the corpse with the other. Slowly he lifted it. Then it clove to the half-dried skin of the face, and his hand shook as if someone had struck him on the elbow, but half in fear and half in anger at himself, he pulled it, so that it came away with a little ripping sound. He caught his breath as he held it, not yet throwing it back, and not yet looking. The horror was working in him, and he felt that old Vernon Ockram was standing up in his iron coffin, headless, yet watching him with the stump of his severed neck.

While he held his breath he felt the dead smile twisting his lips. In sudden wrath at his own misery, he tossed the death-stained linen backward, and looked at last. He ground his teeth lest he should shriek aloud.

There it was, the thing that haunted him, that haunted Evelyn Warburton, that was like a blight on all that came near him.

The dead face was blotched with dark stains, and the thin, grey hair was matted about the discoloured forehead. The sunken lids were half open, and the candle light gleamed on something foul where the toad eyes had lived.

But yet the dead thing smiled, as it had smiled in life; the ghastly lips were parted and drawn wide and tight upon the wolfish teeth, cursing still, and still defying hell to do its worst — defying, cursing, and always and forever smiling alone in the dark.

Sir Gabriel opened the winding-sheet where the hands were, and the blackened, withered fingers were closed upon something stained and mottled. Shivering from head to foot, but fighting like a man in agony for his life, he tried to take the package from the dead man’s hold. But as he pulled at it the claw-like fingers seemed to close more tightly, and when he pulled harder the shrunken hands and arms rose from the corpse with a horrible look of life following his motion — then as he wrenched the sealed packet loose at last, the hands fell back into their place still folded.

He set down the candle on the edge of the bier to break the seals from the stout paper. And, kneeling on one knee, to get a better light, he read what was within, written long ago in Sir Hugh’s queer hand.

He was no longer afraid.

He read how Sir Hugh had written it all down that it might perchance be a witness of evil and of his hatred; how he had loved Evelyn Warburton, his wife’s sister; and how his wife had died of a broken heart with his curse upon her, and how Warburton and he had fought side by side in Afghanistan, and Warburton had fallen; but Ockram had brought his comrade’s wife back a full year later, and little Evelyn, her child, had been born in Ockram Hall. And next, how he had wearied of the mother, and she had died like her sister with his curse on her. And then, how Evelyn had been brought up as his niece, and how he had trusted that his son Gabriel and his daughter, innocent and unknowing, might love and marry, and the souls of the women he had betrayed might suffer another anguish before eternity was out. And, last of all, he hoped that someday, when nothing could be undone, the two might find his writing and live on, not daring to tell the truth for their children’s sake and the world’s word, man and wife.

This he read, kneeling beside the corpse in the north vault, by the light of the altar candle; and when he had read it all, he thanked God aloud that he had found the secret in time. But when he rose to his feet and looked down at the dead face it was changed, and the smile was gone from it forever, and the jaw had fallen a little, and the tired, dead lips were relaxed. And then there was a breath behind him and close to him, not cold like that which had blown the flame of the candle as he came, but warm and human. He turned suddenly.

There she stood, all in white, with her shadowy golden hair — for she had risen from her bed and had followed him noiselessly, and had found him reading, and had herself read over his shoulder. He started violently when he saw her, for his nerves were unstrung — and then he cried out her name in the still place of death:

“Evelyn!”

“My brother!” she answered softly and tenderly, putting out both hands to meet his.

“Ainslee’s Magazine”, Aug.1899

Wandering Ghosts (1911)

THE FOG

Morley Roberts

1908

The fog had been thickening for many weeks, but now, moving I like a black wall, it fell on the town. The lights that guided the world were put out — the nearest were almost as invisible as the stars; a powerful arc-lamp overhead was but a blur. Traffic ceased, for drivers could not see; screams were heard in the streets, and cries for help, where none could help themselves.

“I’m blind,” said Tom Crabb, as he leant against the pillar outside the Café Français in Regent Street. He said it with a chuckle, for he, alone of a street full of the lost, did not feel lost. “I’m blind, but know my way home!”

Day by day and night by night he patrolled the street with a placard upon his breast marked in big letters, “Blind”. People with eyes saw him. Out of a thousand one gave him a penny; out of ten thousand one gave him sixpence. The millionth, or some charitable madman, made it half a crown. The red-letter day of his blind life was when he found a sovereign in his palm, put there by a soft little hand that touched his. He heard a gentle girl’s voice say, “Poor blind man.” He had a hard life, and was a hard and lonely man, but he remembered that voice, as he did all voices.

As he stayed by the pillar a man stumbled against him and apologized.

“That’s Mr Bentley,” said Tom Crabb.

“Who are you?”

“I’m blind Crabb, sir, bless your heart. You’ve given me many a copper, haven’t you?”

Bentley was a chauffeur and engineer. He drove for Lord Gervase North, the balloonist and motor-racer, and was forever about the West End and Regent Street, as Lord Gervase often dined at the Français.

“To be sure. I know your voice,” said Bentley. “It’s an awful night, Crabb.”

“Must be,” said Crabb. “But fog or none is the same for an eyeless man. To hear the folks, it might be the end of the world, sir.”

“There never was such a fog,” replied Bentley; “it’s just awful. I can’t see you; no, nor my hand before my face.”

“You can’t get home, then. What are you doing?”

“I’ve come for my boss and the lady he’s to marry. They’re dining here with her mother. But we’ll never get home.”

“Bentley!” called a voice.

“Yes, my lord,” said the chauffeur.

“What are we to do?”

“Don’t know, my lord.”

“Can we get to an hotel?”

“They’re crammed already, I hear, my lord.”

Crabb put out his hand and touched Bentley.

“Where does he want to go? Perhaps I could lead you.”

It was a strange notion, but then the blind know their way. “Aye, perhaps you could. The ladies live in Eccleston Square and my lord in Pont Street.”

“I don’t know either of them, but I could take them and you to your place.”

“My place?” said Bentley. Then his master spoke.

“Who’s that with you, Bentley?”

“A blind man, my lord. He thought he might take you all home, but he doesn’t know Eccleston Square. All he knows is my place.”

“Better be there than in the street,” said Crabb. He had a sense of power in him. All the rest of the world were blind. He alone had some sight.

“If the hotels are full we must go somewhere,” said Lord Gervase. “There’s no room here, nor a bed. They want to shut up now. I’ll speak to the ladies.”

“Good bloke that,” said Crabb. “He gave me a shilling once and said a kind word.”

The darkness was thicker than ever. It was incredibly thick and choking — it made the useless eyes ache. It was a threat, a terror. So might the end of the world come.

“Bentley!” said Lord Gervase once more.

“Yes, my lord.”

“Come here.”

Bentley found him, and his employer put his hand upon his shoulder. “Can you trust this man? If so, the ladies will come to your place till it clears, if you will take us in.”

“My wife will do her best, my lord. I know this Crabb to speak to. He says you once gave him a shilling. I’m sure he’ll lead us right. But what about the car?”

“You must leave it, or get him to bring you back. I want you with us. Come, Lady Semple; come, Julia.”

The mother and daughter, who had been close behind him, moved timidly.

“Let me lead her ladyship,” said Bentley.

“Thank you, Bentley,” said Lady Semple. There was a painful note in her voice. She was never strong, and the fog alarmed her. Julia clung to her lover and did not speak.

“Crabb, take us to my place, then, if you can,” said Bentley.

“I’ll give you a flyer if we get there all right,” said Lord Gervase.

“You gave me a shilling once, my lord, and after that I’d take you for nothing,” said Crabb. “’Tisn’t often I get so much.”

He led the way and Bentley took hold of his coat.

“Keep close, all of you,” said Crabb. “The Circus is packed terrible, but if I can get across Piccadilly, ’twill be easy.”

They were on the west side of Regent Street and went down Air Street into Piccadilly. Out of the darkness wandering folks came and met them. Some wailed, some asked for help, some seemed dazed or half mad, as all folks get in deep fog. And every now and again there was a crash of glass.

They came to Piccadilly and heard the trampling of horses. People in carriages spoke. The darkness was a visible, awful darkness, and in it a mad world was buried.

“Here’s the way across to Eagle Place,” said Crabb. “But can we get across?”

It was a passage of such peril as might be found in war, or upon an unknown mountain in heavy snow, or in a wreck upon a reef of sharp rocks. They heard the dreadful cry of a hurt man. Crabb’s foot came upon one who lay on the pavement. He was dead, or so Crabb averred when he stooped and felt him.

“I’ve seen many dead when I was soldiering in India,” said Crabb. Julia trembled to hear him say so.

There were many people in the street; some were drunk, and many wild, but most were fearful. Yet the darkness released some from fear and let loose their devilry. It seemed that two men in front of them smashed every window as they passed, and laughed wildly. Once Julia called out, and her lover said, “What is it?”

“Did you kiss me, Gervase?”

There was horror in her voice. He had not kissed her.

“My God!” said Gervase. “My God!”

There was a strange laugh in the darkness. He leapt at the laugh, caught it by the throat, and dashed the laugher on the pavement. And Julia’s cry brought him back to her. But they crossed at Duke Street, and wondered how they did it.

“Now it’s easy,” said Crabb. “We’re as good as there, my lord.”

In St James’s Square there were few people, and they rested. Julia spoke again.

“Did you — did you hurt him?”

But Crabb heard her speak.

“Who spoke?” he said, suddenly.

“’Twas Miss Semple spoke,” answered Bentley.

“Young lady, did you ever give a poor blind man a sovereign?” asked Crabb, in a strange, far-off voice.

“Yes, once, many years ago,” said Julia, wondering.

“And you said, ‘Poor blind man.’ God bless you, miss. I knew your voice just now,” said Crabb. “’Twas the fifth of July, five years ago; I never forget a voice.”

He went on in silence and led them by way of Pall Mall and the Square down Whitehall and Parliament Street, going through many perils, till the Houses of Parliament were on their left and the Abbey on their right.

“We’re close now,” said Crabb. “’Tis strange it should be the same to me as any other night. Is it better now?”

“It’s worse,” said Bentley, gloomily.

But they came to the stairway of the flat that Bentley lived in.

“Is this it?” asked Bentley, in surprise. He could see nothing.

“You live here, or I’m a fool,” said Crabb. “I’ve led you straight. Go up and see.”

On the first floor his flat was, and Bentley’s young wife opened the door and cried out as she took hold of him.

“A blind man led me, dear,” said Bentley, “and we’ve brought Lord Gervase North and Lady Semple and Miss Semple. They cannot get home. We must keep them till tomorrow, when the fog goes.”

So shadow spoke to shadow, and she whom they could not see spoke to them and bade them welcome in a trembling voice, and found chairs for them. But Bentley and Lord Gervase went out again to Crabb, who took his five pounds gratefully.

“Will this fog last?” asked Lord Gervase. But none could answer him. Ere Crabb went off to his solitary house close by, Bentley said to him:

“If the fog’s like this tomorrow, come in and see us, Crabb.”

They shook hands, for the danger brought them close, and Crabb went off murmuring to himself. Bentley went back upstairs again, and it seemed to him that the fog was thicker still. In the room was lighted darkness, and the lamps showed the night feebly.

“There never was such a fog,” he said, cheerfully. But Lady Semple moaned and shed tears, and nothing they could say consoled her. To be in her own home in such a fog would be bad enough, but to be here! Poor Mrs Bentley, only lately married, was terrified to think she had three such folks to deal with, but she had sense and some energy in her. She took her husband aside.

“The Thompsons are away,” she began. These people lived in the opposite flat on their landing. “Why shouldn’t we break in there and take their beds for these ladies?”

“Break in!” cried Bentley. “Suppose they came back?”

“They’ve gone for a week, and how can they come back in this fog? Besides, what can we do?”

“It’s a notion after all,” said her husband. “I’ll propose it to his lordship.”

As a result of the proposal he and Lord Gervase put their heads and shoulders together and turned housebreakers inside five minutes. They lighted fires and lamps and mitigated the horrid darkness as much as they could, and sent Lady Semple and Julia to bed. Mrs Bentley soon followed, and left her husband and his employer together.

“This is a queer situation, Bentley. I wonder if it will last?” said Lord Gervase.

“It’s a rum start, my lord,” replied Bentley; “and, to look at it, it might last forever.”

“Then what will become of London and of us?”

“We’ll have to leave in your balloon, my lord,” said Bentley, with a grim laugh. “But let’s hope it will be better in the morning.”

Lord Gervase slept in the Bentleys’ spare room, and slept soundly. When he woke it was pitch-dark. He looked at his watch by the light of a match and could not discern the figures. It seemed as if he was blind. But on opening the watch and feeling the hands he found it was eight o’clock in the morning. The fog was worse than ever. The gloom that was outside settled on their hearts. They had breakfast together and hardly spoke. Lady Semple cried continually, and Julia could hardly restrain her own tears.

“It’s like the end of the world,” sobbed Lady Semple. “We — we shall die of it.”

In truth Mrs Bentley wondered where food was to come from if it continued. She had nothing left after breakfast but a loaf of bread. And they could not see each other. When they opened the window the outside fog was as thick as a black blanket. It inspired a helpless, hopeless horror. They sat about till nearly noon and said nothing. At ten Crabb came to the outer door and knocked. When they let his dark shadow in he put something on the table.

“It’s grub,” he said. “I thought you might want it.”

He came to them from the outer world; they asked him for news.

“Things are awful, my lord,” he said, quietly. But there was a strange ring in his voice. “They’re awful; I can’t tell you all that’s going on. ’Tis madness. There are awful things being done; fires, murders, and horrible screams about. I was in Trafalgar Square and folks cried out suddenly, ‘Light! Light!’ Something broke in the fog overhead and a great light shone. People cried out, and then — then the fog came down again. Terror is in us all, but many have broken into liquor shops and are drunk; the whole town’s mad.”

“Oh, will it last?” asked Julia. “What do the papers say?”

There were no papers; there was nothing, said Crabb. The very electric lights were out; it seemed no one worked, no one could work. There was a blind mob in the streets, and all were lost. They sought to escape, and knew not which way to run. When he had finished Lady Semple fainted, falling into her daughter’s arms. Julia and Mrs Bentley took hold of her, and Crabb and Bentley and Lord Gervase went apart.

“What’s to be done?” asked Lord Gervase, in a kind of despair.

“Nothing but wait, my lord,” said Bentley.

“Could you lead us out of London, Crabb?” asked Lord Gervase. “I don’t know more than my beat and a bit over,” said Crabb.

“What I know I know like the inside of my hat, but beyond it there’s a sort of blackness for me. But I’ll get you food.”

“How did you get what you brought?” asked Bentley.

“Out of an open shop,” said Crabb. “There was a dead man in it.” They said nothing for a time.

“Folks are going mad and jumping into the river,” said Crabb.

“And I heard women shrieking awfully. Wicked people are about. There’s fires already here and there.”

“What can we do?” asked Lord Gervase. “It can’t last,” said Bentley.

“Why can’t it?” asked Crabb, after a pause.

“It might last a week, eh?” said Bentley; “or — or more?”

“Where’s London’s food to come from? Where are folks to find it?” asked Crabb. “In three days they’ll be eating each other. I heard horrid things said in the dark by blind voices, my lord. They gave me the shivers and shakes.”

“Where’s that balloon, Bentley?” asked Lord Gervase, in a shaken voice. “Could we — could we use it? We must get Lady Semple out of this; we must, or she will die!”

It was in a store close by the gasworks, but Bentley couldn’t find it. Crabb said he knew the gasworks if Bentley could find the place in which the balloon was.

“But what will you do with it, my lord?”

“Go up in it and out of this, and drift away,” said Lord Gervase. “It could be done.”

“Will there be any gas left?” asked Bentley, and then he clapped his thigh as if he thought of something.

“What is it, Bentley?”

“There’ll be none working at the gasworks, my lord!”

“No?”

“Crabb and I will go down and turn off the supply if we can,” said Bentley; “turn it off before it’s gone.”

“Do it,” said Lord Gervase; “this is horrible — my eyes ache. It’s driving me mad. Poor Julia!”

“Will you help me, Crabb?” asked Bentley.

So they went out together, and passed murder in the streets, and saw the glare of fires, and heard awful things. And Bentley was blind. But Crabb had eyes in his mind. So at last they came to the works, and smote on the door to see if by happy chance there were any there. The watchman came running; he had lost his nerve, and cried as he held to them, telling how the men had left him all alone. But he lived there, and they had their homes elsewhere.

“What gas have you left?” they asked him, and when he could answer he said that one gasometer was half full, but that it went quickly.

“Come and turn it off, so that it won’t waste any more,” cried Bentley. And they turned it off, knowing they brought bitter darkness to many. But Crabb said he would bring food to the watchman, and he was easier in his mind.

“London’s being destroyed,” said the watchman. “I hear dreadful things.”

“Dreadful things are being done,” said Crabb. “But dreadful things are always being done, my lad. I’m not so blind I can’t see that.”

“This is blindness,” said the watchman. “I can’t smoke even. ’Tis dreadful. Shall we all die?”

“Someday,” said Crabb. “I can see that.”

And he and Bentley tried to find the store where the balloon was, and, in trying, Crabb once got lost and said so. Bentley’s blood ran cold, for Crabb was his sight, his life, and the life of those he loved. For he loved not only his wife, but Gervase North and Julia Semple, since they were made to be loved, both of them, and Bentley was kind-hearted.

Yet Crabb found himself again, and they went back to the Square without discovering the balloon shed.

“We’ll try tomorrow,” said Crabb.

They tried next day and failed.

They tried the next day — and still failed. But Crabb brought them food, very fine food, wonderful things in pots and jars.

“I went up to Piccadilly and smashed a window for ’em,” said Crabb. “God’s truth I did. I hope they’re good. Is it too dark to see?”

They, too, had no gas.

“We can taste,” they answered. But they tasted fog — fog thick, congealed, yellow, a pasty fog. And they tasted horror, for there were lamentable voices in the streets, voicing death and murder.

“What’s this in the bottom of the sack?” asked Bentley, when he had taken out the jars and the fine glasses of preserved foods.

“Jewels, I think,” said Crabb, in a strange voice. “I thought the ladies might like ’em. I found ’em on the pavement in an open bag, and by the feel of ’em thought they might be di’monds. And I passed another shop and smashed the window and grabbed a handful. Why not? Who wants ’em? London’s dying. But you’ve your balloon.”

Again a heavy silence fell on them. Crabb went away — he wanted news, he said. So he went lightly through the gloom, the paste of darkness and night. London was like the Pit: it was silent, but in the silence were cries. Horses lay dead; others wandered loose. There were fires in the streets, made of smashed vehicles; gloomy shadows burnt themselves and cooked horseflesh by the leaping hidden flames; some danced drunkenly and fell in the fires. Many offered golden loot for food, jewels for a mouthful, and went about hunting. They said — voices said — that the river was thick with floating corpses already, and fires increased. Out of the night came the mad shrieks of women and the wildest laughter. Dying men played with death and fell on fire and crime and the awfullest disasters. Some went madly crying for their wives and daughters, their little children and their old people who were lost. In churches they prayed; a blind organist made mad music to Heaven in a church that Crabb passed. For him a madman blew.

“’Tis an awful strange world,” said Crabb. “Darkness fell on me years ago. But this city’s blind.”

Some he spoke to were quiet and some wild. They told him rumours — the strangest. It was wonderful how rumours went in the dark. Wild crowds were marching east and west and south and north, or trying to march. But few had any guidance. ’Twas said one man had a compass and led a thousand to the river and there fell in. The parks were full of wanderers. Rich people offered thousands from windows, and were slain for money that the slayers could not find. One man lighted a fire with banknotes. A voice said that men were in the Bank, in all the banks, stealing the sacks of gold. The pavements were slippery with a thick fluid, and the dead lay everywhere. Folks drank at the river and fell in. They threw themselves from windows and fell on blind wanderers.

The railways were quiet; nothing moved there. Ships were deserted in the lower river. The telegraphs were quiet; men fled from them. The telephone exchanges were empty. The outside world had deserted London and cut it off. It was sunk in a pit; it lay at the bottom of a well. And these things Crabb gathered up and, going back to his friends, told them. But he brought them food and they ate in the darkness. He took them wine and they drank in the night. And they lost count of the days and the nights. But every day (or night) Bentley and Crabb sought for the place where the balloon was stored.

On the tenth day they found it. That day Lady Semple seemed near to death.

With infinite labour, though they had the help of the watchman, they took the balloon to the gasworks, and then Lord Gervase came with them, leaving Julia with her sick mother.

“It’s our only chance, my darling,” he said, as he left her.

He kissed her in the darkness, and kissed the dying woman — for, indeed, unless they got her out of darkness she was dead — and went away with Crabb and Bentley.

With blind eyes they worked; their eyes ached and saw nothing; their hearts laboured, for the air was thick and foul, and ever fouler and thicker, since the fires of the town grew by the folly and madness of lost men. And once again for an hour it grew lighter overhead. They saw each other. Then the darkness fell again. With the help of the watchman, now their slave and the slave of Crabb — who did the work of many and was the calmest of all — they started the inflating of the great balloon. In the blackness of things they had to use infinite care lest they should wound the gigantic ship which was to save them. Yet at last the monster commenced to grow wonderfully, like a huge toadstool in the night. As it grew it straightened out the gear, and they felt its proportions and recognized this and that and felt easier.

“We shall get out,” said Lord Gervase. He yearned to live. He was young and loved a woman, and the world was big for him and fine. But he found Bentley a bigger man than himself; and Crabb was bigger than either, though he had been no more than a soldier, wounded in a foolish fight in far-off India. He gave them courage to drink — he held up their hearts. For he loved the voice of Julia Semple, and remembered her gift, and was glad to help her and her lover.

“You shall want nothing after this, Crabb,” said Gervase.

“I shall want much, or little always,” returned Crabb, in a strange exaltation. For he had never loved a woman till now, though he had kissed many. And her whom he loved he could never kiss.

The world outside was not their world. They were lost in London in the darkness, and were cut off. But the balloon grew and grew. And then it ceased to grow. There was no more gas.

That night it was a little lighter (for it was night, though they knew it not), and the four men laboured in the works, and set the retorts going and made more gas. Crabb was a man of strength, and now he grew more strong. He held them up and laboured, and made the watchman, who was a poor creature, do all that he should do. He made him feel brave. This is the gift of the strong; the gift by which men know them. And at last the balloon stood up and tugged upon its ropes, made fast to an old boiler in the open space.

“It will carry — how many?” asked Crabb. This was a thing none had asked. It was a great balloon, built for a special race and for purposes of science, but it could not carry them all, and they knew it.

Lord Gervase whispered to him.

“Five at the most, Crabb.”

Including the watchman they were seven.

“I’ll stay, my lord,” said Crabb. “I can get on by myself, as you see.”

“You’re a brave man,” said Lord Gervase.

He was more than a brave man, this poor blind fellow. But for him what would they have done? By now they would have been dead. Through him they had one chance.

But if Crabb stayed, who was the other to be? They fought it out that night in the flat among the three — Lord Gervase, Crabb, and Bentley. The women stayed apart in another room, where some feared Lady Semple was dying.

“I’ll stay with those who can’t go,” said Crabb. They understood him. He could live. For him it was not dark. He had, as he said, eyes, and his strong and quiet mind could endure the horrors of which he told them. They knew he never told half, but their minds told them the rest.

“Let it be so, Crabb. You’ve saved us,” said Lord Gervase. “When this is over, ask what you like and you shall have it.”

“I’ll stay with Crabb, sir,” said Bentley. He too was brave, but his heart sank as he spoke.

“Your wife must go, then!”

“She must,” said Bentley.

“What about the watchman?” asked Crabb.

“If I stay he can go,” said Bentley. “He has helped; but for him we couldn’t have filled the balloon. Let him go.”

Bentley called to his wife. She came from the other flat and went to his voice, and leant upon him while he told her what they meant to do. She was a young girl still, no more than nineteen, and her soul was her husband’s in this hour.

“I’ll stay with you, Will.”

They could not move her. For when they spoke urgently she laughed at them in scorn. Every reason they urged for her safety was one for her man’s.

“I’d rather die with him. Don’t say any more. Let the watchman go,” said she. Bentley kissed her in the darkness, which was lighted for him by her faith and love, and she wept upon his heart.

“Take poor Lady Semple out of this place quickly,” she said, “or she will die.”

They knew it was the truth. Lord Gervase spoke.

“Then it’s Lady Semple and Miss Semple, myself and the watchman. Yet the balloon might carry five. It’s a pity.”

“So much the better chance for you, my lord,” said Bentley. The higher they could rise the greater chance there was of getting an air-current to carry them away from London. But they knew there might be none.

“Lose no time,” said Crabb. He was the strongest there. They needed a strong man, for if the fog could be worse it was now worse indeed. The heavy smoke of many fires ran along the ground; nothing but the calm that destroyed them kept them from being destroyed.

“Let’s go now,” said Crabb. He carried Lady Semple to the works in his arms, and as they went she spoke to him.

“Save my daughter, Crabb. I shall never get out alive.”

“We’ll save you both, and all of you, my lady,” said Crabb, cheerfully.

“Oh, it’s dreadful,” she moaned. “Am I blind, Crabb? I see nothing — nothing! I choke!”

“You’ll be in sunlight, God’s sunlight, in half an hour, my lady,” said Crabb. “Up above this there’s light — there must be; think of it — fine sunlight shining such as I’ve not seen these ten years, since I saw it out in India. ’Tis a sun there, my lady. I remember shining temples, gold and marble. Oh, yes, there’s sunlight up above.”

They came to the works and entered. The watchman greeted them nervously.

“You must take me, gentlemen; you must take me,” he cried, fearfully.

“Shut up,” said Crabb. “You’re going to be taken. Don’t act the cur.”

But the watchman was half mad. There were thousands mad that hour in London, and tens of thousands would be. Yes, there was sunlight up above, said Crabb. Oh, the brave man he was! Could there be sunlight, or had the sun been put out?

They laid the sick woman in the car, and she rested her head upon Julia’s knees. The watchman held to the basket-work and leapt in hurriedly. But Gervase North spoke with Crabb and Bentley.

“Stay here if you can, Crabb. You, Bentley, go back to your wife. She’ll be lonely. You’re both brave men — the bravest. I feel a cur to leave you. But you stay, Crabb. If there’s no wind up aloft we shall come down here — here! You understand?”

They understood and shook hands.

“I’d like to shake hands with Miss Julia, my lord,” said Crabb, in a queer, strained voice.

“Yes, yes,” said Lord Gervase. So Crabb spoke to the girl.

“Will you shake hands, miss?” Julia cried softly.

“Oh, yes; you’re a brave man.”

“You said years ago, ‘Poor blind man,’” said Crabb. He kissed her hand gently.

“Goodbye, miss.”

Gervase was in the car.

“You can let go, Crabb,” he said. “Goodbye, Bentley; goodbye, Crabb.”

“Good luck and God’s sunlight to you all,” said the blind man.

He and Bentley let the rope run slowly, easing it off round a heavy pipe of iron that lay by the big boiler.

“I’m at the end of the rope,” said Crabb. “Stand clear, Bentley. Goodbye, sir. Goodbye, miss.”

The balloon was invisible, the car unseen; the world was blank and awful.

“Let go,” said Gervase.

He heard a far dim voice below him cry “Goodbye,” and knew the earth had dropped away. He grasped Julia’s hand. Lady Semple fainted and was quiet. The watchman laughed. But Gervase looked up — up!

Above him he saw something — a dimness, a blur, a space. It was almost black, but visible; it was brown, it was yellow, and then grey. There was a dash of wonderful blue in it, and then they shot out into a magic and intolerable day of noon! The sun shone upon them, and far below lay a wonderful cloud with sunlight on it.

And the watchman giggled strangely. Julia shrank from him and held out her hand to her lover. They saw each other once more — their sight was their own again. But Gervase was grimed with the labour he had done; she hardly knew him. Even his voice was strange.

“Thank God! It’s wonderful!” she said. He bent and kissed her.

“My dearest!” he answered. And Lady Semple moaned and woke.

“Where am I?” she asked.

“In the daylight,” said Gervase.

“The poor men who were left!” cried Julia. She had never seen this Crabb with her eyes; she only knew him as a big shadow, a voice that was strong and yet trembled when he spoke to her. She knew he was a hero, and knew, as women must know, that he loved her. He was in the darkness beneath them.

But how wonderful the world was! The sun was glorious, the heaven above a perfect blue. The far cloud below was white, and yet in places a strange dun colour. It heaved and moved and rose and sank. Out of it came strange pillars of yellow clouds.

“What are they?” asked Julia, pointing into the void.

“Fires,” said her lover. He wondered if the balloon moved, and could not see that it did. There was no speck of cloud above them to say if the air moved.

Far away from the city, to the east and west, they saw a shining gleam of the river. The great cloud rested only on the town. They saw far off blue hills, and the far, far country adorned with happy little towns. Wrath lay only on the city; far away was peace. The lower river was full of ships. The outer world wondered at the end of things.

They rose no further. And they did not move. Gervase grasped Julia’s hand.

“You’re brave, my dear?”

It was a question, and she knew it.

“What is it, Gervase?”

“We don’t move, Julia. Neither up nor away from here.”

“What does that mean?”

She saw how grave he looked.

“What does it mean?”

“You’re brave and will be,” he said.

So she understood. He knew the balloon was slowly sinking. Perhaps there was a little leak in it.

They came slowly, very slowly, from the heights. But still the watchman chuckled, for he watched no longer. The golden cloud heaved close beneath them.

“We’re going down, down,” said the lovers. It was as though a ship sank in a turbid sea. A little grey cloud gathered about them. The sun lost its golden clear sharpness. And the watchman saw it and watched, and ceased to laugh.

“Do we go down again, sir?” he asked.

“Aye,” said Gervase. Lady Semple heard him, but saw nothing. The light of day grew dim. It was as though night fell about them. The sun went out and darkness gathered where they sank. They breathed uneasily and sank into utter blackness.

Down below Crabb waited, quietly wondering. He had taken Bentley home and had come back to the works by himself. He sat quiet as a stone — hoping, happy and unhappy. She was, at any rate, in sunshine. He thanked what gods there were for that. The time went. Perhaps a wind blew high up in the sunlight!

As he waited he heard a little sharp cry like that of a bat, and then a sudden rushing sound, and the flat sound of something striking earth not many yards from him. It was very horrible, for what fell was soft — humanly soft — and he knew it. He groped his way to where the thing fell, and his hands were wet when he touched it, and his heart failed him. But he felt again, and knew it was a man, or had been one, and not a woman. He felt a beard. It was the watchman. He sat by the body — by the wreck of the body — and wondered. Had Lord Gervase thrown him out? That was possible. Anything was possible. Or perhaps the man had gone mad. He knew he was unbalanced. There were few wholly sane in the great city. But if the balloon had been coming down, it must have ascended again.

“I’ll wait,” said Crabb. How long he waited he did not know. No clocks chimed. He had no sense of the hours; there was no light for him or for any. But at last — at last — he heard a far dim voice. It was not in the Street, for now none came there, or if they came they cried lamentably. It was far above him. The next moment he heard the faint light impact of the car; heard it rebound lightly and come down again, not twenty yards from where it had ascended.

“Is that you, my lord?” he asked.

A voice within two yards of him answered, “Yes, Crabb.”

“I’m sorry, sorry, my lord.” Now for a break from the story. Where do you think that this came from? Another site, that’s where. Sorry if you find this annoying, but you might want to find a site that does the work instead of stealing someone else’s work.

“It can’t be helped,” said Gervase. “Did you hear anything fall, Crabb?”

“Aye, my lord.”

“The watchman went mad and jumped out. We rose again, but sank once more. There’s no wind up there, Crabb. And Lady Semple’s dead, Crabb.”

Crabb heard Julia Semple weeping quietly, but he found a sheet of iron and dragged it over the hollow in which the watchman’s body lay before he went to the car.

“Make the ropes fast, Crabb,” said Lord Gervase.

Then they lifted Julia and her dead mother from the car. They laid the body apart.

“God help us,” said Gervase. “Where’s Bentley?”

“With his wife,” said Crabb.

“We must keep the balloon full and try again,” said Gervase. Crabb brought Bentley, and his wife came with him. The men fired the retorts and made more gas with infinite labour. Once more the balloon, which had become limp and flaccid, stood up boldly. There were five of them left. The car could carry five, but even with four they had done nothing. Before they did anything else they buried Lady Semple, and heaped earth upon the battered watchman. They thought then that it was day.

“We must go,” said Gervase.

Crabb stood apart once more, but Julia Semple spoke.

“Let Crabb come.”

“Oh, no, miss.”

“You must come, or I will not go.”

She took the blind man by the arm.

“Yes; come, Crabb. We owe everything to you,” said Gervase.

“I’ll come, then,” said Crabb. His voice was strained. They remembered it afterwards. Some folks have gifts in their voices: they mark the power of their nature, the strength of them.

Before they went up they lightened the car of every superfluous thing and cut away the guide-rope. They took little food with them, and even cast away their boots.

“It’s our last chance, Bentley,” said Lord Gervase. “We can’t make more gas, Crabb says.”

They got into the car again.

“I’ll cut the rope, my lord,” said Crabb.

“Aye,” said Gervase.

“Are we ready?”

“Yes.”

Crabb cut the rope, and they rose. But overhead the darkness was intense.

“We came through black and dun and yellow and grey before,” said Gervase. “And then the light — the light!”

Now they breathed again and saw a faint greyness, and then stars sparkling suddenly in deep dark blue, and far away to the west a thin, thin moon. It was night, the dark hour before the dawn. Towns shone with lights far below them, sparkling on the horizon.

“It’s night still,” they said.

Even as they spoke they saw in the east a little grey flame of dawn, a faint whiteness, a growth as of a lily opened.

“There’s the day!”

“I wish I could see it,” said Crabb.

“Poor blind man,” said Julia, and she pressed his big hand.

“That’s better than gold, missy. Oh, if I could see your face!” said Crabb.

“I’ve never seen yours,” she said, softly.

But the dawn rose like a magic palm in a desert. There was gold in the flame of it, and a heart of gold, and the upper limb of the sun grew out of the east, and she saw Crabb at last. Grimed though he was by labour she saw a strangely carved face, which was very calm and strong. The lids upon his sightless eyes were full and hid them. His mouth was like that of some strange Egyptian. It had power in it, and resolution.

“I see you now, Crabb,” she said to him.

The others looked at the dawn. Mrs Bentley wept softly.

“If I could only see you! May I touch your face, missy?”

She raised his hand to it and he felt its sweet, soft contours.

“You must be very beautiful,” he murmured. Then he said to Lord Gervase:

“Do we still rise, my lord?”

“I think so, Crabb,” Gervase answered.

“Look up, my lord. Is there a cloud above us?”

High in the zenith there was a faint wisp of vapour in a cool current.

“That cloud above moves, my lord,” said Bentley.

“We don’t move,” said Gervase, dully. “’Tis a thousand feet above us.”

“Can we cast out anything?” said Crabb, in an eager voice.

They cast out some clothes — aye, and some food and water.

“It’s not enough,” said Gervase. “But there’s a strong current high above us.”

“Oh, there’s enough,” said Crabb.

But they only stared at him.

“You’re blind, Crabb.”

“I can see things,” said Crabb. “I see if we go down we shall not rise again. I see that — and more.”

He bent his head to Julia.

“You see me, missy? Will you remember me?”

“Oh, yes, Crabb.”

He stood up and held the edge of the car.

“Sit down, man!” cried Bentley.

But he stared at the warmth of the sun, which he felt upon his pallid cheek.

“Oh, the sun’s good, though I cannot see it! And I’ve a sense of light in me! Goodbye, missy.”

He said that to Julia, and ere they knew what he did he threw himself from the car.

They saw his body fall, and Julia shrieked vainly. He fell into the cloud, but the balloon rose and entered the great wind of the upper air. And the heavy cloud below them slipped to the east.

“The Strand Magazine”, Oct. 1908

Midsummer Madness (1909)

AFTERWARD

Edith Wharton

1910

I

“Oh, there is one, of course, but you’ll never know it.”

The assertion, laughingly flung out six months earlier in a bright June garden, came back to Mary Boyne with a new perception of its significance as she stood, in the December dusk, waiting for the lamps to be brought into the library.

The words had been spoken by their friend Alida Stair, as they sat at tea on her lawn at Pangbourne, in reference to the very house of which the library in question was the central, the pivotal “feature.” Mary Boyne and her husband, in quest of a country place in one of the southern or southwestern counties, had, on their arrival in England, carried their problem straight to Alida Stair, who had successfully solved it in her own case; but it was not until they had rejected, almost capriciously, several practical and judicious suggestions that she threw out: “Well, there’s Lyng, in Dorsetshire. It belongs to Hugo’s cousins, and you can get it for a song.”

The reason she gave for its being obtainable on these terms — its remoteness from a station, its lack of electric light, hot-water pipes, and other vulgar necessities — were exactly those pleading in its favour with two romantic Americans perversely in search of the economic drawbacks which were associated, in their tradition, with unusual architectural felicities.

“I should never believe I was living in an old house unless I was thoroughly uncomfortable,” Ned Boyne, the more extravagant of the two, had jocosely insisted; “the least hint of ‘convenience’ would make me think it had been bought out of an exhibition, with the pieces numbered, and set up again.” And they had proceeded to enumerate, with humorous precision, their various doubts and demands, refusing to believe that the house their cousin recommended was really Tudor till they learned it had no heating system, or that the village church was literally in the grounds till she assured them of the deplorable uncertainty of the water-supply.

“It’s too uncomfortable to be true!” Edward Boyne had continued to exult as the avowal of each disadvantage was successively wrung from her; but he had cut short his rhapsody to ask, with a relapse to distrust: “And the ghost? You’ve been concealing from us the fact that there is no ghost!”

Mary, at the moment, had laughed with him, yet almost with her laugh, being possessed of several sets of independent perceptions, had been struck by a note of flatness in Alida’s answering hilarity.

“Oh, Dorsetshire’s full of ghosts, you know.”

“Yes, yes; but that won’t do. I don’t want to have to drive ten miles to see somebody else’s ghost. I want one of my own on the premises. Is there a ghost at Lyng?”

His rejoinder had made Alida laugh again, and it was then that she had flung back tantalisingly: “Oh, there is one, of course, but you’ll never know it.”

“Never know it?” Boyne pulled her up. “But what in the world constitutes a ghost except the fact of its being known for one?”

“I can’t say. But that’s the story.”

“That there’s a ghost, but that nobody knows it’s a ghost?”

“Well — not till afterward, at any rate.”

“Till afterward?”

“Not till long long afterward.”

“But if it’s once been identified as an unearthly visitant, why hasn’t its signalement [description] been handed down in the family? How has it managed to preserve its incognito?”

Alida could only shake her head. “Don’t ask me. But it has.”

“And then suddenly—” Mary spoke up as if from cavernous depths of divination — “suddenly, long afterward, one says to one’s self ‘That was it?’”

She was startled at the sepulchral sound with which her question fell on the banter of the other two, and she saw the shadow of the same surprise flit across Alida’s pupils. “I suppose so. One just has to wait.”

“Oh, hang waiting!” Ned broke in. “Life’s too short for a ghost who can only be enjoyed in retrospect. Can’t we do better than that, Mary?”

But it turned out that in the event they were not destined to, for within three months of their conversation with Mrs. Stair they were settled at Lyng, and the life they had yearned for, to the point of planning it in advance in all its daily details, had actually begun for them.

It was to sit, in the thick December dusk, by just such a wide-hooded fireplace, under just such black oak rafters, with the sense that beyond the mullioned panes the downs were darkened to a deeper solitude: it was for the ultimate indulgence of such sensations that Mary Boyne, abruptly exiled from New York by her husband’s business, had endured for nearly fourteen years the soul-deadening ugliness of a Middle Western town, and that Boyne had ground on doggedly at his engineering till, with a suddenness that still made her blink, the prodigious windfall of the Blue Star Mine had put them at a stroke in possession of life and the leisure to taste it. They had never for a moment meant their new state to be one of idleness; but they meant to give themselves only to harmonious activities. She had her vision of painting and gardening (against a background of grey walls), he dreamed of the production of his long-planned book on the “Economic Basis of Culture”; and with such absorbing work ahead no existence could be too sequestered: they could not get far enough from the world, or plunge deep enough into the past.

Dorsetshire had attracted them from the first by an air of remoteness out of all proportion to its geographical position. But to the Boynes it was one of the ever-recurring wonders of the whole incredibly compressed island — a nest of counties, as they put it — that for the production of its effects so little of a given quality went so far: that so few miles made a distance, and so short a distance a difference.

“It’s that,” Ned had once enthusiastically explained, “that gives such depth to their effects, such relief to their contrasts. They’ve been able to lay the butter so thick on every delicious mouthful.”

The butter had certainly been laid on thick at Lyng: the old house hidden under a shoulder of the downs had almost all the finer marks of commerce with a protracted past. The mere fact that it was neither large nor exceptional made it, to the Boynes, abound the more completely in its special charm — the charm of having been for centuries a deep dim reservoir of life. The life had probably not been of the most vivid order: for long periods, no doubt, it had fallen as noiselessly into the past as the quiet drizzle of autumn fell, hour after hour, into the fish-pond between the yews; but these back-waters of existence sometimes breed, in their sluggish depths, strange acuities of emotion, and Mary Boyne had felt from the first the mysterious stir of intenser memories.

The feeling had never been stronger than on this particular afternoon when, waiting in the library for the lamps to come, she rose from her seat and stood among the shadows of the hearth. Her husband had gone off, after luncheon, for one of his long tramps on the downs. She had noticed of late that he preferred to go alone; and, in the tried security of their personal relations, had been driven to conclude that his book was bothering him, and that he needed the afternoons to turn over in solitude the problems left from the morning’s work. Certainly the book was not going as smoothly as she had thought it would, and there were lines of perplexity between his eyes such as had never been there in his engineering days. He had often, then, looked fagged to the verge of illness, but the native demon of “worry” had never branded his brow. Yet the few pages he had so far read to her — the introduction, and a summary of the opening chapter — showed a firm hold on his subject, and an increasing confidence in his powers.

The fact threw her into deeper perplexity, since, now that he had done with “business” and its disturbing contingencies, the one other possible source of anxiety was eliminated. Unless it were his health, then? But physically he had gained since they had come to Dorsetshire, grown robuster, ruddier and fresher-eyed. It was only within the last week that she had felt in him the undefinable change which made her restless in his absence, and as tongue-tied in his presence as though it were she who had a secret to keep from him!

The thought that there was a secret somewhere between them struck her with a sudden rap of wonder, and she looked about her down the long room.

“Can it be the house?” she mused.

The room itself might have been full of secrets. They seemed to be piling themselves up, as evening fell, like the layers and layers of velvet shadow dropping from the low ceiling, the rows of books, the smoke-blurred sculpture of the hearth.

“Why, of course — the house is haunted!” she reflected.

The ghost — Alida’s imperceptible ghost — after figuring largely in the banter of their first month or two at Lyng, had been gradually left aside as too ineffectual for imaginative use. Mary had, indeed, as became the tenant of a haunted house, made the customary inquiries among her rural neighbours, but, beyond a vague “They dü say so, Ma’am,” the villagers had nothing to impart. The elusive spectre had apparently never had sufficient identity for a legend to crystallise about it, and after a time the Boynes had set the matter down to their profit-and-loss account, agreeing that Lyng was one of the few houses good enough in itself to dispense with supernatural enhancements.

“And I suppose, poor ineffectual demon, that’s why it beats its beautiful wings in vain in the void,” Mary had laughingly concluded.

“Or, rather,” Ned answered in the same strain, “why, amid so much that’s ghostly, it can never affirm its separate existence as the ghost.” And thereupon their invisible house-mate had finally dropped out of their references, which were numerous enough to make them soon unaware of the loss.

Now, as she stood on the hearth, the subject of their earlier curiosity revived in her with a new sense of its meaning — a sense gradually acquired through daily contact with the scene of the lurking mystery. It was the house itself, of course, that possessed the ghost-seeing faculty, that communed visually but secretly with its own past; if one could only get into close enough communion with the house, one might surprise its secret, and acquire the ghost-sight on one’s own account. Perhaps, in his long hours in this very room, where she never trespassed till the afternoon, her husband had acquired it already, and was silently carrying about the weight of whatever it had revealed to him. Mary was too well versed in the code of the spectral world not to know that one could not talk about the ghosts one saw: to do so was almost as great a breach of taste as to name a lady in a club. But this explanation did not really satisfy her. “What, after all, except for the fun of the shudder,” she reflected, “would he really care for any of their old ghosts?” And thence she was thrown back once more on the fundamental dilemma: the fact that one’s greater or less susceptibility to spectral influences had no particular bearing on the case, since, when one did see a ghost at Lyng, one did not know it.

“Not till long afterward,” Alida Stair had said. Well, supposing Ned had seen one when they first came, and had known only within the last week what had happened to him? More and more under the spell of the hour, she threw back her thoughts to the early days of their tenancy, but at first only to recall a lively confusion of unpacking, settling, arranging of books, and calling to each other from remote corners of the house as, treasure after treasure, it revealed itself to them. It was in this particular connection that she presently recalled a certain soft afternoon of the previous October, when, passing from the first rapturous flurry of exploration to a detailed inspection of the old house, she had pressed (like a novel heroine) a panel that opened on a flight of corkscrew stairs leading to a flat ledge of the roof — the roof which, from below, seemed to slope away on all sides too abruptly for any but practised feet to scale.

The view from this hidden coign was enchanting, and she had flown down to snatch Ned from his papers and give him the freedom of her discovery. She remembered still how, standing at her side, he had passed his arm about her while their gaze flew to the long tossed horizon-line of the downs, and then dropped contentedly back to trace the arabesque of yew hedges about the fish-pond, and the shadow of the cedar on the lawn.

“And now the other way,” he had said, turning her about within his arm; and closely pressed to him, she had absorbed, like some long satisfying draught, the picture of the grey-walled court, the squat lions on the gates, and the lime-avenue reaching up to the highroad under the downs.

It was just then, while they gazed and held each other, that she had felt his arm relax, and heard a sharp “Hullo!” that made her turn to glance at him.

Distinctly, yes, she now recalled that she had seen, as she glanced, a shadow of anxiety, of perplexity, rather, fall across his face; and, following his eyes, had beheld the figure of a man — a man in loose greyish clothes, as it appeared to her — who was sauntering down the lime-avenue to the court with the doubtful gait of a stranger who seeks his way. Her short-sighted eyes had given her but a blurred impression of slightness and greyishness, with something foreign, or at least unlocal, in the cut of the figure or its dress; but her husband had apparently seen more — seen enough to make him push past her with a hasty “Wait!” and dash down the stairs without pausing to give her a hand.

A slight tendency to dizziness obliged her, after a provisional clutch at the chimney against which they had been leaning, to follow him first more cautiously; and when she had reached the landing she paused again, for a less definite reason, leaning over the banister to strain her eyes through the silence of the brown sun-flecked depths. She lingered there till, somewhere in those depths, she heard the closing of a door; then, mechanically impelled, she went down the shallow flights of steps till she reached the lower hall.

The front door stood open on the sunlight of the court, and hall and court were empty. The library door was open, too, and after listening in vain for any sound of voices within, she crossed the threshold, and found her husband alone, vaguely fingering the papers on his desk.

He looked up, as if surprised at her entrance, but the shadow of anxiety had passed from his face, leaving it even, as she fancied, a little brighter and clearer than usual.

“What was it? Who was it?” she asked.

“Who?” he repeated, with the surprise still all on his side.

“The man we saw coming toward the house.”

He seemed to reflect. “The man? Why, I thought I saw Peters; I dashed after him to say a word about the stable drains, but he had disappeared before I could get down.”

“Disappeared? But he seemed to be walking so slowly when we saw him.”

Boyne shrugged his shoulders. “So I thought; but he must have got up steam in the interval. What do you say to our trying a scramble up Meldon Steep before sunset?”

That was all. At the time the occurrence had been less than nothing, had, indeed, been immediately obliterated by the magic of their first vision from Meldon Steep, a height which they had dreamed of climbing ever since they had first seen its bare spine rising above the roof of Lyng. Doubtless it was the mere fact of the other incident’s having occurred on the very day of their ascent to Meldon that had kept it stored away in the fold of memory from which it now emerged; for in itself it had no mark of the portentous. At the moment there could have been nothing more natural than that Ned should dash himself from the roof in the pursuit of dilatory tradesmen. It was the period when they were always on the watch for one or the other of the specialists employed about the place; always lying in wait for them, and rushing out at them with questions, reproaches or reminders. And certainly in the distance the grey figure had looked like Peters.

Yet now, as she reviewed the scene, she felt her husband’s explanation of it to have been invalidated by the look of anxiety on his face. Why had the familiar appearance of Peters made him anxious? Why, above all, if it was of such prime necessity to confer with him on the subject of the stable drains, had the failure to find him produced such a look of relief? Mary could not say that any one of these questions had occurred to her at the time, yet, from the promptness with which they now marshalled themselves at her summons, she had a sense that they must all along have been there, waiting their hour.

II

Weary with her thoughts, she moved to the window. The library was now quite dark, and she was surprised to see how much faint light the outer world still held.

As she peered out into it across the court, a figure shaped itself far down the perspective of bare limes: it looked a mere blot of deeper grey in the greyness, and for an instant, as it moved toward her, her heart thumped to the thought “It’s the ghost!”

She had time, in that long instant, to feel suddenly that the man of whom, two months earlier, she had had a distant vision from the roof, was now, at his predestined hour, about to reveal himself as not having been Peters; and her spirit sank under the impending fear of the disclosure. But almost with the next tick of the clock the figure, gaining substance and character, showed itself even to her weak sight as her husband’s; and she turned to meet him, as he entered, with the confession of her folly.

“It’s really too absurd,” she laughed out, “but I never can remember!”

“Remember what?” Boyne questioned as they drew together.

“That when one sees the Lyng ghost one never knows it.”

Her hand was on his sleeve, and he kept it there, but with no response in his gesture or in the lines of his preoccupied face.

“Did you think you’d seen it?” he asked, after an appreciable interval.

“Why, I actually took you for it, my dear, in my mad determination to spot it!”

“Me — just now?” His arm dropped away, and he turned from her with a faint echo of her laugh. “Really, dearest, you’d better give it up, if that’s the best you can do.”

“Oh, yes, I give it up. Have you?” she asked, turning round on him abruptly.

The parlour-maid had entered with letters and a lamp, and the light struck up into Boyne’s face as he bent above the tray she presented.

“Have you?” Mary perversely insisted, when the servant had disappeared on her errand of illumination.

“Have I what?” he rejoined absently, the light bringing out the sharp stamp of worry between his brows as he turned over the letters.

“Given up trying to see the ghost.” Her heart beat a little at the experiment she was making.

Her husband, laying his letters aside, moved away into the shadow of the hearth.

“I never tried,” he said, tearing open the wrapper of a newspaper.

“Well, of course,” Mary persisted, “the exasperating thing is that there’s no use trying, since one can’t be sure till so long afterward.”

He was unfolding the paper as if he had hardly heard her; but after a pause, during which the sheets rustled spasmodically between his hands, he looked up to ask, “Have you any idea how long?”

Mary had sunk into a low chair beside the fireplace. From her seat she glanced over, startled, at her husband’s profile, which was projected against the circle of lamplight.

“No; none. Have you?” she retorted, repeating her former phrase with an added stress of intention.

Boyne crumpled the paper into a bunch, and then, inconsequently, turned back with it toward the lamp.

“Lord, no! I only meant,” he explained, with a faint tinge of impatience, “is there any legend, any tradition, as to that?”

“Not that I know of,” she answered; but the impulse to add “What makes you ask?” was checked by the reappearance of the parlour-maid, with tea and a second lamp.

With the dispersal of shadows, and the repetition of the daily domestic office, Mary Boyne felt herself less oppressed by that sense of something mutely imminent which had darkened her afternoon. For a few moments she gave herself to the details of her task, and when she looked up from it she was struck to the point of bewilderment by the change in her husband’s face. He had seated himself near the farther lamp, and was absorbed in the perusal of his letters; but was it something he had found in them, or merely the shifting of her own point of view, that had restored his features to their normal aspect? The longer she looked the more definitely the change affirmed itself. The lines of tension had vanished, and such traces of fatigue as lingered were of the kind easily attributable to steady mental effort. He glanced up, as if drawn by her gaze, and met her eyes with a smile.

“I’m dying for my tea, you know; and here’s a letter for you,” he said.

She took the letter he held out in exchange for the cup she proffered him, and, returning to her seat, broke the seal with the languid gesture of the reader whose interests are all enclosed in the circle of one cherished presence.

Her next conscious motion was that of starting to her feet, the letter falling to them as she rose, while she held out to her husband a newspaper clipping.

“Ned! What’s this? What does it mean?”

He had risen at the same instant, almost as if hearing her cry before she uttered it; and for a perceptible space of time he and she studied each other, like adversaries watching for an advantage, across the space between her chair and his desk.

“What’s what? You fairly made me jump!” Boyne said at length, moving toward her with a sudden half-exasperated laugh. The shadow of apprehension was on his face again, not now a look of fixed foreboding, but a shifting vigilance of lips and eyes that gave her the sense of his feeling himself invisibly surrounded.

Her hand shook so that she could hardly give him the clipping.

“This article — from the Waukesha Sentinel — that a man named Elwell has brought suit against you — that there was something wrong about the Blue Star Mine. I can’t understand more than half.”

They continued to face each other as she spoke, and to her astonishment she saw that her words had the almost immediate effect of dissipating the strained watchfulness of his look.

“Oh, that!” He glanced down the printed slip, and then folded it with the gesture of one who handles something harmless and familiar. “What’s the matter with you this afternoon, Mary? I thought you’d got bad news.”

She stood before him with her undefinable terror subsiding slowly under the reassurance of his tone.

“You knew about this, then — it’s all right?”

“Certainly I knew about it; and it’s all right.”

“But what is it? I don’t understand. What does this man accuse you of?”

“Pretty nearly every crime in the calendar.” Boyne had tossed the clipping down, and thrown himself into an armchair near the fire. “Do you want to hear the story? It’s not particularly interesting — just a squabble over interests in the Blue Star.”

“But who is this Elwell? I don’t know the name.”

“Oh, he’s a fellow I put into it — gave him a hand up. I told you all about him at the time.”

“I daresay. I must have forgotten.” Vainly she strained back among her memories. “But if you helped him, why does he make this return?”

“Probably some shyster lawyer got hold of him and talked him over. It’s all rather technical and complicated. I thought that kind of thing bored you.”

His wife felt a sting of compunction. Theoretically, she deprecated the American wife’s detachment from her husband’s professional interests, but in practice she had always found it difficult to fix her attention on Boyne’s report of the transactions in which his varied interests involved him. Besides, she had felt during their years of exile, that, in a community where the amenities of living could be obtained only at the cost of efforts as arduous as her husband’s professional labours, such brief leisure as he and she could command should be used as an escape from immediate preoccupations, a flight to the life they always dreamed of living. Once or twice, now that this new life had actually drawn its magic circle about them, she had asked herself if she had done right; but hitherto such conjectures had been no more than the retrospective excursions of an active fancy. Now, for the first time, it startled her a little to find how little she knew of the material foundation on which her happiness was built.

She glanced at her husband, and was again reassured by the composure of his face; yet she felt the need of more definite grounds for her reassurance.

“But doesn’t this suit worry you? Why have you never spoken to me about it?”

He answered both questions at once. “I didn’t speak of it at first because it did worry me — annoyed me, rather. But it’s all ancient history now. Your correspondent must have got hold of a back number of the Sentinel.”

She felt a quick thrill of relief. “You mean it’s over? He’s lost his case?”

There was a just perceptible delay in Boyne’s reply. “The suit’s been withdrawn — that’s all.”

But she persisted, as if to exonerate herself from the inward charge of being too easily put off. “Withdrawn it because he saw he had no chance?”

“Oh, he had no chance,” Boyne answered.

She was still struggling with a dimly felt perplexity at the back of her thoughts.

“How long ago was it withdrawn?”

He paused, as if with a slight return of his former uncertainty. “I’ve just had the news now; but I’ve been expecting it.”

“Just now — in one of your letters?”

“Yes; in one of my letters.”

She made no answer, and was aware only, after a short interval of waiting, that he had risen, and, strolling across the room, had placed himself on the sofa at her side. She felt him, as he did so, pass an arm about her, she felt his hand seek hers and clasp it, and turning slowly, drawn by the warmth of his cheek, she met his smiling eyes.

“It’s all right — it’s all right?” she questioned, through the flood of her dissolving doubts; and “I give you my word it was never righter!” he laughed back at her, holding her close.

III

One of the strangest things she was afterward to recall out of all the next day’s strangeness was the sudden and complete recovery of her sense of security.

It was in the air when she woke in her low-ceiled, dusky room; it went with her downstairs to the breakfast-table, flashed out at her from the fire, and reduplicated itself from the flanks of the urn and the sturdy flutings of the Georgian teapot. It was as if, in some roundabout way, all her diffused fears of the previous day, with their moment of sharp concentration about the newspaper article — as if this dim questioning of the future, and startled return upon the past, had between them liquidated the arrears of some haunting moral obligation. If she had indeed been careless of her husband’s affairs, it was, her new state seemed to prove, because her faith in him instinctively justified such carelessness; and his right to her faith had now affirmed itself in the very face of menace and suspicion. She had never seen him more untroubled, more naturally and unconsciously himself, than after the cross-examination to which she had subjected him: it was almost as if he had been aware of her doubts, and had wanted the air cleared as much as she did.

It was as clear, thank Heaven! as the bright outer light that surprised her almost with a touch of summer when she issued from the house for her daily round of the gardens. She had left Boyne at his desk, indulging herself, as she passed the library door, by a last peep at his quiet face, where he bent, pipe in mouth, above his papers; and now she had her own morning’s task to perform. The task involved, on such charmed winter days, almost as much happy loitering about the different quarters of her demesne as if spring were already at work there. There were such endless possibilities still before her, such opportunities to bring out the latent graces of the old place, without a single irreverent touch of alteration, that the winter was all too short to plan what spring and autumn executed. And her recovered sense of safety gave, on this particular morning, a peculiar zest to her progress through the sweet still place. She went first to the kitchen-garden, where the espaliered pear-trees drew complicated patterns on the walls, and pigeons were fluttering and preening about the silvery-slated roof of their cot. There was something wrong about the piping of the hothouse, and she was expecting an authority from Dorchester, who was to drive out between trains and make a diagnosis of the boiler. But when she dipped into the damp heat of the greenhouses, among the spiced scents and waxy pinks and reds of old-fashioned exotics — even the flora of Lyng was in the note! — she learned that the great man had not arrived, and, the day being too rare to waste in an artificial atmosphere, she came out again and paced along the springy turf of the bowling-green to the gardens behind the house. At their farther end rose a grass terrace, looking across the fish-pond and yew hedges to the long house-front with its twisted chimney-stacks and blue roof angles all drenched in the pale gold moisture of the air.

Seen thus, across the level tracery of the gardens, it sent her, from open windows and hospitably smoking chimneys, the look of some warm human presence, of a mind slowly ripened on a sunny wall of experience. She had never before had such a sense of her intimacy with it, such a conviction that its secrets were all beneficent, kept, as they said to children, “for one’s good,” such a trust in its power to gather up her life and Ned’s into the harmonious pattern of the long long story it sat there weaving in the sun.

She heard steps behind her, and turned, expecting to see the gardener accompanied by the engineer from Dorchester. But only one figure was in sight, that of a youngish slightly built man, who, for reasons she could not on the spot have given, did not remotely resemble her notion of an authority on hothouse boilers. The newcomer, on seeing her, lifted his hat, and paused with the air of a gentleman — perhaps a traveller — who wishes to make it known that his intrusion is involuntary. Lyng occasionally attracted the more cultivated traveller, and Mary half-expected to see the stranger dissemble a camera, or justify his presence by producing it. But he made no gesture of any sort, and after a moment she asked, in a tone responding to the courteous hesitation of his attitude: “Is there anyone you wish to see?”

“I came to see Mr. Boyne,” he answered. His intonation, rather than his accent, was faintly American, and Mary, at the note, looked at him more closely. The brim of his soft felt hat cast a shade on his face, which, thus obscured, wore to her short-sighted gaze a look of seriousness, as of a person arriving “on business,” and civilly but firmly aware of his rights.

Past experience had made her equally sensible to such claims; but she was jealous of her husband’s morning hours, and doubtful of his having given anyone the right to intrude on them.

“Have you an appointment with my husband?” she asked.

The visitor hesitated, as if unprepared for the question.

“I think he expects me,” he replied.

It was Mary’s turn to hesitate. “You see this is his time for work: he never sees anyone in the morning.”

He looked at her a moment without answering; then, as if accepting her decision, he began to move away. As he turned, Mary saw him pause and glance up at the peaceful house-front. Something in his air suggested weariness and disappointment, the dejection of the traveller who has come from far off and whose hours are limited by the timetable. It occurred to her that if this were the case her refusal might have made his errand vain, and a sense of compunction caused her to hasten after him.

“May I ask if you have come a long way?”

He gave her the same grave look. “Yes — I have come a long way.”

“Then, if you’ll go to the house, no doubt my husband will see you now. You’ll find him in the library.”

She did not know why she had added the last phrase, except from a vague impulse to atone for her previous inhospitality. The visitor seemed about to express his thanks, but her attention was distracted by the approach of the gardener with a companion who bore all the marks of being the expert from Dorchester.

“This way,” she said, waving the stranger to the house; and an instant later she had forgotten him in the absorption of her meeting with the boiler-maker.

The encounter led to such far-reaching results that the engineer ended by finding it expedient to ignore his train, and Mary was beguiled into spending the remainder of the morning in absorbed confabulation among the flowerpots. When the colloquy ended, she was surprised to find that it was nearly luncheon-time, and she half expected, as she hurried back to the house, to see her husband coming out to meet her. But she found no one in the court but an under-gardener raking the gravel, and the hall, when she entered it, was so silent that she guessed Boyne to be still at work.

Not wishing to disturb him, she turned into the drawing-room, and there, at her writing-table, lost herself in renewed calculations of the outlay to which the morning’s conference had pledged her. The fact that she could permit herself such follies had not yet lost its novelty; and somehow, in contrast to the vague fears of the previous days, it now seemed an element of her recovered security, of the sense that, as Ned had said, things in general had never been “righter.”

She was still luxuriating in a lavish play of figures when the parlour-maid, from the threshold, roused her with an enquiry as to the expediency of serving luncheon. It was one of their jokes that Trimmle announced luncheon as if she were divulging a state secret, and Mary, intent upon her papers, merely murmured an absent-minded assent.

She felt Trimmle wavering doubtfully on the threshold, as if in rebuke of such unconsidered assent; then her retreating steps sounded down the passage, and Mary, pushing away her papers, crossed the hall and went to the library door. It was still closed, and she wavered in her turn, disliking to disturb her husband, yet anxious that he should not exceed his usual measure of work. As she stood there, balancing her impulses, Trimmle returned with the announcement of luncheon, and Mary, thus impelled, opened the library door.

Boyne was not at his desk, and she peered about her, expecting to discover him before the bookshelves, somewhere down the length of the room; but her call brought no response, and gradually it became clear to her that he was not there.

She turned back to the parlour-maid.

“Mr. Boyne must be upstairs. Please tell him that luncheon is ready.”

Trimmle appeared to hesitate between the obvious duty of obedience and an equally obvious conviction of the foolishness of the injunction laid on her. The struggle resulted in her saying: “If you please, Madam, Mr. Boyne’s not upstairs.”

“Not in his room? Are you sure?”

“I’m sure, Madam.”

Mary consulted the clock. “Where is he, then?”

“He’s gone out,” Trimmle announced, with the superior air of one who has respectfully waited for the question that a well-ordered mind would have put first.

Mary’s conjecture had been right, then. Boyne must have gone to the gardens to meet her, and since she had missed him, it was clear that he had taken the shorter way by the south door, instead of going round to the court. She crossed the hall to the French window opening directly on the yew garden, but the parlour-maid, after another moment of inner conflict, decided to bring out: “Please, Madam, Mr. Boyne didn’t go that way.”

Mary turned back. “Where did he go? And when?”

“He went out of the front door, up the drive, Madam.” It was a matter of principle with Trimmle never to answer more than one question at a time.

“Up the drive? At this hour?” Mary went to the door herself, and glanced across the court through the tunnel of bare limes. But its perspective was as empty as when she had scanned it on entering.

“Did Mr. Boyne leave no message?”

Trimmle seemed to surrender herself to a last struggle with the forces of chaos.

“No, Madam. He just went out with the gentleman.”

“The gentleman? What gentleman?” Mary wheeled about, as if to front this new factor.

“The gentleman who called, Madam,” said Trimmle resignedly.

“When did a gentleman call? Do explain yourself, Trimmle!”

Only the fact that Mary was very hungry, and that she wanted to consult her husband about the greenhouses, would have caused her to lay so unusual an injunction on her attendant; and even now she was detached enough to note in Trimmle’s eye the dawning defiance of the respectful subordinate who has been pressed too hard.

“I couldn’t exactly say the hour, Madam, because I didn’t let the gentleman in,” she replied, with an air of discreetly ignoring the irregularity of her mistress’s course.

“You didn’t let him in?”

“No, Madam. When the bell rang I was dressing, and Agnes—”

“Go and ask Agnes, then,” said Mary.

Trimmle still wore her look of patient magnanimity. “Agnes would not know, Madam, for she had unfortunately burnt her hand in trimming the wick of the new lamp from town” — Trimmle, as Mary was aware, had always been opposed to the new lamp — “and so Mrs. Dockett sent the kitchen-maid instead.”

Mary looked again at the clock. “It’s after two! Go and ask the kitchen-maid if Mr. Boyne left any word.”

She went into luncheon without waiting, and Trimmle presently brought her there the kitchen-maid’s statement that the gentleman had called about eleven o’clock, and that Mr. Boyne had gone out with him without leaving any message. The kitchen-maid did not even know the caller’s name, for he had written it on a slip of paper, which he had folded and handed to her, with the injunction to deliver it at once to Mr. Boyne.

Mary finished her luncheon, still wondering, and when it was over, and Trimmle had brought the coffee to the drawing-room, her wonder had deepened to a first faint tinge of disquietude. It was unlike Boyne to absent himself without explanation at so unwonted an hour, and the difficulty of identifying the visitor whose summons he had apparently obeyed made his disappearance the more unaccountable. Mary Boyne’s experience as the wife of a busy engineer, subject to sudden calls and compelled to keep irregular hours, had trained her to the philosophic acceptance of surprises; but since Boyne’s withdrawal from business he had adopted a Benedictine regularity of life. As if to make up for the dispersed and agitated years, with their “stand-up” lunches, and dinners rattled down to the joltings of the dining-cars, he cultivated the last refinements of punctuality and monotony, discouraging his wife’s fancy for the unexpected, and declaring that to a delicate taste there were infinite gradations of pleasure in the recurrences of habit.

Still, since no life can completely defend itself from the unforeseen, it was evident that all Boyne’s precautions would sooner or later prove unavailable, and Mary concluded that he had cut short a tiresome visit by walking with his caller to the station, or at least accompanying him for part of the way.

This conclusion relieved her from farther preoccupation, and she went out herself to take up her conference with the gardener. Thence she walked to the village post-office, a mile or so away; and when she turned toward home the early twilight was setting in.

She had taken a footpath across the downs, and as Boyne, meanwhile, had probably returned from the station by the highroad, there was little likelihood of their meeting. She felt sure, however, of his having reached the house before her; so sure that, when she entered it herself, without even pausing to inquire of Trimmle, she made directly for the library. But the library was still empty, and with an unwonted exactness of visual memory she observed that the papers on her husband’s desk lay precisely as they had lain when she had gone in to call him to luncheon.

Then of a sudden she was seized by a vague dread of the unknown. She had closed the door behind her on entering, and as she stood alone in the long silent room, her dread seemed to take shape and sound, to be there breathing and lurking among the shadows. Her short-sighted eyes strained through them, half-discerning an actual presence, something aloof, that watched and knew; and in the recoil from that intangible presence she threw herself on the bell-rope and gave it a sharp pull.

The sharp summons brought Trimmle in precipitately with a lamp, and Mary breathed again at this sobering reappearance of the usual.

“You may bring tea if Mr. Boyne is in,” she said, to justify her ring.

“Very well, Madam. But Mr. Boyne is not in,” said Trimmle, putting down the lamp.

“Not in? You mean he’s come back and gone out again?”

“No, Madam. He’s never been back.”

The dread stirred again, and Mary knew that now it had her fast.

“Not since he went out with — the gentleman?”

“Not since he went out with the gentleman.”

“But who was the gentleman?” Mary insisted, with the shrill note of someone trying to be heard through a confusion of noises.

“That I couldn’t say, Madam.” Trimmle, standing there by the lamp, seemed suddenly to grow less round and rosy, as though eclipsed by the same creeping shade of apprehension.

“But the kitchen-maid knows — wasn’t it the kitchen-maid who let him in?”

“She doesn’t know either, Madam, for he wrote his name on a folded paper.”

Mary, through her agitation, was aware that they were both designating the unknown visitor by a vague pronoun, instead of the conventional formula which, till then, had kept their allusions within the bounds of conformity. And at the same moment her mind caught at the suggestion of the folded paper.

“But he must have a name! Where’s the paper?”

She moved to the desk, and began to turn over the documents that littered it. The first that caught her eye was an unfinished letter in her husband’s hand, with his pen lying across it, as though dropped there at a sudden summons.

“My dear Parvis” — who was Parvis? — “I have just received your letter announcing Elwell’s death, and while I suppose there is now no farther risk of trouble, it might be safer—”

She tossed the sheet aside, and continued her search; but no folded paper was discoverable among the letters and pages of manuscript which had been swept together in a heap, as if by a hurried or a startled gesture.

“But the kitchen-maid saw him. Send her here,” she commanded, wondering at her dullness in not thinking sooner of so simple a solution.

Trimmle vanished in a flash, as if thankful to be out of the room, and when she reappeared, conducting the agitated underling, Mary had regained her self-possession, and had her questions ready.

The gentleman was a stranger, yes — that she understood. But what had he said? And, above all, what had he looked like? The first question was easily enough answered, for the disconcerting reason that he had said so little — had merely asked for Mr. Boyne, and, scribbling something on a bit of paper, had requested that it should at once be carried in to him.

“Then you don’t know what he wrote? You’re not sure it was his name?”

The kitchen-maid was not sure, but supposed it was, since he had written it in answer to her inquiry as to whom she should announce.

“And when you carried the paper in to Mr. Boyne, what did he say?”

The kitchen-maid did not think that Mr. Boyne had said anything, but she could not be sure, for just as she had handed him the paper and he was opening it, she had become aware that the visitor had followed her into the library, and she had slipped out, leaving the two gentlemen together.

“But then, if you left them in the library, how do you know that they went out of the house?”

This question plunged the witness into a momentary inarticulateness, from which she was rescued by Trimmle, who, by means of ingenious circumlocutions, elicited the statement that before she could cross the hall to the back passage she had heard the two gentlemen behind her, and had seen them go out of the front door together.

“Then, if you saw the strange gentleman twice, you must be able to tell me what he looked like.”

But with this final challenge to her powers of expression it became clear that the limit of the kitchen-maid’s endurance had been reached. The obligation of going to the front door to “show in” a visitor was in itself so subversive of the fundamental order of things that it had thrown her faculties into hopeless disarray, and she could only stammer out, after various panting efforts: “His hat, mum, was different-like, as you might say—”

“Different? How different?” Mary flashed out, her own mind, in the same instant, leaping back to an image left on it that morning, and then lost under layers of subsequent impressions.

“His hat had a wide brim, you mean? and his face was pale — a youngish face?” Mary pressed her, with a white-lipped intensity of interrogation. But if the kitchen-maid found any adequate answer to this challenge, it was swept away for her listener down the rushing current of her own convictions. The stranger — the stranger in the garden! Why had Mary not thought of him before? She needed no one now to tell her that it was he who had called for her husband and gone away with him. But who was he, and why had Boyne obeyed him?

IV

It leaped out at her suddenly, like a grin out of the dark, that they had often called England so little — “such a confoundedly hard place to get lost in.”

A confoundedly hard place to get lost in! That had been her husband’s phrase. And now, with the whole machinery of official investigation sweeping its flash-lights from shore to shore, and across the dividing straits; now, with Boyne’s name blazing from the walls of every town and village, his portrait (how that wrung her!) hawked up and down the country like the image of a hunted criminal; now the little compact populous island, so policed, surveyed and administered, revealed itself as a Sphinx-like guardian of abysmal mysteries, staring back into his wife’s anguished eyes as if with the wicked joy of knowing something they would never know!

In the fortnight since Boyne’s disappearance there had been no word of him, no trace of his movements. Even the usual misleading reports that raise expectancy in tortured bosoms had been few and fleeting. No one but the kitchen-maid had seen Boyne leave the house, and no one else had seen “the gentleman” who accompanied him. All enquiries in the neighbourhood failed to elicit the memory of a stranger’s presence that day in the neighbourhood of Lyng. And no one had met Edward Boyne, either alone or in company, in any of the neighbouring villages, or on the road across the downs, or at either of the local railway-stations. The sunny English noon had swallowed him as completely as if he had gone out into Cimmerian night.

Mary, while every official means of investigation was working at its highest pressure, had ransacked her husband’s papers for any trace of antecedent complications, of entanglements or obligations unknown to her, that might throw a ray into the darkness. But if any such had existed in the background of Boyne’s life, they had vanished like the slip of paper on which the visitor had written his name. There remained no possible thread of guidance except — if it were indeed an exception — the letter which Boyne had apparently been in the act of writing when he received his mysterious summons. That letter, read and reread by his wife, and submitted by her to the police, yielded little enough to feed conjecture.

“I have just heard of Elwell’s death, and while I suppose there is now no farther risk of trouble, it might be safer—” That was all. The “risk of trouble” was easily explained by the newspaper clipping which had apprised Mary of the suit brought against her husband by one of his associates in the Blue Star enterprise. The only new information conveyed by the letter was the fact of its showing Boyne, when he wrote it, to be still apprehensive of the results of the suit, though he had told his wife that it had been withdrawn, and though the letter itself proved that the plaintiff was dead. It took several days of cabling to fix the identity of the “Parvis” to whom the fragment was addressed, but even after these enquiries had shown him to be a Waukesha lawyer, no new facts concerning the Elwell suit were elicited. He appeared to have had no direct concern in it, but to have been conversant with the facts merely as an acquaintance, and possible intermediary; and he declared himself unable to guess with what object Boyne intended to seek his assistance.

This negative information, sole fruit of the first fortnight’s search, was not increased by a jot during the slow weeks that followed. Mary knew that the investigations were still being carried on, but she had a vague sense of their gradually slackening, as the actual march of time seemed to slacken. It was as though the days, flying horror-struck from the shrouded image of the one inscrutable day, gained assurance as the distance lengthened, till at last they fell back into their normal gait. And so with the human imaginations at work on the dark event. No doubt it occupied them still, but week by week and hour by hour it grew less absorbing, took up less space, was slowly but inevitably crowded out of the foreground of consciousness by the new problems perpetually bubbling up from the cloudy cauldron of human experience.

Even Mary Boyne’s consciousness gradually felt the same lowering of velocity. It still swayed with the incessant oscillations of conjecture; but they were slower, more rhythmical in their beat. There were even moments of weariness when, like the victim of some poison which leaves the brain clear, but holds the body motionless, she saw herself domesticated with the Horror, accepting its perpetual presence as one of the fixed conditions of life.

These moments lengthened into hours and days, till she passed into a phase of stolid acquiescence. She watched the routine of daily life with the incurious eye of a savage on whom the meaningless processes of civilisation make but the faintest impression. She had come to regard herself as part of the routine, a spoke of the wheel, revolving with its motion; she felt almost like the furniture of the room in which she sat, an insensate object to be dusted and pushed about with the chairs and tables. And this deepening apathy held her fast at Lyng, in spite of the entreaties of friends and the usual medical recommendation of “change.” Her friends supposed that her refusal to move was inspired by the belief that her husband would one day return to the spot from which he had vanished, and a beautiful legend grew up about this imaginary state of waiting. But in reality she had no such belief: the depths of anguish enclosing her were no longer lighted by flashes of hope. She was sure that Boyne would never come back, that he had gone out of her sight as completely as if Death itself had waited that day on the threshold. She had even renounced, one by one, the various theories as to his disappearance which had been advanced by the press, the police, and her own agonised imagination. In sheer lassitude her mind turned from these alternatives of horror, and sank back into the blank fact that he was gone.

No, she would never know what had become of him — no one would ever know. But the house knew; the library in which she spent her long lonely evenings knew. For it was here that the last scene had been enacted, here that the stranger had come, and spoken the word which had caused Boyne to rise and follow him. The floor she trod had felt his tread; the books on the shelves had seen his face; and there were moments when the intense consciousness of the old dusky walls seemed about to break out into some audible revelation of their secret. But the revelation never came, and she knew it would never come. Lyng was not one of the garrulous old houses that betray the secrets entrusted to them. Its very legend proved that it had always been the mute accomplice, the incorruptible custodian, of the mysteries it had surprised. And Mary Boyne, sitting face to face with its silence, felt the futility of seeking to break it by any human means.

V

“I don’t say it wasn’t straight, and yet I don’t say it was straight. It was business.”

Mary, at the words, lifted her head with a start, and looked intently at the speaker.

When, half an hour before, a card with “Mr. Parvis” on it had been brought up to her, she had been immediately aware that the name had been a part of her consciousness ever since she had read it at the head of Boyne’s unfinished letter. In the library she had found awaiting her a small sallow man with a bald head and gold eyeglasses, and it sent a tremor through her to know that this was the person to whom her husband’s last known thought had been directed.

Parvis, civilly, but without vain preamble — in the manner of a man who has his watch in his hand — had set forth the object of his visit. He had “run over” to England on business, and finding himself in the neighbourhood of Dorchester, had not wished to leave it without paying his respects to Mrs. Boyne; and without asking her, if the occasion offered, what she meant to do about Bob Elwell’s family.

The words touched the spring of some obscure dread in Mary’s bosom. Did her visitor, after all, know what Boyne had meant by his unfinished phrase? She asked for an elucidation of his question, and noticed at once that he seemed surprised at her continued ignorance of the subject. Was it possible that she really knew as little as she said?

“I know nothing — you must tell me,” she faltered out; and her visitor thereupon proceeded to unfold his story. It threw, even to her confused perceptions, and imperfectly initiated vision, a lurid glare on the whole hazy episode of the Blue Star Mine. Her husband had made his money in that brilliant speculation at the cost of “getting ahead” of someone less alert to seize the chance; and the victim of his ingenuity was young Robert Elwell, who had “put him on” to the Blue Star scheme.

Parvis, at Mary’s first cry, had thrown her a sobering glance through his impartial glasses.

“Bob Elwell wasn’t smart enough, that’s all; if he had been, he might have turned round and served Boyne the same way. It’s the kind of thing that happens every day in business. I guess it’s what the scientists call the survival of the fittest — see?” said Mr. Parvis, evidently pleased with the aptness of his analogy.

Mary felt a physical shrinking from the next question she tried to frame: it was as though the words on her lips had a taste that nauseated her.

“But then — you accuse my husband of doing something dishonourable?”

Mr. Parvis surveyed the question dispassionately. “Oh, no, I don’t. I don’t even say it wasn’t straight.” He glanced up and down the long lines of books, as if one of them might have supplied him with the definition he sought. “I don’t say it wasn’t straight, and yet I don’t say it was straight. It was business.” After all, no definition in his category could be more comprehensive than that.

Mary sat staring at him with a look of terror. He seemed to her like the indifferent emissary of some evil power.

“But Mr. Elwell’s lawyers apparently did not take your view, since I suppose the suit was withdrawn by their advice.”

“Oh, yes; they knew he hadn’t a leg to stand on, technically. It was when they advised him to withdraw the suit that he got desperate. You see, he’d borrowed most of the money he lost in the Blue Star, and he was up a tree. That’s why he shot himself when they told him he had no show.”

The horror was sweeping over Mary in great deafening waves.

“He shot himself? He killed himself because of that?”

“Well, he didn’t kill himself, exactly. He dragged on two months before he died.” Parvis emitted the statement as unemotionally as a gramophone grinding out its “record.”

“You mean that he tried to kill himself, and failed? And tried again?”

“Oh, he didn’t have to try again,” said Parvis grimly.

They sat opposite each other in silence, he swinging his eyeglasses thoughtfully about his finger, she, motionless, her arms stretched along her knees in an attitude of rigid tension.

“But if you knew all this,” she began at length, hardly able to force her voice above a whisper, “how is it that when I wrote you at the time of my husband’s disappearance you said you didn’t understand his letter?”

Parvis received this without perceptible embarrassment: “Why, I didn’t understand it — strictly speaking. And it wasn’t the time to talk about it, if I had. The Elwell business was settled when the suit was withdrawn. Nothing I could have told you would have helped you to find your husband.”

Mary continued to scrutinise him. “Then why are you telling me now?”

Still Parvis did not hesitate. “Well, to begin with, I supposed you knew more than you appear to — I mean about the circumstances of Elwell’s death. And then people are talking of it now; the whole matter’s been raked up again. And I thought if you didn’t know you ought to.”

She remained silent, and he continued: “You see, it’s only come out lately what a bad state Elwell’s affairs were in. His wife’s a proud woman, and she fought on as long as she could, going out to work, and taking sewing at home when she got too sick — something with the heart, I believe. But she had his mother to look after, and the children, and she broke down under it, and finally had to ask for help. That called attention to the case, and the papers took it up, and a subscription was started. Everybody out there liked Bob Elwell, and most of the prominent names in the place are down on the list, and people began to wonder why—”

Parvis broke off to fumble in an inner pocket. “Here,” he continued, “here’s an account of the whole thing from the Sentinel — a little sensational, of course. But I guess you’d better look it over.”

He held out a newspaper to Mary, who unfolded it slowly, remembering, as she did so, the evening when, in that same room, the perusal of a clipping from the Sentinel had first shaken the depths of her security.

As she opened the paper, her eyes, shrinking from the glaring headlines, “Widow of Boyne’s Victim Forced to Appeal for Aid,” ran down the column of text to two portraits inserted in it. The first was her husband’s, taken from a photograph made the year they had come to England. It was the picture of him that she liked best, the one that stood on the writing-table upstairs in her bedroom. As the eyes in the photograph met hers, she felt it would be impossible to read what was said of him, and closed her lids with the sharpness of the pain.

“I thought if you felt disposed to put your name down—” she heard Parvis continue.

She opened her eyes with an effort, and they fell on the other portrait. It was that of a youngish man, slightly built, with features somewhat blurred by the shadow of a projecting hat-brim. Where had she seen that outline before? She stared at it confusedly, her heart hammering in her ears. Then she gave a cry.

“This is the man — the man who came for my husband!”

She heard Parvis start to his feet, and was dimly aware that she had slipped backward into the corner of the sofa, and that he was bending above her in alarm. She straightened herself, and reached out for the paper, which she had dropped.

“It’s the man! I should know him anywhere!” she persisted in a voice that sounded to her own ears like a scream.

Parvis’s answer seemed to come to her from far off, down endless fog-muffled windings.

“Mrs. Boyne, you’re not very well. Shall I call somebody? Shall I get a glass of water?”

“No, no, no!” She threw herself toward him, her hand frantically clutching the newspaper. “I tell you, it’s the man! I know him! He spoke to me in the garden!”

Parvis took the journal from her, directing his glasses to the portrait. “It can’t be, Mrs. Boyne. It’s Robert Elwell.”

“Robert Elwell?” Her white stare seemed to travel into space. “Then it was Robert Elwell who came for him.”

“Came for Boyne? The day he went away from here?” Parvis’s voice dropped as hers rose. He bent over, laying a fraternal hand on her, as if to coax her gently back into her seat. “Why, Elwell was dead! Don’t you remember?”

Mary sat with her eyes fixed on the picture, unconscious of what he was saying.

“Don’t you remember Boyne’s unfinished letter to me — the one you found on his desk that day? It was written just after he’d heard of Elwell’s death.” She noticed an odd shake in Parvis’s unemotional voice. “Surely you remember!” he urged her.

Yes, she remembered: that was the profoundest horror of it. Elwell had died the day before her husband’s disappearance; and this was Elwell’s portrait; and it was the portrait of the man who had spoken to her in the garden. She lifted her head and looked slowly about the library. The library could have borne witness that it was also the portrait of the man who had come in that day to call Boyne from his unfinished letter. Through the misty surgings of her brain she heard the faint boom of half-forgotten words — words spoken by Alida Stair on the lawn at Pangbourne before Boyne and his wife had ever seen the house at Lyng, or had imagined that they might one day live there.

“This was the man who spoke to me,” she repeated.

She looked again at Parvis. He was trying to conceal his disturbance under what he probably imagined to be an expression of indulgent commiseration; but the edges of his lips were blue. “He thinks me mad; but I’m not mad,” she reflected; and suddenly there flashed upon her a way of justifying her strange affirmation.

She sat quiet, controlling the quiver of her lips, and waiting till she could trust her voice; then she said, looking straight at Parvis: “Will you answer me one question, please? When was it that Robert Elwell tried to kill himself?”

“When — when?” Parvis stammered.

“Yes; the date. Please try to remember.”

She saw that he was growing still more afraid of her. “I have a reason,” she insisted.

“Yes, yes. Only I can’t remember. About two months before, I should say.”

“I want the date,” she repeated.

Parvis picked up the newspaper. “We might see here,” he said, still humouring her. He ran his eyes down the page. “Here it is. Last October — the—”

She caught the words from him. “The 20th, wasn’t it?” With a sharp look at her, he verified. “Yes, the 20th. Then you did know?”

“I know now.” Her gaze continued to travel past him. “Sunday, the 20th — that was the day he came first.”

Parvis’s voice was almost inaudible. “Came here first?”

“Yes.”

“You saw him twice, then?”

“Yes, twice.” She just breathed it at him. “He came first on the 20th of October. I remember the date because it was the day we went up Meldon Steep for the first time.” She felt a faint gasp of inward laughter at the thought that but for that she might have forgotten.

Parvis continued to scrutinise her, as if trying to intercept her gaze.

“We saw him from the roof,” she went on. “He came down the lime-avenue toward the house. He was dressed just as he is in that picture. My husband saw him first. He was frightened, and ran down ahead of me; but there was no one there. He had vanished.”

“Elwell had vanished?” Parvis faltered.

“Yes.” Their two whispers seemed to grope for each other. “I couldn’t think what had happened. I see now. He tried to come then; but he wasn’t dead enough — he couldn’t reach us. He had to wait for two months to die; and then he came back again — and Ned went with him.”

She nodded at Parvis with the look of triumph of a child who has worked out a difficult puzzle. But suddenly she lifted her hands with a desperate gesture, pressing them to her temples.

“Oh, my God! I sent him to Ned — I told him where to go! I sent him to this room!” she screamed.

She felt the walls of books rush toward her, like inward falling ruins; and she heard Parvis, a long way off, through the ruins, crying to her, and struggling to get at her. But she was numb to his touch, she did not know what he was saying. Through the tumult she heard but one clear note, the voice of Alida Stair, speaking on the lawn at Pangbourne.

“You won’t know till afterward,” it said. “You won’t know till long, long afterward.”

“The Century Magazine”, Jan. 1910

Tales of Men and Ghosts (1910)

CASTING THE RUNES

M. R. James

1911

April 15th, 190—

Dear Sir,

I am requested by the Council of the ——— Association to return to you the draft of a paper on The Truth of Alchemy, which you have been good enough to offer to read at our forthcoming meeting, and to inform you that the Council do not see their way to including it in the programme.

I am, Yours faithfully,

——— Secretary.

April 18th

Dear Sir,

I am sorry to say that my engagements do not permit of my affording you an interview on the subject of your proposed paper. Nor do our laws allow of your discussing the matter with a Committee of our Council, as you suggest. Please allow me to assure you that the fullest consideration was given to the draft which you submitted, and that it was not declined without having been referred to the judgement of a most competent authority. No personal question (it can hardly be necessary for me to add) can have had the slightest influence on the decision of the Council.

Believe me (ut supra).
[“as stated above”]

April 20th

The Secretary of the ——— Association begs respectfully to inform Mr. Karswell that it is impossible for him to communicate the name of any person or persons to whom the draft of Mr. Karswell’s paper may have been submitted; and further desires to intimate that he cannot undertake to reply to any further letters on this subject.

“And who is Mr. Karswell?” inquired the Secretary’s wife. She had called at his office, and (perhaps unwarrantably) had picked up the last of these three letters, which the typist had just brought in.

“Why, my dear, just at present Mr. Karswell is a very angry man. But I don’t know much about him otherwise, except that he is a person of wealth, his address is Lufford Abbey, Warwickshire, and he’s an alchemist, apparently, and wants to tell us all about it; and that’s about all — except that I don’t want to meet him for the next week or two. Now, if you’re ready to leave this place, I am.”

“What have you been doing to make him angry?” asked Mrs. Secretary.

“The usual thing, my dear, the usual thing: he sent in a draft of a paper he wanted to read at the next meeting, and we referred it to Edward Dunning — almost the only man in England who knows about these things — and he said it was perfectly hopeless, so we declined it. So Karswell has been pelting me with letters ever since. The last thing he wanted was the name of the man we referred his nonsense to; you saw my answer to that. But don’t you say anything about it, for goodness’ sake.”

“I should think not, indeed. Did I ever do such a thing? I do hope, though, he won’t get to know that it was poor Mr. Dunning.”

“Poor Mr. Dunning? I don’t know why you call him that; he’s a very happy man, is Dunning. Lots of hobbies and a comfortable home, and all his time to himself.”

“I only meant I should be sorry for him if this man got hold of his name, and came and bothered him.”

“Oh, ah! yes. I dare say he would be poor Mr. Dunning then.”

The Secretary and his wife were lunching out, and the friends to whose house they were bound were Warwickshire people. So Mrs. Secretary had already settled it in her own mind that she would question them judiciously about Mr. Karswell. But she was saved the trouble of leading up to the subject, for the hostess said to the host, before many minutes had passed, “I saw the Abbot of Lufford this morning.” The host whistled. “Did you? What in the world brings him up to town?”  “Goodness knows; he was coming out of the British Museum gate as I drove past.” It was not unnatural that Mrs. Secretary should inquire whether this was a real Abbot who was being spoken of. “Oh no, my dear: only a neighbour of ours in the country who bought Lufford Abbey a few years ago. His real name is Karswell.”  “Is he a friend of yours?” asked Mr. Secretary, with a private wink to his wife. The question let loose a torrent of declamation. There was really nothing to be said for Mr. Karswell. Nobody knew what he did with himself: his servants were a horrible set of people; he had invented a new religion for himself, and practised no one could tell what appalling rites; he was very easily offended, and never forgave anybody; he had a dreadful face (so the lady insisted, her husband somewhat demurring); he never did a kind action, and whatever influence he did exert was mischievous. “Do the poor man justice, dear,” the husband interrupted. “You forget the treat he gave the school children.”  “Forget it, indeed! But I’m glad you mentioned it, because it gives an idea of the man. Now, Florence, listen to this. The first winter he was at Lufford this delightful neighbour of ours wrote to the clergyman of his parish (he’s not ours, but we know him very well) and offered to show the school children some magic-lantern slides. He said he had some new kinds, which he thought would interest them. Well, the clergyman was rather surprised, because Mr. Karswell had shown himself inclined to be unpleasant to the children — complaining of their trespassing, or something of the sort; but of course he accepted, and the evening was fixed, and our friend went himself to see that everything went right. He said he never had been so thankful for anything as that his own children were all prevented from being there: they were at a children’s party at our house, as a matter of fact. Because this Mr. Karswell had evidently set out with the intention of frightening these poor village children out of their wits, and I do believe, if he had been allowed to go on, he would actually have done so. He began with some comparatively mild things. Red Riding Hood was one, and even then, Mr. Farrer said, the wolf was so dreadful that several of the smaller children had to be taken out: and he said Mr. Karswell began the story by producing a noise like a wolf howling in the distance, which was the most gruesome thing he had ever heard. All the slides he showed, Mr. Farrer said, were most clever; they were absolutely realistic, and where he had got them or how he worked them he could not imagine. Well, the show went on, and the stories kept on becoming a little more terrifying each time, and the children were mesmerized into complete silence. At last he produced a series which represented a little boy passing through his own park — Lufford, I mean — in the evening. Every child in the room could recognize the place from the pictures. And this poor boy was followed, and at last pursued and overtaken, and either torn to pieces or somehow made away with, by a horrible hopping creature in white, which you saw first dodging about among the trees, and gradually it appeared more and more plainly. Mr. Farrer said it gave him one of the worst nightmares he ever remembered, and what it must have meant to the children doesn’t bear thinking of. Of course this was too much, and he spoke very sharply indeed to Mr. Karswell, and said it couldn’t go on. All hesaid was: ‘Oh, you think it’s time to bring our little show to an end and send them home to their beds? Very well!’ And then, if you please, he switched on another slide, which showed a great mass of snakes, centipedes, and disgusting creatures with wings, and somehow or other he made it seem as if they were climbing out of the picture and getting in amongst the audience; and this was accompanied by a sort of dry rustling noise which sent the children nearly mad, and of course they stampeded. A good many of them were rather hurt in getting out of the room, and I don’t suppose one of them closed an eye that night. There was the most dreadful trouble in the village afterwards. Of course the mothers threw a good part of the blame on poor Mr. Farrer, and, if they could have got past the gates, I believe the fathers would have broken every window in the Abbey. Well, now, that’s Mr. Karswell: that’s the Abbot of Lufford, my dear, and you can imagine how we covet his society.”

“Yes, I think he has all the possibilities of a distinguished criminal, has Karswell,” said the host. “I should be sorry for anyone who got into his bad books.”

“Is he the man, or am I mixing him up with someone else?” asked the Secretary (who for some minutes had been wearing the frown of the man who is trying to recollect something). “Is he the man who brought out a History of Witchcraft some time back — ten years or more?”

“That’s the man; do you remember the reviews of it?”

“Certainly I do; and what’s equally to the point, I knew the author of the most incisive of the lot. So did you: you must remember John Harrington; he was at John’s in our time.”

“Oh, very well indeed, though I don’t think I saw or heard anything of him between the time I went down and the day I read the account of the inquest on him.”

“Inquest?” said one of the ladies. “What has happened to him?”

“Why, what happened was that he fell out of a tree and broke his neck. But the puzzle was, what could have induced him to get up there. It was a mysterious business, I must say. Here was this man — not an athletic fellow, was he? and with no eccentric twist about him that was ever noticed — walking home along a country road late in the evening — no tramps about — well known and liked in the place — and he suddenly begins to run like mad, loses his hat and stick, and finally shins up a tree — quite a difficult tree — growing in the hedgerow: a dead branch gives way, and he comes down with it and breaks his neck, and there he’s found next morning with the most dreadful face of fear on him that could be imagined. It was pretty evident, of course, that he had been chased by something, and people talked of savage dogs, and beasts escaped out of menageries; but there was nothing to be made of that. That was in ’89, and I believe his brother Henry (whom I remember as well at Cambridge, but you probably don’t) has been trying to get on the track of an explanation ever since. He, of course, insists there was malice in it, but I don’t know. It’s difficult to see how it could have come in.”

After a time the talk reverted to the History of Witchcraft. “Did you ever look into it?” asked the host.

“Yes, I did,” said the Secretary. “I went so far as to read it.”

“Was it as bad as it was made out to be?”

“Oh, in point of style and form, quite hopeless. It deserved all the pulverizing it got. But, besides that, it was an evil book. The man believed every word of what he was saying, and I’m very much mistaken if he hadn’t tried the greater part of his receipts.”

“Well, I only remember Harrington’s review of it, and I must say if I’d been the author it would have quenched my literary ambition for good. I should never have held up my head again.”

“It hasn’t had that effect in the present case. But come, it’s half-past three; I must be off.”

On the way home the Secretary’s wife said, “I do hope that horrible man won’t find out that Mr. Dunning had anything to do with the rejection of his paper.”  “I don’t think there’s much chance of that,” said the Secretary. “Dunning won’t mention it himself, for these matters are confidential, and none of us will for the same reason. Karswell won’t know his name, for Dunning hasn’t published anything on the same subject yet. The only danger is that Karswell might find out, if he was to ask the British Museum people who was in the habit of consulting alchemical manuscripts: I can’t very well tell them not to mention Dunning, can I? It would set them talking at once. Let’s hope it won’t occur to him.”

However, Mr. Karswell was an astute man.

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This much is in the way of prologue. On an evening rather later in the same week, Mr. Edward Dunning was returning from the British Museum, where he had been engaged in research, to the comfortable house in a suburb where he lived alone, tended by two excellent women who had been long with him. There is nothing to be added by way of description of him to what we have heard already. Let us follow him as he takes his sober course homewards.

A train took him to within a mile or two of his house, and an electric tram a stage farther. The line ended at a point some three hundred yards from his front door. He had had enough of reading when he got into the car, and indeed the light was not such as to allow him to do more than study the advertisements on the panes of glass that faced him as he sat. As was not unnatural, the advertisements in this particular line of cars were objects of his frequent contemplation, and, with the possible exception of the brilliant and convincing dialogue between Mr. Lamplough and an eminent K.C. on the subject of Pyretic Saline, none of them afforded much scope to his imagination. I am wrong: there was one at the corner of the car farthest from him which did not seem familiar. It was in blue letters on a yellow ground, and all that he could read of it was a name — John Harrington — and something like a date. It could be of no interest to him to know more; but for all that, as the car emptied, he was just curious enough to move along the seat until he could read it well. He felt to a slight extent repaid for his trouble; the advertisement was not of the usual type. It ran thus: “In memory of John Harrington, F.S.A., of The Laurels, Ashbrooke. Died Sept. 18th, 1889. Three months were allowed.”

The car stopped. Mr. Dunning, still contemplating the blue letters on the yellow ground, had to be stimulated to rise by a word from the conductor. “I beg your pardon,” he said, “I was looking at that advertisement; it’s a very odd one, isn’t it?” The conductor read it slowly. “Well, my word,” he said, “I never see that one before. Well, that is a cure, ain’t it? Someone bin up to their jokes ’ere, I should think.” He got out a duster and applied it, not without saliva, to the pane and then to the outside. “No,” he said, returning, “that ain’t no transfer; seems to me as if it was reg’lar in the glass, what I mean in the substance, as you may say. Don’t you think so, sir?” Mr. Dunning examined it and rubbed it with his glove, and agreed. “Who looks after these advertisements, and gives leave for them to be put up? I wish you would inquire. I will just take a note of the words.” At this moment there came a call from the driver: “Look alive, George, time’s up.”  “All right, all right; there’s something else what’s up at this end. You come and look at this ’ere glass.”  “What’s gorn with the glass?” said the driver, approaching. “Well, and oo’s ’Arrington? What’s it all about?”  “I was just asking who was responsible for putting the advertisements up in your cars, and saying it would be as well to make some inquiry about this one.”  “Well, sir, that’s all done at the Company’s office, that work is: it’s our Mr. Timms, I believe, looks into that. When we put up tonight I’ll leave word, and per’aps I’ll be able to tell you tomorrer if you ’appen to be coming this way.”

This was all that passed that evening. Mr. Dunning did just go to the trouble of looking up Ashbrooke, and found that it was in Warwickshire.

Next day he went to town again. The car (it was the same car) was too full in the morning to allow of his getting a word with the conductor: he could only be sure that the curious advertisement had been made away with. The close of the day brought a further element of mystery into the transaction. He had missed the tram, or else preferred walking home, but at a rather late hour, while he was at work in his study, one of the maids came to say that two men from the tramways was very anxious to speak to him. This was a reminder of the advertisement, which he had, he says, nearly forgotten. He had the men in — they were the conductor and driver of the car — and when the matter of refreshment had been attended to, asked what Mr. Timms had had to say about the advertisement. “Well, sir, that’s what we took the liberty to step round about,” said the conductor. “Mr. Timms ’e give William ’ere the rough side of his tongue about that: ’cordin’ to ’im there warn’t no advertisement of that description sent in, nor ordered, nor paid for, nor put up, nor nothink, let alone not bein’ there, and we was playing the fool takin’ up his time. ‘Well,’ I says, ‘if that’s the case, all I ask of you, Mr. Timms,’ I says, ‘is to take and look at it for yourself,’ I says. ‘Of course if it ain’t there,’ I says, ‘you may take and call me what you like.’  ‘Right,’ he says, ‘I will’: and we went straight off. Now, I leave it to you, sir, if that ad., as we term ’em, with ’Arrington on it warn’t as plain as ever you see anythink — blue letters on yeller glass, and as I says at the time, and you borne me out, reg’lar in the glass, because, if you remember, you recollect of me swabbing it with my duster.”  “To be sure I do, quite clearly — well?”  “You may say well, I don’t think. Mr. Timms he gets in that car with a light — no, he telled William to ’old the light outside. ‘Now,’ he says, ‘where’s your precious ad. what we’ve ’eard so much about?’  ‘’Ere it is,’ I says, ‘Mr. Timms,’ and I laid my ’and on it.” The conductor paused.

“Well,” said Mr. Dunning, “it was gone, I suppose. Broken?”

“Broke! — not it. There warn’t, if you’ll believe me, no more trace of them letters — blue letters they was — on that piece o’ glass, than — well, it’s no good me talkin’. I never see such a thing. I leave it to William here if — but there, as I says, where’s the benefit in me going on about it?”

“And what did Mr. Timms say?”

“Why ’e did what I give ’im leave to — called us pretty much anythink he liked, and I don’t know as I blame him so much neither. But what we thought, William and me did, was as we seen you take down a bit of a note about that — well, that letterin’—”

“I certainly did that, and I have it now. Did you wish me to speak to Mr. Timms myself, and show it to him? Was that what you came in about?”

“There, didn’t I say as much?” said William. “Deal with a gent if you can get on the track of one, that’s my word. Now perhaps, George, you’ll allow as I ain’t took you very far wrong tonight.”

“Very well, William, very well; no need for you to go on as if you’d ’ad to frog’s-march me ’ere. I come quiet, didn’t I? All the same for that, we ’adn’t ought to take up your time this way, sir; but if it so ’appened you could find time to step round to the Company orfice in the morning and tell Mr. Timms what you seen for yourself, we should lay under a very ’igh obligation to you for the trouble. You see it ain’t bein’ called — well, one thing and another, as we mind, but if they got it into their ’ead at the orfice as we seen things as warn’t there, why, one thing leads to another, and where we should be a twelvemunce ’ence — well, you can understand what I mean.”

Amid further elucidations of the proposition, George, conducted by William, left the room.

The incredulity of Mr. Timms (who had a nodding acquaintance with Mr. Dunning) was greatly modified on the following day by what the latter could tell and show him; and any bad mark that might have been attached to the names of William and George was not suffered to remain on the Company’s books; but explanation there was none.

Mr. Dunning’s interest in the matter was kept alive by an incident of the following afternoon. He was walking from his club to the train, and he noticed some way ahead a man with a handful of leaflets such as are distributed to passers-by by agents of enterprising firms. This agent had not chosen a very crowded street for his operations: in fact, Mr. Dunning did not see him get rid of a single leaflet before he himself reached the spot. One was thrust into his hand as he passed: the hand that gave it touched his, and he experienced a sort of little shock as it did so. It seemed unnaturally rough and hot. He looked in passing at the giver, but the impression he got was so unclear that, however much he tried to reckon it up subsequently, nothing would come. He was walking quickly, and as he went on glanced at the paper. It was a blue one. The name of Harrington in large capitals caught his eye. He stopped, startled, and felt for his glasses. The next instant the leaflet was twitched out of his hand by a man who hurried past, and was irrecoverably gone. He ran back a few paces, but where was the passer-by? and where the distributor?

It was in a somewhat pensive frame of mind that Mr. Dunning passed on the following day into the Select Manuscript Room of the British Museum, and filled up tickets for Harley 3586, and some other volumes. After a few minutes they were brought to him, and he was settling the one he wanted first upon the desk, when he thought he heard his own name whispered behind him. He turned round hastily, and in doing so, brushed his little portfolio of loose papers on to the floor. He saw no one he recognized except one of the staff in charge of the room, who nodded to him, and he proceeded to pick up his papers. He thought he had them all, and was turning to begin work, when a stout gentleman at the table behind him, who was just rising to leave, and had collected his own belongings, touched him on the shoulder, saying, “May I give you this? I think it should be yours,” and handed him a missing quire. “It is mine, thank you,” said Mr. Dunning. In another moment the man had left the room. Upon finishing his work for the afternoon, Mr. Dunning had some conversation with the assistant in charge, and took occasion to ask who the stout gentleman was. “Oh, he’s a man named Karswell,” said the assistant; “he was asking me a week ago who were the great authorities on alchemy, and of course I told him you were the only one in the country. I’ll see if I can catch him: he’d like to meet you, I’m sure.”

“For heaven’s sake don’t dream of it!” said Mr. Dunning, “I’m particularly anxious to avoid him.”

“Oh! very well,” said the assistant, “he doesn’t come here often: I dare say you won’t meet him.”

More than once on the way home that day Mr. Dunning confessed to himself that he did not look forward with his usual cheerfulness to a solitary evening. It seemed to him that something ill-defined and impalpable had stepped in between him and his fellow-men — had taken him in charge, as it were. He wanted to sit close up to his neighbours in the train and in the tram, but as luck would have it both train and car were markedly empty. The conductor George was thoughtful, and appeared to be absorbed in calculations as to the number of passengers. On arriving at his house he found Dr. Watson, his medical man, on his doorstep. “I’ve had to upset your household arrangements, I’m sorry to say, Dunning. Both your servants hors de combat. In fact, I’ve had to send them to the Nursing Home.”

“Good heavens! what’s the matter?”

“It’s something like ptomaine poisoning, I should think: you’ve not suffered yourself, I can see, or you wouldn’t be walking about. I think they’ll pull through all right.”

“Dear, dear! Have you any idea what brought it on?”  “Well, they tell me they bought some shellfish from a hawker at their dinner-time. It’s odd. I’ve made inquiries, but I can’t find that any hawker has been to other houses in the street. I couldn’t send word to you; they won’t be back for a bit yet. You come and dine with me tonight, anyhow, and we can make arrangements for going on. Eight o’clock. Don’t be too anxious.” The solitary evening was thus obviated; at the expense of some distress and inconvenience, it is true. Mr. Dunning spent the time pleasantly enough with the doctor (a rather recent settler), and returned to his lonely home at about 11.30. The night he passed is not one on which he looks back with any satisfaction. He was in bed and the light was out. He was wondering if the charwoman would come early enough to get him hot water next morning, when he heard the unmistakable sound of his study door opening. No step followed it on the passage floor, but the sound must mean mischief, for he knew that he had shut the door that evening after putting his papers away in his desk. It was rather shame than courage that induced him to slip out into the passage and lean over the banister in his nightgown, listening. No light was visible; no further sound came: only a gust of warm, or even hot air played for an instant round his shins. He went back and decided to lock himself into his room. There was more unpleasantness, however. Either an economical suburban company had decided that their light would not be required in the small hours, and had stopped working, or else something was wrong with the meter; the effect was in any case that the electric light was off. The obvious course was to find a match, and also to consult his watch: he might as well know how many hours of discomfort awaited him. So he put his hand into the well-known nook under the pillow: only, it did not get so far. What he touched was, according to his account, a mouth, with teeth, and with hair about it, and, he declares, not the mouth of a human being. I do not think it is any use to guess what he said or did; but he was in a spare room with the door locked and his ear to it before he was clearly conscious again. And there he spent the rest of a most miserable night, looking every moment for some fumbling at the door: but nothing came.

The venturing back to his own room in the morning was attended with many listenings and quiverings. The door stood open, fortunately, and the blinds were up (the servants had been out of the house before the hour of drawing them down); there was, to be short, no trace of an inhabitant. The watch, too, was in its usual place; nothing was disturbed, only the wardrobe door had swung open, in accordance with its confirmed habit. A ring at the back door now announced the charwoman, who had been ordered the night before, and nerved Mr. Dunning, after letting her in, to continue his search in other parts of the house. It was equally fruitless.

The day thus begun went on dismally enough. He dared not go to the Museum: in spite of what the assistant had said, Karswell might turn up there, and Dunning felt he could not cope with a probably hostile stranger. His own house was odious; he hated sponging on the doctor. He spent some little time in a call at the Nursing Home, where he was slightly cheered by a good report of his housekeeper and maid. Towards lunch-time he betook himself to his club, again experiencing a gleam of satisfaction at seeing the Secretary of the Association. At luncheon Dunning told his friend the more material of his woes, but could not bring himself to speak of those that weighed most heavily on his spirits. “My poor dear man,” said the Secretary, “what an upset! Look here: we’re alone at home, absolutely. You must put up with us. Yes! no excuse: send your things in this afternoon.” Dunning was unable to stand out: he was, in truth, becoming acutely anxious, as the hours went on, as to what that night might have waiting for him. He was almost happy as he hurried home to pack up.

His friends, when they had time to take stock of him, were rather shocked at his lorn appearance, and did their best to keep him up to the mark. Not altogether without success: but, when the two men were smoking alone later, Dunning became dull again. Suddenly he said, “Gayton, I believe that alchemist man knows it was I who got his paper rejected.” Gayton whistled. “What makes you think that?” he said. Dunning told of his conversation with the Museum assistant, and Gayton could only agree that the guess seemed likely to be correct. “Not that I care much,” Dunning went on, “only it might be a nuisance if we were to meet. He’s a bad-tempered party, I imagine.” Conversation dropped again; Gayton became more and more strongly impressed with the desolateness that came over Dunning’s face and bearing, and finally — though with a considerable effort — he asked him point-blank whether something serious was not bothering him. Dunning gave an exclamation of relief. “I was perishing to get it off my mind,” he said. “Do you know anything about a man named John Harrington?” Gayton was thoroughly startled, and at the moment could only ask why. Then the complete story of Dunning’s experiences came out — what had happened in the tramcar, in his own house, and in the street, the troubling of spirit that had crept over him, and still held him; and he ended with the question he had begun with. Gayton was at a loss how to answer him. To tell the story of Harrington’s end would perhaps be right; only, Dunning was in a nervous state, the story was a grim one, and he could not help asking himself whether there were not a connecting link between these two cases, in the person of Karswell. It was a difficult concession for a scientific man, but it could be eased by the phrase “hypnotic suggestion”. In the end he decided that his answer tonight should be guarded; he would talk the situation over with his wife. So he said that he had known Harrington at Cambridge, and believed he had died suddenly in 1889, adding a few details about the man and his published work. He did talk over the matter with Mrs. Gayton, and, as he had anticipated, she leapt at once to the conclusion which had been hovering before him. It was she who reminded him of the surviving brother, Henry Harrington, and she also who suggested that he might be got hold of by means of their hosts of the day before. “He might be a hopeless crank,” objected Gayton. “That could be ascertained from the Bennetts, who knew him,” Mrs. Gayton retorted; and she undertook to see the Bennetts the very next day.

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It is not necessary to tell in further detail the steps by which Henry Harrington and Dunning were brought together.

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The next scene that does require to be narrated is a conversation that took place between the two. Dunning had told Harrington of the strange ways in which the dead man’s name had been brought before him, and had said something, besides, of his own subsequent experiences. Then he had asked if Harrington was disposed, in return, to recall any of the circumstances connected with his brother’s death. Harrington’s surprise at what he heard can be imagined: but his reply was readily given.

“John,” he said, “was in a very odd state, undeniably, from time to time, during some weeks before, though not immediately before, the catastrophe. There were several things; the principal notion he had was that he thought he was being followed. No doubt he was an impressionable man, but he never had had such fancies as this before. I cannot get it out of my mind that there was ill-will at work, and what you tell me about yourself reminds me very much of my brother. Can you think of any possible connecting link?”

“There is just one that has been taking shape vaguely in my mind. I’ve been told that your brother reviewed a book very severely not long before he died, and just lately I have happened to cross the path of the man who wrote that book in a way he would resent.”

“Don’t tell me the man was called Karswell.”

“Why not? that is exactly his name.”

Henry Harrington leant back. “That is final to my mind. Now I must explain further. From something he said, I feel sure that my brother John was beginning to believe — very much against his will — that Karswell was at the bottom of his trouble. I want to tell you what seems to me to have a bearing on the situation. My brother was a great musician, and used to run up to concerts in town. He came back, three months before he died, from one of these, and gave me his programme to look at — an analytical programme: he always kept them. ‘I nearly missed this one,’ he said. ‘I suppose I must have dropped it: anyhow, I was looking for it under my seat and in my pockets and so on, and my neighbour offered me his, said “might he give it me, he had no further use for it,” and he went away just afterwards. I don’t know who he was — a stout, clean-shaven man. I should have been sorry to miss it; of course I could have bought another, but this cost me nothing.’ At another time he told me that he had been very uncomfortable both on the way to his hotel and during the night. I piece things together now in thinking it over. Then, not very long after, he was going over these programmes, putting them in order to have them bound up, and in this particular one (which by the way I had hardly glanced at), he found quite near the beginning a strip of paper with some very odd writing on it in red and black — most carefully done — it looked to me more like Runic letters than anything else. ‘Why,’ he said, ‘this must belong to my fat neighbour. It looks as if it might be worth returning to him; it may be a copy of something; evidently someone has taken trouble over it. How can I find his address?’ We talked it over for a little and agreed that it wasn’t worth advertising about, and that my brother had better look out for the man at the next concert, to which he was going very soon. The paper was lying on the book and we were both by the fire; it was a cold, windy summer evening. I suppose the door blew open, though I didn’t notice it: at any rate a gust — a warm gust it was — came quite suddenly between us, took the paper and blew it straight into the fire: it was light, thin paper, and flared and went up the chimney in a single ash. ‘Well,’ I said, ‘you can’t give it back now.’ He said nothing for a minute: then rather crossly, ‘No, I can’t; but why you should keep on saying so I don’t know.’ I remarked that I didn’t say it more than once. ‘Not more than four times, you mean,’ was all he said. I remember all that very clearly, without any good reason; and now to come to the point. I don’t know if you looked at that book of Karswell’s which my unfortunate brother reviewed. It’s not likely that you should: but I did, both before his death and after it. The first time we made game of it together. It was written in no style at all — split infinitives, and every sort of thing that makes an Oxford gorge rise. Then there was nothing that the man didn’t swallow: mixing up classical myths, and stories out of the Golden Legend with reports of savage customs of today — all very proper, no doubt, if you know how to use them, but he didn’t: he seemed to put the Golden Legend and the Golden Bough exactly on a par, and to believe both: a pitiable exhibition, in short. Well, after the misfortune, I looked over the book again. It was no better than before, but the impression which it left this time on my mind was different. I suspected — as I told you — that Karswell had borne ill-will to my brother, even that he was in some way responsible for what had happened; and now his book seemed to me to be a very sinister performance indeed. One chapter in particular struck me, in which he spoke of ‘casting the Runes’ on people, either for the purpose of gaining their affection or of getting them out of the way — perhaps more especially the latter: he spoke of all this in a way that really seemed to me to imply actual knowledge. I’ve not time to go into details, but the upshot is that I am pretty sure from information received that the civil man at the concert was Karswell: I suspect — I more than suspect — that the paper was of importance: and I do believe that if my brother had been able to give it back, he might have been alive now. Therefore, it occurs to me to ask you whether you have anything to put beside what I have told you.”

By way of answer, Dunning had the episode in the Manuscript Room at the British Museum to relate.

“Then he did actually hand you some papers; have you examined them? No? because we must, if you’ll allow it, look at them at once, and very carefully.”

They went to the still empty house — empty, for the two servants were not yet able to return to work. Dunning’s portfolio of papers was gathering dust on the writing-table. In it were the quires of small-sized scribbling paper which he used for his transcripts: and from one of these, as he took it up, there slipped and fluttered out into the room with uncanny quickness, a strip of thin light paper. The window was open, but Harrington slammed it to, just in time to intercept the paper, which he caught. “I thought so,” he said; “it might be the identical thing that was given to my brother. You’ll have to look out, Dunning; this may mean something quite serious for you.”

A long consultation took place. The paper was narrowly examined. As Harrington had said, the characters on it were more like Runes than anything else, but not decipherable by either man, and both hesitated to copy them, for fear, as they confessed, of perpetuating whatever evil purpose they might conceal. So it has remained impossible (if I may anticipate a little) to ascertain what was conveyed in this curious message or commission. Both Dunning and Harrington are firmly convinced that it had the effect of bringing its possessors into very undesirable company. That it must be returned to the source whence it came they were agreed, and further, that the only safe and certain way was that of personal service; and here contrivance would be necessary, for Dunning was known by sight to Karswell. He must, for one thing, alter his appearance by shaving his beard. But then might not the blow fall first? Harrington thought they could time it. He knew the date of the concert at which the “black spot” had been put on his brother: it was June 18th. The death had followed on Sept. 18th. Dunning reminded him that three months had been mentioned on the inscription on the car-window. “Perhaps,” he added, with a cheerless laugh, “mine may be a bill at three months too. I believe I can fix it by my diary. Yes, April 23rd was the day at the Museum; that brings us to July 23rd. Now, you know, it becomes extremely important to me to know anything you will tell me about the progress of your brother’s trouble, if it is possible for you to speak of it.”  “Of course. Well, the sense of being watched whenever he was alone was the most distressing thing to him. After a time I took to sleeping in his room, and he was the better for that: still, he talked a great deal in his sleep. What about? Is it wise to dwell on that, at least before things are straightened out? I think not, but I can tell you this: two things came for him by post during those weeks, both with a London postmark, and addressed in a commercial hand. One was a woodcut of Bewick’s, roughly torn out of the page: one which shows a moonlit road and a man walking along it, followed by an awful demon creature. Under it were written the lines out of the ‘Ancient Mariner’ (which I suppose the cut illustrates) about one who, having once looked round—

walks on,

And turns no more his head,

Because he knows a frightful fiend

Doth close behind him tread.

The other was a calendar, such as tradesmen often send. My brother paid no attention to this, but I looked at it after his death, and found that everything after Sept. 18 had been torn out. You may be surprised at his having gone out alone the evening he was killed, but the fact is that during the last ten days or so of his life he had been quite free from the sense of being followed or watched.”

The end of the consultation was this. Harrington, who knew a neighbour of Karswell’s, thought he saw a way of keeping a watch on his movements. It would be Dunning’s part to be in readiness to try to cross Karswell’s path at any moment, to keep the paper safe and in a place of ready access.

They parted. The next weeks were no doubt a severe strain upon Dunning’s nerves: the intangible barrier which had seemed to rise about him on the day when he received the paper, gradually developed into a brooding blackness that cut him off from the means of escape to which one might have thought he might resort. No one was at hand who was likely to suggest them to him, and he seemed robbed of all initiative. He waited with inexpressible anxiety as May, June, and early July passed on, for a mandate from Harrington. But all this time Karswell remained immovable at Lufford.

At last, in less than a week before the date he had come to look upon as the end of his earthly activities, came a telegram: “Leaves Victoria by boat train Thursday night. Do not miss. I come to you tonight. Harrington.”

He arrived accordingly, and they concocted plans. The train left Victoria at nine and its last stop before Dover was Croydon West. Harrington would mark down Karswell at Victoria, and look out for Dunning at Croydon, calling to him if need were by a name agreed upon. Dunning, disguised as far as might be, was to have no label or initials on any hand luggage, and must at all costs have the paper with him.

Dunning’s suspense as he waited on the Croydon platform I need not attempt to describe. His sense of danger during the last days had only been sharpened by the fact that the cloud about him had perceptibly been lighter; but relief was an ominous symptom, and, if Karswell eluded him now, hope was gone: and there were so many chances of that. The rumour of the journey might be itself a device. The twenty minutes in which he paced the platform and persecuted every porter with inquiries as to the boat train were as bitter as any he had spent. Still, the train came, and Harrington was at the window. It was important, of course, that there should be no recognition: so Dunning got in at the farther end of the corridor carriage, and only gradually made his way to the compartment where Harrington and Karswell were. He was pleased, on the whole, to see that the train was far from full.

Karswell was on the alert, but gave no sign of recognition. Dunning took the seat not immediately facing him, and attempted, vainly at first, then with increasing command of his faculties, to reckon the possibilities of making the desired transfer. Opposite to Karswell, and next to Dunning, was a heap of Karswell’s coats on the seat. It would be of no use to slip the paper into these — he would not be safe, or would not feel so, unless in some way it could be proffered by him and accepted by the other. There was a handbag, open, and with papers in it. Could he manage to conceal this (so that perhaps Karswell might leave the carriage without it), and then find and give it to him? This was the plan that suggested itself. If he could only have counselled with Harrington! but that could not be. The minutes went on. More than once Karswell rose and went out into the corridor. The second time Dunning was on the point of attempting to make the bag fall off the seat, but he caught Harrington’s eye, and read in it a warning.

Karswell, from the corridor, was watching: probably to see if the two men recognized each other. He returned, but was evidently restless: and, when he rose the third time, hope dawned, for something did slip off his seat and fall with hardly a sound to the floor. Karswell went out once more, and passed out of range of the corridor window. Dunning picked up what had fallen, and saw that the key was in his hands in the form of one of Cook’s ticket-cases, with tickets in it. These cases have a pocket in the cover, and within very few seconds the paper of which we have heard was in the pocket of this one. To make the operation more secure, Harrington stood in the doorway of the compartment and fiddled with the blind. It was done, and done at the right time, for the train was now slowing down towards Dover.

In a moment more Karswell re-entered the compartment. As he did so, Dunning, managing, he knew not how, to suppress the tremble in his voice, handed him the ticket-case, saying, “May I give you this, sir? I believe it is yours.” After a brief glance at the ticket inside, Karswell uttered the hoped-for response, “Yes, it is; much obliged to you, sir,” and he placed it in his breast pocket.

Even in the few moments that remained — moments of tense anxiety, for they knew not to what a premature finding of the paper might lead — both men noticed that the carriage seemed to darken about them and to grow warmer; that Karswell was fidgety and oppressed; that he drew the heap of loose coats near to him and cast it back as if it repelled him; and that he then sat upright and glanced anxiously at both. They, with sickening anxiety, busied themselves in collecting their belongings; but they both thought that Karswell was on the point of speaking when the train stopped at Dover Town. It was natural that in the short space between town and pier they should both go into the corridor.

At the pier they got out, but so empty was the train that they were forced to linger on the platform until Karswell should have passed ahead of them with his porter on the way to the boat, and only then was it safe for them to exchange a pressure of the hand and a word of concentrated congratulation. The effect upon Dunning was to make him almost faint. Harrington made him lean up against the wall, while he himself went forward a few yards within sight of the gangway to the boat, at which Karswell had now arrived. The man at the head of it examined his ticket, and, laden with coats he passed down into the boat. Suddenly the official called after him, “You, sir, beg pardon, did the other gentleman show his ticket?”  “What the devil do you mean by the other gentleman?” Karswell’s snarling voice called back from the deck. The man bent over and looked at him. “The devil? Well, I don’t know, I’m sure,” Harrington heard him say to himself, and then aloud, “My mistake, sir; must have been your rugs! ask your pardon.” And then, to a subordinate near him, “’Ad he got a dog with him, or what? Funny thing: I could ’a’ swore ’e wasn’t alone. Well, whatever it was, they’ll ’ave to see to it aboard. She’s off now. Another week and we shall be gettin’ the ’oliday customers.” In five minutes more there was nothing but the lessening lights of the boat, the long line of the Dover lamps, the night breeze, and the moon.

Long and long the two sat in their room at the Lord Warden. In spite of the removal of their greatest anxiety, they were oppressed with a doubt, not of the lightest. Had they been justified in sending a man to his death, as they believed they had? Ought they not to warn him, at least? “No,” said Harrington; “if he is the murderer I think him, we have done no more than is just. Still, if you think it better — but how and where can you warn him?”  “He was booked to Abbeville only,” said Dunning. “I saw that. If I wired to the hotels there in Joanne’s Guide, ‘Examine your ticket-case, Dunning,’ I should feel happier. This is the 21st: he will have a day. But I am afraid he has gone into the dark.” So telegrams were left at the hotel office.

It is not clear whether these reached their destination, or whether, if they did, they were understood. All that is known is that, on the afternoon of the 23rd, an English traveller, examining the front of St. Wulfram’s Church at Abbeville, then under extensive repair, was struck on the head and instantly killed by a stone falling from the scaffold erected round the north-western tower, there being, as was clearly proved, no workman on the scaffold at that moment: and the traveller’s papers identified him as Mr. Karswell.

Only one detail shall be added. At Karswell’s sale a set of Bewick, sold with all faults, was acquired by Harrington. The page with the woodcut of the traveller and the demon was, as he had expected, mutilated. Also, after a judicious interval, Harrington repeated to Dunning something of what he had heard his brother say in his sleep: but it was not long before Dunning stopped him.

More Ghost Stories of an Antiquary (1911)

TRANSITION

Algernon Blackwood

1913

John Mudbury was on his way home from the shops, his arms full of Christmas presents. It was after six o’clock and the streets were very crowded. He was an ordinary man, lived in an ordinary suburban flat, with an ordinary wife and four ordinary children. He did not think them ordinary, but everybody else did. He had ordinary presents for each one, a cheap blotter for his wife, a cheap air-gun for the eldest boy, and so forth. He was over fifty, bald, in an office, decent in mind and habits, of uncertain opinions, uncertain politics, and uncertain religion. Yet he considered himself a decided, positive gentleman, quite unaware that the morning newspaper determined his opinions for the day. He just lived — from day to day. Physically, he was fit enough, except for a weak heart (which never troubled him); and his summer holiday was bad golf, while the children bathed and his wife read “Garvice” on the sands. Like the majority of men, he dreamed idly of the past, muddled away the present, and guessed vaguely — after imaginative reading on occasions — at the future.

“I’d like to survive all right,” he said, “provided it’s better than this,” surveying his wife and children, and thinking of his daily toil. “Otherwise — !” and he shrugged his shoulders as a brave man should.

He went to church regularly. But nothing in church convinced him that he did survive, just as nothing in church enticed him into hoping that he would. On the other hand, nothing in life persuaded him that he didn’t, wouldn’t, couldn’t. “I’m an Evolutionist,” he loved to say to thoughtful cronies (over a glass), having never heard that Darwinism had been questioned….

And so he came home gaily, happily, with his bunch of Christmas presents “for the wife and little ones,” stroking himself upon their keen enjoyment and excitement. The night before he had taken “the wife” to see Magic at a select London theatre where the Intellectuals went — and had been extraordinarily stirred. He had gone questioningly, yet expecting something out of the common. “It’s not musical,” he warned her, “nor farce, nor comedy, so to speak”; and in answer to her question as to what the Critics had said, he had wriggled, sighed, and put his gaudy necktie straight four times in quick succession. For no “Man in the Street,” with any claim to self-respect, could be expected to understand what the Critics had said, even if he understood the Play. And John had answered truthfully: “Oh, they just said things. But the theatre’s always full — and that’s the only test.”

And just now, as he crossed the crowded Circus to catch his ’bus, it chanced that his mind (having glimpsed an advertisement) was full of this particular Play, or, rather, of the effect it had produced upon him at the time. For it had thrilled him — inexplicably: with its marvellous speculative hint, its big audacity, its alert and spiritual beauty…. Thought plunged to find something — plunged after this bizarre suggestion of a bigger universe, after this quasi-jocular suggestion that man is not the only — then dashed full-tilt against a sentence that memory thrust beneath his nose: “Science does not exhaust the Universe” — and at the same time dashed full-tilt against destruction of another kind as well…!

How it happened, he never exactly knew. He saw a Monster glaring at him with eyes of blazing fire. It was horrible! It rushed upon him. He dodged…. Another Monster met him round the corner. Both came at him simultaneously…. He dodged again — a leap that might have cleared a hurdle easily, but was too late. Between the pair of them — his heart literally in his gullet — he was mercilessly caught…. Bones crunched…. There was a soft sensation, icy cold and hot as fire. Horns and voices roared. Battering-rams he saw, and a carapace of iron…. Then dazzling light…. “Always face the traffic!” he remembered with a frantic yell — and, by some extraordinary luck, escaped miraculously on to the opposite pavement….

There was no doubt about it. By the skin of his teeth he had dodged a rather ugly death. First … he felt for his presents — all were safe. And then, instead of congratulating himself and taking breath, he hurried homewards — on foot, which proved that his mind had lost control a bit! — thinking only how disappointed the wife and children would have been if — if anything had happened…. Another thing he realised, oddly enough, was that he no longer really loved his wife, but had only great affection for her. What made him think of that, Heaven only knows, but he did think of it. He was an honest man without pretence. This came as a discovery somehow. He turned a moment, and saw the crowd gathered about the entangled taxicabs, policemen’s helmets gleaming in the lights of the shop windows … then hurried on again, his thoughts full of the joy his presents would give … of the scampering children … and of his wife — bless her silly heart! — eyeing the mysterious parcels….

And, though he never could explain how, he presently stood at the door of the jail-like building that contained his flat, having walked the whole three miles! His thoughts had been so busy and absorbed that he had hardly noticed the length of weary trudge…. “Besides,” he reflected, thinking of the narrow escape, “I’ve had a nasty shock. It was a d — d near thing, now I come to think of it….” He did feel a bit shaky and bewildered…. Yet, at the same time, he felt extraordinarily jolly and light-hearted….

He counted his Christmas parcels … hugged himself in anticipatory joy … and let himself in swiftly with his latchkey. “I’m late,” he realised, “but when she sees the brown-paper parcels, she’ll forget to say a word. God bless the old faithful soul.” And he softly used the key a second time and entered his flat on tiptoe…. In his mind was the master impulse of that afternoon — the pleasure these Christmas presents would give his wife and children….

He heard a noise. He hung up hat and coat in the poky vestibule (they never called it “hall”) and moved softly towards the parlour door, holding the packages behind him. Only of them he thought, not of himself — of his family, that is, not of the packages. Pushing the door cunningly ajar, he peeped in slyly. To his amazement, the room was full of people! He withdrew quickly, wondering what it meant. A party? And without his knowing about it! Extraordinary!… Keen disappointment came over him. But, as he stepped back, the vestibule, he saw, was full of people too.

He was uncommonly surprised, yet somehow not surprised at all. People were congratulating him. There was a perfect mob of them. Moreover, he knew them all — vaguely remembered them, at least. And they all knew him.

“Isn’t it a game?” laughed someone, patting him on the back. “They haven’t the least idea…!”

And the speaker — it was old John Palmer, the bookkeeper at the office — emphasised the “they.”

“Not the least idea,” he answered with a smile, saying something he didn’t understand, yet knew was right.

His face, apparently, showed the utter bewilderment he felt. The shock of the collision had been greater than he realised evidently. His mind was wandering…. Possibly! Only the odd thing was — he had never felt so clear-headed in his life. Ten thousand things grew simple suddenly. But, how thickly these people pressed about him, and how — familiarly!

“My parcels,” he said, joyously pushing his way across the throng. “These are Christmas presents I’ve bought for them.” He nodded toward the room. “I’ve saved for weeks — stopped cigars and billiards and — and several other good things — to buy them.”

“Good man!” said Palmer with a happy laugh. “It’s the heart that counts.”

Mudbury looked at him. Palmer had said an amazing truth, only — people would hardly understand and believe him…. Would they?

“Eh?” he asked, feeling stuffed and stupid, muddled somewhere between two meanings, one of which was gorgeous and the other stupid beyond belief.

“If you please, Mr. Mudbury, step inside. They are expecting you,” said a kindly, pompous voice. And, turning sharply, he met the gentle, foolish eyes of Sir James Epiphany, a director of the Bank where he worked.

The effect of the voice was instantaneous from long habit.

“They are?” he smiled from his heart, and advanced as from the custom of many years. Oh, how happy and gay he felt! His affection for his wife was real. Romance, indeed, had gone, but he needed her — and she needed him. And the children — Milly, Bill, and Jean — he deeply loved them. Life was worth living indeed!

In the room was a crowd, but — an astounding silence. John Mudbury looked round him. He advanced towards his wife, who sat in the corner armchair with Milly on her knee. A lot of people talked and moved about. Momentarily the crowd increased. He stood in front of them — in front of Milly and his wife. And he spoke — holding out his packages. “It’s Christmas Eve,” he whispered shyly, “and I’ve — brought you something — something for everybody. Look!” He held the packages before their eyes.

“Of course, of course,” said a voice behind him, “but you may hold them out like that for a century. They’ll never see them!”

“Of course they won’t. But I love to do the old, sweet thing,” replied John Mudbury — then wondered with a gasp of stark amazement why he said it.

“I think—” whispered Milly, staring round her.

“Well, what do you think?” her mother asked sharply. “You’re always thinking something queer.”

“I think,” the child continued dreamily, “that Daddy’s already here.” She paused, then added with a child’s impossible conviction, “I’m sure he is. I feel him.”

There was an extraordinary laugh. Sir James Epiphany laughed. The others — the whole crowd of them — also turned their heads and smiled. But the mother, thrusting the child away from her, rose up suddenly with a violent start. Her face had turned to chalk. She stretched her arms out — into the air before her. She gasped and shivered. There was an awful anguish in her eyes.

“Look!” repeated John, “these are the presents that I brought.”

But his voice apparently was soundless. And, with a spasm of icy pain, he remembered that Palmer and Sir James — some years ago — had died.

“It’s magic,” he cried, “but — I love you, Jinny — I love you — and — and I have always been true to you — as true as steel. We need each other — oh, can’t you see — we go on together — you and I — for ever and ever—”

“Think,” interrupted an exquisitely tender voice, “don’t shout! They can’t hear you — now.” And, turning, John Mudbury met the eyes of Everard Minturn, their President of the year before. Minturn had gone down with the Titanic.

He dropped his parcels then. His heart gave an enormous leap of joy.

He saw her face — the face of his wife — look through him.

But the child gazed straight into his eyes. She saw him.

The next thing he knew was that he heard something tinkling … far, far away. It sounded miles below him — inside him — he was sounding himself — all utterly bewildering — like a bell. It was a bell.

Milly stooped down and picked the parcels up. Her face shone with happiness and laughter….

But a man came in soon after, a man with a ridiculous, solemn face, a pencil, and a notebook. He wore a dark blue helmet. Behind him came a string of other men. They carried something … something … he could not see exactly what it was. But when he pressed forward through the laughing throng to gaze upon it, he dimly made out two eyes, a nose, a chin, a deep red smear, and a pair of folded hands upon an overcoat. A woman’s form fell down upon them then, and … he heard … soft sounds of children weeping strangely … and other sounds … sounds as of familiar voices … laughing … laughing gaily.

“They’ll join us presently. It goes like a flash….”

And, turning with great happiness in his heart, he saw that Sir James had said it, holding Palmer by the arm as with some natural yet unexpected love of sympathetic friendship.

“Come on,” said Palmer, smiling like a man who accepts a gift in universal fellowship, “let’s help ’em. They’ll never understand…. Still, we can always try.”

The entire throng moved up with laughter and amusement. It was a moment of hearty, genuine life at last. Delight and Joy and Peace were everywhere.

Then John Mudbury realised the truth — that he was dead.

“The New Witness”, 11 Dec. 1913
as “Mudbury’s Xmas Adventure”

Day and Night Stories (1917)

THE THREE SISTERS

W. W. Jacobs

1914

Thirty years ago on a wet autumn evening the household of Mallett’s Lodge was gathered round the death-bed of Ursula Mallow, the eldest of the three sisters who inhabited it. The dingy moth-eaten curtains of the old wooden bedstead were drawn apart, the light of a smoking oil-lamp falling upon the hopeless countenance of the dying woman as she turned her dull eyes upon her sisters. The room was in silence except for an occasional sob from the youngest sister, Eunice. Outside the rain fell steadily over the steaming marshes.

“Nothing is to be changed, Tabitha,” gasped Ursula to the other sister, who bore a striking likeness to her although her expression was harder and colder; “this room is to be locked up and never opened.”

“Very well,” said Tabitha brusquely, “though I don’t see how it can matter to you then.”

“It does matter,” said her sister with startling energy. “How do you know, how do I know that I may not sometimes visit it? I have lived in this house so long I am certain that I shall see it again. I will come back. Come back to watch over you both and see that no harm befalls you.”

“You are talking wildly,” said Tabitha, by no means moved at her sister’s solicitude for her welfare. “Your mind is wandering; you know that I have no faith in such things.”

Ursula sighed, and beckoning to Eunice, who was weeping silently at the bedside, placed her feeble arms around her neck and kissed her.

“Do not weep, dear,” she said feebly. “Perhaps it is best so. A lonely woman’s life is scarce worth living. We have no hopes, no aspirations; other women have had happy husbands and children, but we in this forgotten place have grown old together. I go first, but you must soon follow.”

Tabitha, comfortably conscious of only forty years and an iron frame, shrugged her shoulders and smiled grimly.

“I go first,” repeated Ursula in a new and strange voice as her heavy eyes slowly closed, “but I will come for each of you in turn, when your lease of life runs out. At that moment I will be with you to lead your steps whither I now go.”

As she spoke the flickering lamp went out suddenly as though extinguished by a rapid hand, and the room was left in utter darkness. A strange suffocating noise issued from the bed, and when the trembling women had re-lighted the lamp, all that was left of Ursula Mallow was ready for the grave.

That night the survivors passed together. The dead woman had been a firm believer in the existence of that shadowy borderland which is said to form an unhallowed link between the living and the dead, and even the stolid Tabitha, slightly unnerved by the events of the night, was not free from certain apprehensions that she might have been right.

With the bright morning their fears disappeared. The sun stole in at the window, and seeing the poor earth-worn face on the pillow so touched it and glorified it that only its goodness and weakness were seen, and the beholders came to wonder how they could ever have felt any dread of aught so calm and peaceful. A day or two passed, and the body was transferred to a massive coffin long regarded as the finest piece of work of its kind ever turned out of the village carpenter’s workshop. Then a slow and melancholy cortège headed by four bearers wound its solemn way across the marshes to the family vault in the grey old church, and all that was left of Ursula was placed by the father and mother who had taken that self-same journey some thirty years before.

To Eunice as they toiled slowly home the day seemed strange and Sabbath-like, the flat prospect of marsh wilder and more forlorn than usual, the roar of the sea more depressing. Tabitha had no such fancies. The bulk of the dead woman’s property had been left to Eunice, and her avaricious soul was sorely troubled and her proper sisterly feelings of regret for the deceased sadly interfered with in consequence.

“What are you going to do with all that money, Eunice?” she asked as they sat at their quiet tea.

“I shall leave it as it stands,” said Eunice slowly. “We have both got sufficient to live upon, and I shall devote the income from it to supporting some beds in a children’s hospital.”

“If Ursula had wished it to go to a hospital,” said Tabitha in her deep tones, “she would have left the money to it herself. I wonder you do not respect her wishes more.”

“What else can I do with it then?” inquired Eunice.

“Save it,” said the other with gleaming eyes, “save it.”

Eunice shook her head.

“No,” said she, “it shall go to the sick children, but the principal I will not touch, and if I die before you it shall become yours and you can do what you like with it.”

“Very well,” said Tabitha, smothering her anger by a strong effort; “I don’t believe that was what Ursula meant you to do with it, and I don’t believe she will rest quietly in the grave while you squander the money she stored so carefully.”

“What do you mean?” asked Eunice with pale lips. “You are trying to frighten me; I thought that you did not believe in such things.”

Tabitha made no answer, and to avoid the anxious inquiring gaze of her sister, drew her chair to the fire, and folding her gaunt arms, composed herself for a nap.

For some time life went on quietly in the old house. The room of the dead woman, in accordance with her last desire, was kept firmly locked, its dirty windows forming a strange contrast to the prim cleanliness of the others. Tabitha, never very talkative, became more taciturn than ever, and stalked about the house and the neglected garden like an unquiet spirit, her brow roughened into the deep wrinkles suggestive of much thought. As the winter came on, bringing with it the long dark evenings, the old house became more lonely than ever, and an air of mystery and dread seemed to hang over it and brood in its empty rooms and dark corridors. The deep silence of night was broken by strange noises for which neither the wind nor the rats could be held accountable. Old Martha, seated in her distant kitchen, heard strange sounds upon the stairs, and once, upon hurrying to them, fancied that she saw a dark figure squatting upon the landing, though a subsequent search with candle and spectacles failed to discover anything. Eunice was disturbed by several vague incidents, and, as she suffered from a complaint of the heart, rendered very ill by them. Even Tabitha admitted a strangeness about the house, but, confident in her piety and virtue, took no heed of it, her mind being fully employed in another direction.

Since the death of her sister all restraint upon her was removed, and she yielded herself up entirely to the stern and hard rules enforced by avarice upon its devotees. Her housekeeping expenses were kept rigidly separate from those of Eunice and her food limited to the coarsest dishes, while in the matter of clothes, the old servant was by far the better dressed. Seated alone in her bedroom this uncouth, hard-featured creature revelled in her possessions, grudging even the expense of the candle-end which enabled her to behold them. So completely did this passion change her that both Eunice and Martha became afraid of her, and lay awake in their beds night after night trembling at the chinking of the coins at her unholy vigils.

One day Eunice ventured to remonstrate. “Why don’t you bank your money, Tabitha?” she said; “it is surely not safe to keep such large sums in such a lonely house.”

“Large sums!” repeated the exasperated Tabitha, “large sums! what nonsense is this? You know well that I have barely sufficient to keep me.”

“It’s a great temptation to housebreakers,” said her sister, not pressing the point. “I made sure last night that I heard somebody in the house.”

“Did you?” said Tabitha, grasping her arm, a horrible look on her face. “So did I. I thought they went to Ursula’s room, and I got out of bed and went on the stairs to listen.”

“Well?” said Eunice faintly, fascinated by the look on her sister’s face.

“There was something there,” said Tabitha slowly. “I’ll swear it, for I stood on the landing by her door and listened; something scuffling on the floor round and round the room. At first I thought it was the cat, but when I went up there this morning the door was still locked, and the cat was in the kitchen.”

“Oh, let us leave this dreadful house,” moaned Eunice.

“What!” said her sister grimly; “afraid of poor Ursula? Why should you be? Your own sister who nursed you when you were a babe, and who perhaps even now comes and watches over your slumbers.”

“Oh!” said Eunice, pressing her hand to her side, “if I saw her I should die. I should think that she had come for me as she said she would. O God! have mercy on me, I am dying.”

She reeled as she spoke, and before Tabitha could save her, sank senseless to the floor.

“Get some water,” cried Tabitha, as old Martha came hurrying up the stairs, “Eunice has fainted.”

The old woman, with a timid glance at her, retired, reappearing shortly afterwards with the water, with which she proceeded to restore her much-loved mistress to her senses. Tabitha, as soon as this was accomplished, stalked off to her room, leaving her sister and Martha sitting drearily enough in the small parlour, watching the fire and conversing in whispers.

It was clear to the old servant that this state of things could not last much longer, and she repeatedly urged her mistress to leave a house so lonely and so mysterious. To her great delight Eunice at length consented, despite the fierce opposition of her sister, and at the mere idea of leaving gained greatly in health and spirits. A small but comfortable house was hired in Morville, and arrangements made for a speedy change.

It was the last night in the old house, and all the wild spirits of the marshes, the wind and the sea seemed to have joined forces for one supreme effort. When the wind dropped, as it did at brief intervals, the sea was heard moaning on the distant beach, strangely mingled with the desolate warning of the bell-buoy as it rocked to the waves. Then the wind rose again, and the noise of the sea was lost in the fierce gusts which, finding no obstacle on the open marshes, swept with their full fury upon the house by the creek. The strange voices of the air shrieked in its chimneys windows rattled, doors slammed, and even, the very curtains seemed to live and move.

Eunice was in bed, awake. A small night-light in a saucer of oil shed a sickly glare upon the worm-eaten old furniture, distorting the most innocent articles into ghastly shapes. A wilder gust than usual almost deprived her of the protection afforded by that poor light, and she lay listening fearfully to the creakings and other noises on the stairs, bitterly regretting that she had not asked Martha to sleep with her. But it was not too late even now. She slipped hastily to the floor, crossed to the huge wardrobe, and was in the very act of taking her dressing-gown from its peg when an unmistakable footfall was heard on the stairs. The robe dropped from her shaking fingers, and with a quickly beating heart she regained her bed.

The sounds ceased and a deep silence followed, which she herself was unable to break although she strove hard to do so. A wild gust of wind shook the windows and nearly extinguished the light, and when its flame had regained its accustomed steadiness she saw that the door was slowly opening, while the huge shadow of a hand blotted the papered wall. Still her tongue refused its office. The door flew open with a crash, a cloaked figure entered and, throwing aside its coverings, she saw with a horror past all expression the napkin-bound face of the dead Ursula smiling terribly at her. In her last extremity she raised her faded eyes above for succour, and then as the figure noiselessly advanced and laid its cold hand upon her brow, the soul of Eunice Mallow left its body with a wild shriek and made its way to the Eternal.

Martha, roused by the cry, and shivering with dread, rushed to the door and gazed in terror at the figure which stood leaning over the bedside. As she watched, it slowly removed the cowl and the napkin and exposed the fell face of Tabitha, so strangely contorted between fear and triumph that she hardly recognized it.

“Who’s there?” cried Tabitha in a terrible voice as she saw the old woman’s shadow on the wall.

“I thought I heard a cry,” said Martha, entering. “Did anybody call?”

“Yes, Eunice,” said the other, regarding her closely. “I, too, heard the cry, and hurried to her. What makes her so strange? Is she in a trance?”

“Ay,” said the old woman, falling on her knees by the bed and sobbing bitterly, “the trance of death. Ah, my dear, my poor lonely girl, that this should be the end of it! She has died of fright,” said the old woman, pointing to the eyes, which even yet retained their horror. “She has seen something devilish.”

Tabitha’s gaze fell. “She has always suffered with her heart,” she muttered; “the night has frightened her; it frightened me.”

She stood upright by the foot of the bed as Martha drew the sheet over the face of the dead woman.

“First Ursula, then Eunice,” said Tabitha, drawing a deep breath. “I can’t stay here. I’ll dress and wait for the morning.”

She left the room as she spoke, and with bent head proceeded to her own. Martha remained by the bedside, and gently closing the staring eyes, fell on her knees, and prayed long and earnestly for the departed soul. Overcome with grief and fear she remained with bowed head until a sudden sharp cry from Tabitha brought her to her feet.

“Well,” said the old woman, going to the door.

“Where are you?” cried Tabitha, somewhat reassured by her voice.

“In Miss Eunice’s bedroom. Do you want anything?”

“Come down at once. Quick! I am unwell.”

Her voice rose suddenly to a scream. “Quick! For God’s sake! Quick, or I shall go mad. There is some strange woman in the house.”

The old woman stumbled hastily down the dark stairs. “What is the matter?” she cried, entering the room. “Who is it? What do you mean?”

“I saw it,” said Tabitha, grasping her convulsively by the shoulder. “I was coming to you when I saw the figure of a woman in front of me going up the stairs. Is it — can it be Ursula come for the soul of Eunice, as she said she would?”

“Or for yours?” said Martha, the words coming from her in some odd fashion, despite herself.

Tabitha, with a ghastly look, fell cowering by her side, clutching tremulously at her clothes. “Light the lamps,” she cried hysterically. “Light a fire, make a noise; oh, this dreadful darkness! Will it never be day!”

“Soon, soon,” said Martha, overcoming her repugnance and trying to pacify her. “When the day comes you will laugh at these fears.”

“I murdered her,” screamed the miserable woman, “I killed her with fright. Why did she not give me the money? ’Twas no use to her. Ah! Look there!”

Martha, with a horrible fear, followed her glance to the door, but saw nothing.

“It’s Ursula,” said Tabitha from between her teeth. “Keep her off! Keep her off!”

The old woman, who by some unknown sense seemed to feel the presence of a third person in the room, moved a step forward and stood before her. As she did so Tabitha waved her arms as though to free herself from the touch of a detaining hand, half rose to her feet, and without a word fell dead before her.

At this the old woman’s courage forsook her, and with a great cry she rushed from the room, eager to escape from this house of death and mystery. The bolts of the great door were stiff with age, and strange voices seemed to ring in her ears as she strove wildly to unfasten them. Her brain whirled. She thought that the dead in their distant rooms called to her, and that a devil stood on the step outside laughing and holding the door against her. Then with a supreme effort she flung it open, and heedless of her nightclothes passed into the bitter night. The path across the marshes was lost in the darkness, but she found it; the planks over the ditches slippery and narrow, but she crossed them in safety, until at last, her feet bleeding and her breath coming in great gasps, she entered the village and sank down more dead than alive on a cottage doorstep.

Night Watches (1914)

UNSEEN — UNFEARED

Francis Stevens

1919

I had been dining with my ever-interesting friend, Mark Jenkins, at a little Italian restaurant near South Street. It was a chance meeting. Jenkins is too busy, usually, to make dinner engagements. Over our highly seasoned food and sour, thin, red wine, he spoke of little odd incidents and adventures of his profession. Nothing very vital or important, of course. Jenkins is not the sort of detective who first detects and then pours the egotistical and revealing details of achievement in the ears of every acquaintance, however appreciative.

But when I spoke of something I had seen in the morning papers, he laughed. “Poor old ‘Doc’ Holt! Fascinating old codger, to anyone who really knows him. I’ve had his friendship for years — since I was first on the city force and saved a young assistant of his from jail on a false charge. And they had to drag him into the poisoning of this young sport, Ralph Peeler!”

“Why are you so sure he couldn’t have been implicated?” I asked.

But Jenkins only shook his head, with a quiet smile. “I have reasons for believing otherwise,” was all I could get out of him on that score, “But,” he added, “the only reason he was suspected at all is the superstitious dread of these ignorant people around him. Can’t see why he lives in such a place. I know for a fact he doesn’t have to. Doc’s got money of his own. He’s an amateur chemist and dabbler in different sorts of research work, and I suspect he’s been guilty of ‘showing off.’ Result, they all swear he has the evil eye and holds forbidden communion with invisible powers. Smoke?”

Jenkins offered me one of his invariably good cigars, which I accepted, saying thoughtfully: “A man has no right to trifle with the superstitions of ignorant people. Sooner or later, it spells trouble.”

“Did in his case. They swore up and down that he sold love charms openly and poisons secretly, and that, together with his living so near to — somebody else — got him temporarily suspected. But my tongue’s running away with me, as usual!”

“As usual,” I retorted impatiently, “you open up with all the frankness of a Chinese diplomat.”

He beamed upon me engagingly and rose from the table, with a glance at his watch. “Sorry to leave you, Blaisdell, but I have to meet Jimmy Brennan in ten minutes.”

He so clearly did not invite my further company that I remained seated for a little while after his departure; then took my own way homeward. Those streets always held for me a certain fascination, particularly at night. They are so unlike the rest of the city, so foreign in appearance, with their little shabby stores, always open until late evening, their unbelievably cheap goods, displayed as much outside the shops as in them, hung on the fronts and laid out on tables by the curb and in the street itself. Tonight, however, neither people nor stores in any sense appealed to me. The mixture of Italians, Jews and a few Negroes, mostly bareheaded, unkempt and generally unhygienic in appearance, struck me as merely revolting. They were all humans, and I, too, was human. Some way I did not like the idea.

Puzzled a trifle, for I am more inclined to sympathize with poverty than accuse it, I watched the faces that I passed. Never before had I observed how bestial, how brutal were the countenances of the dwellers in this region. I actually shuddered when an old-clothes man, a grey-bearded Hebrew, brushed me as he toiled past with his barrow.

There was a sense of evil in the air, a warning of things which it is wise for a clean man to shun and keep clear of. The impression became so strong that before I had walked two squares I began to feel physically ill. Then it occurred to me that the one glass of cheap Chianti I had drunk might have something to do with the feeling. Who knew how that stuff had been manufactured, or whether the juice of the grape entered at all into its ill-flavoured composition? Yet I doubted if that were the real cause of my discomfort.

By nature I am rather a sensitive, impressionable sort of chap. In some way tonight this neighbourhood, with its sordid sights and smells, had struck me wrong.

My sense of impending evil was merging into actual fear. This would never do. There is only one way to deal with an imaginative temperament like mine — conquer its vagaries. If I left South Street with this nameless dread upon me, I could never pass down it again without a recurrence of the feeling. I should simply have to stay here until I got the better of it — that was all.

I paused on a corner before a shabby but brightly lighted little drug store. Its gleaming windows and the luminous green of its conventional glass show jars made the brightest spot on the block. I realized that I was tired, but hardly wanted to go in there and rest. I knew what the company would be like at its shabby, sticky soda fountain. As I stood there, my eyes fell on a long white canvas sign across from me, and its black-and-red lettering caught my attention.

SEE THE GREAT UNSEEN!

Come in! This Means You!

FREE TO ALL!

A museum of fakes, I thought, but also reflected that if it were a show of some kind I could sit down for a while, rest, and fight off this increasing obsession of non-existent evil. That side of the street was almost deserted, and the place itself might well be nearly empty.

II

I walked over, but with every step my sense of dread increased. Dread of I knew not what. Bodiless, inexplicable horror had me as in a net, whose strands, being intangible, without reason for existence, I could by no means throw off. It was not the people now. None of them were about me. There, in the open, lighted street, with no sight nor sound of terror to assail me, I was the shivering victim of such fear as I had never known was possible. Yet still I would not yield.

Setting my teeth, and fighting with myself as with some pet animal gone mad, I forced my steps to slowness and walked along the side-walk, seeking entrance. Just here there were no shops, but several doors reached in each case by means of a few iron-railed stone steps. I chose the one in the middle beneath the sign. In that neighbourhood there are museums, shops and other commercial enterprises conducted in many shabby old residences, such as were these. Behind the glazing of the door I had chosen I could see a dim, pinkish light, but on either side the windows were quite dark.

Trying the door, I found it unlocked. As I opened it a party of Italians passed on the pavement below and I looked back at them over my shoulder. They were gaily dressed, men, women and children, laughing and chattering to one another; probably on their way to some wedding or other festivity.

In passing, one of the men glanced up at me and involuntarily I shuddered back against the door. He was a young man, handsome after the swarthy manner of his race, but never in my life had I see a face so expressive of pure, malicious cruelty, naked and unashamed. Our eyes met and his seemed to light up with a vile gleaming, as if all the wickedness of his nature had come to a focus in the look of concentrated hate he gave me.

They went by, but for some distance I could see him watching me, chin on shoulder, till he and his party were swallowed up in the crowd of marketers farther down the street.

Sick and trembling from that encounter, merely of eyes though it had been, I threw aside my partly smoked cigar and entered. Within there was a small vestibule, whose ancient tessellated floor was grimy with the passing of many feet. I could feel the grit of dirt under my shoes, and it rasped on my rawly quivering nerves. The inner door stood partly open, and going on I found myself in a bare, dirty hallway, and was greeted by the sour, musty, poverty-stricken smell common to dwellings of the very ill-to-do. Beyond there was a stairway, carpeted with ragged grass matting. A gas jet, turned low inside a very dusty pink globe, was the light I had seen from without.

Listening, the house seemed entirely silent. Surely, this was no place of public amusement of any kind whatever. More likely it was a rooming-house, and I had, after all, mistaken the entrance.

To my intense relief, since coming inside, the worst agony of my unreasonable terror had passed away. If I could only get in some place where I could sit down and be quiet, probably I should be rid of it for good. Determining to try another entrance, I was about to leave the bare hallway when one of several doors along the side of it suddenly opened and a man stepped out into the hall.

“Well?” he said, looking at me keenly, but with not the least show of surprise at my presence.

“I beg your pardon,” I replied. “The door was unlocked and I came in here, thinking it was the entrance to the exhibit — what do they call it? the ‘Great Unseen.’ The one that is mentioned on that long white sign. Can you tell me which door is the right one?”

“I can.”

With that brief answer he stopped and stared at me again. He was a tall, lean man, somewhat stooped, but possessing considerable dignity of bearing. For that neighbourhood, he appeared uncommonly well dressed, and his long, smooth-shaven face was noticeable because, while his complexion was dark and his eyes coal-black, above them the heavy brows and his hair were almost silvery-white. His age might have been anything over the threescore mark.

I grew tired of being stared at. “If you can and — won’t, then never mind,” I observed a trifle irritably, and turned to go. But his sharp exclamation halted me.

“No!” he said. “No — no! Forgive me for pausing — it was not hesitation, I assure you. To think that one — one, even, has come! All day they pass my sign up there — pass and fear to enter. But you are different. You are not of these timorous, ignorant foreign peasants. You ask me to tell you the right door? Here it is! Here!”

And he struck the panel of the door, which he had closed behind him, so that the sharp yet hollow sound of it echoed up through the silent house.

Now it may be thought that after all my senseless terror in the open street, so strange a welcome from so odd a showman would have brought the feeling back, full force. But there is an emotion stronger, to a certain point, than fear. This queer old fellow aroused my curiosity. What kind of museum could it be that he accused the passing public of fearing to enter? Nothing really terrible, surely, or it would have been closed by the police. And normally I am not an unduly timorous person. “So it’s in there, is it?” I asked, coming toward him. “And I’m to be sole audience? Come, that will be an interesting experience.” I was half laughing now.

“The most interesting in the world,” said the old man, with a solemnity which rebuked my lightness.

With that he opened the door, passed inward and closed it again — in my very face. I stood staring at it blankly. The panels, I remember, had been originally painted white, but now the paint was flaked and blistered, grey with dirt and dirty finger marks. Suddenly it occurred to me that I had no wish to enter there. Whatever was behind it could be scarcely worth seeing, or he would not choose such a place for its exhibition. With the old man’s vanishing my curiosity had cooled, but just as I again turned to leave, the door opened and this singular showman stuck his white-eyebrowed face through the aperture. He was frowning impatiently. “Come in — come in!” he snapped, and promptly withdrawing his head, once more closed the door.

“He has something there he doesn’t want should get out,” was the very natural conclusion which I drew. “Well, since it can hardly be anything dangerous, and he’s so anxious I should see it — here goes!”

With that I turned the soiled white porcelain handle, and entered.

The room I came into was neither very large nor very brightly lighted. In no way did it resemble a museum or lecture room. On the contrary, it seemed to have been fitted up as a quite well-appointed laboratory. The floor was linoleum-covered, there were glass cases along the walls whose shelves were filled with bottles, specimen jars, graduates, and the like. A large table in one corner bore what looked like some odd sort of camera, and a larger one in the middle of the room was fitted with a long rack filled with bottles and test tubes, and was besides littered with papers, glass slides, and various paraphernalia which my ignorance failed to identify. There were several cases of books, a few plain wooden chairs, and in the corner a large iron sink with running water.

My host of the white hair and black eyes was awaiting me, standing near the larger table. He indicated one of the wooden chairs with a thin forefinger that shook a little, either from age or eagerness. “Sit down — sit down! Have no fear but that you will be interested, my friend. Have no fear at all — of anything!”

As he said it he fixed his dark eyes upon me and stared harder than ever. But the effect of his words was the opposite of their meaning. I did sit down, because my knees gave under me, but if in the outer hall I had lost my terror, it now returned twofold upon me. Out there the light had been faint, dingily roseate, indefinite. By it I had not perceived how this old man’s face was a mask of living malice — of cruelty, hate and a certain masterful contempt. Now I knew the meaning of my fear, whose warning I would not heed. Now I knew that I had walked into the very trap from which my abnormal sensitiveness had striven in vain to save me.

III

Again I struggled within me, bit at my lip till I tasted blood, and presently the blind paroxysm passed. It must have been longer in going than I thought, and the old man must have all that time been speaking, for when I could once more control my attention, hear and see him, he had taken up a position near the sink, about ten feet away, and was addressing me with a sort of “platform” manner, as if I had been the large audience whose absence he had deplored.

“And so,” he was saying, “I was forced to make these plates very carefully, to truly represent the characteristic hues of each separate organism. Now, in colour work of every kind the film is necessarily extremely sensitive. Doubtless you are familiar in a general way with the exquisite transparencies produced by colour photography of the single-plate type.”

He paused, and trying to act like a normal human being, I observed: “I saw some nice landscapes done in that way — last week at an illustrated lecture in Franklin Hall.”

He scowled, and made an impatient gesture at me with his hand. “I can proceed better without interruptions,” he said. “My pause was purely oratorical.”

I meekly subsided, and he went on in his original loud, clear voice. He would have made an excellent lecturer before a much larger audience — if only his voice could have lost that eerie, ringing note. Thinking of that I must have missed some more, and when I caught it again he was saying:

“As I have indicated, the original plate is the final picture. Now, many of these organisms are extremely hard to photograph, and microphotography in colour is particularly difficult. In consequence, to spoil a plate tries the patience of the photographer. They are so sensitive that the ordinary darkroom ruby lamp would instantly ruin them, and they must therefore be developed either in darkness or by a special light produced by interposing thin sheets of tissue of a particular shade of green and of yellow between lamp and plate, and even that will often cause ruinous fog. Now I, finding it hard to handle them so, made numerous experiments with a view of discovering some glass or fabric of a colour which should add to the safety of the green, without robbing it of all efficiency. All proved equally useless, but intermittently I persevered — until last week.”

His voice dropped to an almost confidential tone, and he leaned slightly toward me. I was cold from my neck to my feet, though my head was burning, but I tried to force an appreciative smile.

“Last week,” he continued impressively, “I had a prescription filled at the corner drug store. The bottle was sent home to me wrapped in a piece of what I first took to be whitish, slightly opalescent paper. Later I decided that it was some kind of membrane. When I questioned the druggist, seeking its source, he said it was a sheet of ‘paper’ that was around a bundle of herbs from South America. That he had no more, and doubted if I could trace it. He had wrapped my bottle so, because he was in haste and the sheet was handy.

“I can hardly tell you what first inspired me to try that membrane in my photographic work. It was merely dull white with a faint hint of opalescence, except when held against the light. Then it became quite translucent and quite brightly prismatic. For some reason it occurred to me that this refractive effect might help in breaking up the actinic rays — the rays which affect the sensitive emulsion. So that night I inserted it behind the sheets of green and yellow tissue, next the lamp prepared my trays and chemicals laid my plate holders to hand, turned off the white light and — turned on the green!”

There was nothing in his words to inspire fear. It was a wearisomely detailed account of his struggles with photography. Yet, as he again paused impressively, I wished that he might never speak again. I was desperately, contemptibly in dread of the thing he might say next.

Suddenly, he drew himself erect, the stoop went out of his shoulders, he threw back his head and laughed. It was a hollow sound, as if he laughed into a trumpet. “I won’t tell you what I saw! Why should I? Your own eyes shall bear witness. But this much I’ll say, so that you may better understand — later. When our poor, faultily sensitive vision can perceive a thing, we say that it is visible. When the nerves of touch can feel it, we say that it is tangible. Yet I tell you there are beings intangible to our physical sense, yet whose presence is felt by the spirit, and invisible to our eyes merely because those organs are not attuned to the light as reflected from their bodies. But light passed through the screen, which we are about to use has a wave length novel to the scientific world, and by it you shall see with the eyes of the flesh that which has been invisible since life began. Have no fear!”

He stopped to laugh again, and his mirth was yellow-toothed — menacing.

“Have no fear!” he reiterated, and with that stretched his hand toward the wall, there came a click and we were in black, impenetrable darkness. I wanted to spring up, to seek the door by which I had entered and rush out of it, but the paralysis of unreasoning terror held me fast.

I could hear him moving about in the darkness, and a moment later a faint green glimmer sprang up in the room. Its source was over the large sink, where I suppose he developed his precious “colour plates.”

Every instant, as my eyes became accustomed to the dimness, I could see more clearly. Green light is peculiar. It may be far fainter than red, and at the same time far more illuminating. The old man was standing beneath it, and his face by that ghastly radiance had the exact look of a dead man’s. Besides this, however, I could observe nothing appalling.

“That,” continued the man, “is the simple developing light of which I have spoken — now watch, for what you are about to behold no mortal man but myself has ever seen before.”

For a moment he fussed with the green lamp over the sink. It was so constructed that all the direct rays struck downward. He opened a flap at the side, for a moment there was a streak of comforting white luminance from within, then he inserted something, slid it slowly in — and closed the flap.

The thing he put in — that South American “membrane” it must have been — instead of decreasing the light increased it — amazingly. The hue was changed from green to greenish-grey, and the whole room sprang into view, a livid, ghastly chamber, filled with — overcrawled by — what?

My eyes fixed themselves, fascinated, on something that moved by the old man’s feet. It writhed there on the floor like a huge, repulsive starfish, an immense, armed, legged thing, that twisted convulsively. It was smooth, as if made of rubber, was whitish-green in colour; and presently raised its great round blob of a body on tottering tentacles, crept toward my host and writhed upward — yes, climbed up his legs, his body. And he stood there, erect, arms folded, and stared sternly down at the thing which climbed.

But the room — the whole room was alive with other creatures than that. Everywhere I looked they were — centipedish things, with yard-long bodies, detestable, furry spiders that lurked in shadows, and sausage-shaped translucent horrors that moved — and floated through the air. They dived — here and there between me and the light, and I could see its bright greenness through their greenish bodies.

Worse, though; far worse than these were the things with human faces. Mask-like, monstrous, huge gaping mouths and slit-like eyes — I find I cannot write of them. There was that about them which makes their memory even now intolerable.

The old man was speaking again, and every word echoed in my brain like the ringing of a gong. “Fear nothing! Among such as these do you move every hour of the day and night. Only you and I have seen, for God is merciful and has spared our race from sight. But I am not merciful! I loathe the race which gave these creatures birth — the race which might be so surrounded by invisible, unguessed but blessed beings — and chooses these for its companions! All the world shall see and know. One by one shall they come here, learn the truth, and perish. For who can survive the ultimate of terror? Then I, too, shall find peace, and leave the earth to its heritage of man-created horrors. Do you know what these are — whence they come?”

This voice boomed now like a cathedral bell. I could not answer, him, but he waited for no reply. “Out of the ether — out of the omnipresent ether from whose intangible substance the mind of God made the planets, all living things, and man — man has made these! By his evil thoughts, by his selfish panics, by his lusts and his interminable, never-ending hate he has made them, and they are everywhere! Fear nothing — but see where there comes to you, its creator, the shape and the body of your FEAR!”

And as he said it I perceived a great Thing coming toward me — a Thing — but consciousness could endure no more. The ringing, threatening voice merged in a roar within my ears, there came a merciful dimming of the terrible, lurid vision, and blank nothingness succeeded upon horror too great for bearing.

IV

There was a dull, heavy pain above my eyes. I knew that they were closed, that I was dreaming, and that the rack full of coloured bottles which I seemed to see so clearly was no more than a part of the dream. There was some vague but imperative reason why I should rouse myself. I wanted to awaken, and thought that by staring very hard indeed I could dissolve this foolish vision of blue and yellow-brown bottles. But instead of dissolving they grew clearer, more solid and substantial of appearance, until suddenly the rest of my senses rushed to the support of sight, and I became aware that my eyes were open, the bottles were quite real, and that I was sitting in a chair, fallen sideways so that my cheek rested most uncomfortably on the table which held the rack.

I straightened up slowly and with difficulty, groping in my dulled brain for some clue to my presence in this unfamiliar place, this laboratory that was lighted only by the rays of an arc light in the street outside its three large windows. Here I sat, alone, and if the aching of cramped limbs meant anything, here I had sat for more than a little time.

Then, with the painful shock which accompanies awakening to the knowledge of some great catastrophe, came memory. It was this very room, shown by the street lamp’s rays to be empty of life, which I had seen thronged with creatures too loathsome for description. I staggered to my feet, staring fearfully about. There were the glass-floored cases, the bookshelves, the two tables with their burdens, and the long iron sink above which, now only a dark blotch of shadow, hung the lamp from which had emanated that livid, terrifically revealing illumination. Then the experience had been no dream, but a frightful reality. I was alone here now.

With callous indifference my strange host had allowed me to remain for hours unconscious, with not the least effort to aid or revive me. Perhaps, hating me so, he had hoped that I would die there.

At first I made no effort to leave the place. Its appearance filled me with reminiscent loathing. I longed to go, but as yet felt too weak and ill for the effort. Both mentally and physically my condition was deplorable, and for the first time I realized that a shock to the mind may react upon the body as vilely as any debauch of self-indulgence.

Quivering in every nerve and muscle, dizzy with headache and nausea, I dropped back into the chair, hoping that before the old man returned I might recover sufficient self-control to escape him. I knew that he hated me, and why. As I waited, sick, miserable, I understood the man. Shuddering, I recalled the loathsome horrors he had shown me. If the mere desires and emotions of mankind were daily carnified in such forms as those, no wonder that he viewed his fellow beings with detestation and longed only to destroy them.

I thought, too, of the cruel, sensuous faces I had seen in the streets outside — seen for the first time, as if a veil had been withdrawn from eyes hitherto blinded by self-delusion. Fatuously trustful as a month-old puppy, I had lived in a grim, evil world, where goodness is a word and crude selfishness the only actuality. Drearily my thoughts drifted back through my own life, its futile purposes, mistakes and activities. All of evil that I knew returned to overwhelm me. Our gropings toward divinity were a sham, a writhing sunward of slime-covered beasts who claimed sunlight as their heritage, but in their hearts preferred the foul and easy depths.

Even now, though I could neither see nor feel them, this room, the entire world, was acrawl with the beings created by our real natures. I recalled the cringing, contemptible fear to which my spirit had so readily yielded, and the faceless Thing to which the emotion had given birth.

Then abruptly, shockingly, I remembered that every moment I was adding to the horde. Since my mind could conceive only repulsive incubi, and since while I lived I must think, feel, and so continue to shape them, was there no way to check so abominable a succession? My eyes fell on the long shelves with their many-coloured bottles. In the chemistry of photography there are deadly poisons — I knew that. Now was the time to end it — now! Let him return and find his desire accomplished. One good thing I could do, if one only. I could abolish my monster-creating self.

V

My friend Mark Jenkins is an intelligent and usually a very careful man. When he took from “Smiler” Callahan a cigar which had every appearance of being excellent, innocent Havana, the act denoted both intelligence and caution. By very clever work he had traced the poisoning of young Ralph Peeler to Mr. Callahan’s door, and he believed this particular cigar to be the mate of one smoked by Peeler just previous to his demise. And if, upon arresting Callahan, he had not confiscated this bit of evidence, it would have doubtless been destroyed by its regrettably unconscientious owner.

But when Jenkins shortly afterward gave me that cigar, as one of his own, he committed one of those almost inconceivable blunders which, I think, are occasionally forced upon clever men to keep them from overweening vanity. Discovering his slight mistake, my detective friend spent the night searching for his unintended victim, myself; and that his search was successful was due to Pietro Marini, a young Italian of Jenkins’ acquaintance, whom he met about the hour of 2:00 a.m. returning from a dance.

Now, Marini had seen me standing on the steps of the house where Doctor Frederick Holt had his laboratory and living rooms, and he had stared at me, not with any ill intent, but because he thought I was the sickest-looking, most ghastly specimen of humanity that he had ever beheld. And, sharing the superstition of his South Street neighbours, he wondered if the worthy doctor had poisoned me as well as Peeler. This suspicion he imparted to Jenkins, who, however, had the best of reasons for believing otherwise. Moreover, as he informed Marini, Holt was dead, having drowned himself late the previous afternoon. An hour or so after our talk in the restaurant, news of his suicide reached Jenkins.

It seemed wise to search any place where a very sick-looking young man had been seen to enter, so Jenkins came straight to the laboratory. Across the fronts of those houses was the long sign with its mysterious inscription, “See the Great Unseen,” not at all mysterious to the detective. He knew that next door to Doctor Holt’s the second floor had been thrown together into a lecture room, where at certain hours a young man employed by settlement workers displayed upon a screen stereopticon views of various deadly bacilli, the germs of diseases appropriate to dirt and indifference. He knew, too, that Doctor Holt himself had helped the educational effort along by providing some really wonderful lantern slides, done by micro-colour photography.

On the pavement outside, Jenkins found the two-thirds remnant of a cigar, which he gathered in and came up the steps, a very miserable and self-reproachful detective. Neither outer nor inner door was locked, and in the laboratory he found me, alive, but on the verge of death by another means that he had feared.

In the extreme physical depression following my awakening from drugged sleep, and knowing nothing of its cause, I believed my adventure fact in its entirety. My mentality was at too low an ebb to resist its dreadful suggestion. I was searching among Holt’s various bottles when Jenkins burst in. At first I was merely annoyed at the interruption of my purpose, but before the anticlimax of his explanation the mists of obsession drifted away and left me still sick in body, but in spirit happy as any man may well be who has suffered a delusion that the world is wholly bad — and learned that its badness springs from his own poisoned brain.

The malice which I had observed in every face, including young Marini’s, existed only in my drug-affected vision. Last week’s “popular-science” lecture had been recalled to my subconscious mind — the mind that rules dreams and delirium — by the photographic apparatus in Holt’s workroom. “See the Great Unseen” assisted materially, and even the corner drug store before which I had paused, with its green-lit show vases, had doubtless played a part. But presently, following something Jenkins told me, I was driven to one protest. “If Holt was not here,” I demanded, “if Holt is dead, as you say, how do you account for the fact that I, who have never seen the man, was able to give you an accurate description which you admit to be that of Doctor Frederick Holt?”

He pointed across the room. “See that?” It was a life-size bust portrait, in crayons, the picture of a white-haired man with bushy eyebrows and the most piercing black eyes I had ever seen — until the previous evening. It hung facing the door and near the windows, and the features stood out with a strangely lifelike appearance in the white rays of the arc lamp just outside. “Upon entering,” continued Jenkins, “the first thing you saw was that portrait, and from it your delirium built a living, speaking man. So, there are your white-haired showman, your unnatural fear, your colour photography and your pretty green golliwogs all nicely explained for you, Blaisdell, and thank God you’re alive to hear the explanation. If you had smoked the whole of that cigar — well, never mind. You didn’t. And now, my very dear friend, I think it’s high time that you interviewed a real, flesh-and-blood doctor. I’ll phone for a taxi.”

“Don’t,” I said. “A walk in the fresh air will do me more good than fifty doctors.”

“Fresh air! There’s no fresh air on South Street in July,” complained Jenkins, but reluctantly yielded.

I had a reason for my preference. I wished to see people, to meet face to face even such stray prowlers as might be about at this hour, nearer sunrise than midnight, and rejoice in the goodness and kindliness of the human countenance — particularly as found in the lower classes.

But even as we were leaving there occurred to me a curious inconsistency.

“Jenkins,” I said, “you claim that the reason Holt, when I first met him in the hall, appeared to twice close the door in my face, was because the door never opened until I myself unlatched it.”

“Yes,” confirmed Jenkins, but he frowned, foreseeing my next question.

“Then why, if it was from that picture that I built so solid, so convincing a vision of the man, did I see Holt in the hall before the door was open?”

“You confuse your memories,” retorted Jenkins rather shortly.

“Do I? Holt was dead at that hour, but — I tell you I saw Holt outside the door! And what was his reason for committing suicide?”

Before my friend could reply I was across the room, fumbling in the dusk there at the electric lamp above the sink. I got the tin flap open and pulled out the sliding screen, which consisted of two sheets of glass with fabric between, dark on one side, yellow on the other. With it came the very thing I dreaded — a sheet of whitish, parchment-like, slightly opalescent stuff.

Jenkins was beside me as I held it at arm’s length toward the windows. Through it the light of the arc lamp fell — divided into the most astonishingly brilliant rainbow hues. And instead of diminishing the light, it was perceptibly increased in the oddest way. Almost one thought that the sheet itself was luminous, and yet when held in shadow it gave off no light at all.

“Shall we — put it in the lamp again — and try it?” asked Jenkins slowly, and in his voice there was no hint of mockery.

I looked him straight in the eyes. “No,” I said, “we won’t. I was drugged. Perhaps in that condition I received a merciless revelation of the discovery that caused Holt’s suicide, but I don’t believe it. Ghost or no ghost, I refuse to ever again believe in the depravity of the human race. If the air and the earth are teeming with invisible horrors, they are not of our making, and — the study of demonology is better let alone. Shall we burn this thing, or tear it up?”

“We have no right to do either,” returned Jenkins thoughtfully, “but you know, Blaisdell, there’s a little too darn much realism about some parts of your ‘dream.’ I haven’t been smoking any doped cigars; but when you held that up to the light, I’ll swear I saw — well, never mind. Burn it — send it back to the place it came from.”

“South America?” said I.

“A hotter place than that. Burn it.”

So he struck a match and we did. It was gone in one great white flash.

•   •   •

A large place was given by morning papers to the suicide of Doctor Frederick Holt, caused, it was surmised, by mental derangement brought about by his unjust implication in the Peeler murder. It seemed an inadequate reason, since he had never been arrested, but no other was ever discovered.

Of course, our action in destroying that “membrane” was illegal and rather precipitate, but, though he won’t talk about it, I know that Jenkins agrees with me — doubt is sometimes better than certainty, and there are marvels better left unproved. Those, for instance, which concern the Powers of Evil.

“People’s Favorite Magazine”, 10 Feb. 1919

OUTSIDE THE HOUSE

Bessie Kyffin-Taylor

1920

If I say I was just engaged to be married, you will forgive my thus intruding my own affairs for a moment, because, through being engaged, I was landed into the most curious happening of my life.

I had been in France some two and a half years before the bit of shell met me, which landed me back in Blighty, with a leg that was not going to be of much more service to me. I had had many and varied experiences in France — horrors, of course — but of these we do not often speak, much of deep interest, and much which goes to the furthering of knowledge of many kinds — knowledge which has led thousands of men to get down to realities — and to shun for evermore the superficial shams which made up their existences before 1914 — but this is not a war story, except in so far that it transformed me, an officer in a well-known regiment, into a very ordinary civilian, with a game leg, and fathoms deep in love with the sweet child who nursed me — Elsie Falconer was my nurse — in the stately Home of England in which I and my mangled leg found ourselves after a long, troublesome journey. It was a home — there are many such, especially in the south of England — given up by their owners to needs of “woundeds”. Homes, where, in many cases gallant young heirs have laid down their lives for King and Country, leaving none to inherit the stately bourne which for so many generations had belonged to their honoured name — so it comes to pass, that the old house is metamorphosed into a well-equipped hospital, strict routine taking the place of former gay hunting, shooting, and careless living.

It was a wonderfully beautiful old grey stone house, with an old-world garden; no money was spared, no labour was withheld to make it what it was now, a well-worked comfortable happy hospital.

I had been there some six weeks in the hands of an austere but clever elderly nurse, before Elsie was given charge of me. She was a joy to look at, to talk to, to joke with — but, she was not a nurse — Some women are born nurses — some have nursing thrust upon them — and some achieve nursing — Elsie was none of these, but she was very sweet, very sympathetic, and it was a delight to watch her little fingers bandage my poor leg, though I would not for worlds have let her guess the agonies I endured until, in her time off, I could capture the Sister, and beg a little relief, saying my bandages were not quite tight enough. Sister would smile, and being a sport, keep her own counsel.

It was an easy matter to step from sympathetic companionship into love-making — lots of us men have done it — perhaps some will find, to their sorrow, though each man says: “That will not be me.” Not the least pleasurable part of it was a friendship I formed in hospital with a man whom chance placed in the bed next to mine.

It was one of those friendships which come into some lives at the first meeting of the eyes, without a word spoken — something that makes one’s innermost mind think the words, “At last!” — as if one knew that into one’s life had come something hitherto wholly lacking. In this way came my friendship with Percy Hesketh, and as the weeks of our hospital life passed on, we drew even closer, making a compact that, if either should fall on the battlefield, he would endeavour to communicate with the other. The end of my third month in that stately home found me, with my discharge papers, a stiff leg, and a dear little girl, my promised wife.

Elsie did not wish to give up her nursing, so I agreed to wait patiently a while, and when she met me one morning armed with an invitation from her people to spend a month with them to convalesce — adding that she would take her holidays at home during the month — I felt that my lines had fallen in pleasant places.

It was the morning of my departure from the hospital that I noticed the first shadow I had ever seen on my little girl’s face. I asked her what was the trouble, and her reply was somewhat vague. “I was wondering,” she said, “how you will feel at my home.”

“How I will feel?” I queried. “Why, how should I feel, except happy to be there.”

“I hope so,” was her somewhat vague response, as she walked away almost as if she didn’t wish to say any more.

Later in the day, just before I started, she came to me, saying:

“John, you will try and like it all, won’t you, for my sake, don’t let anything worry you, will you. Nothing can really do you any harm.”

In the rush of getting away, her few words had not much effect — indeed it was not until some hours later, when my train slowed down at a little wayside station, and an elderly man in livery met me, that I remembered them, and driving along between high hedges of wild roses, honeysuckle and sweetness of many kinds, I failed to attach the least importance to those little words “nothing can really do you any harm”. Did the little girl mean the jolting of rough roads for my poor leg, or what, I wondered. Then a sudden thought struck me. Perhaps her people were not well off and she feared a little roughing it for my shattered health, but this thought was speedily banished, as we pulled up at a charming little black and white lodge, where a smiling woman opened a massive iron gate bearing a coat of arms in blue and gold. Elsie had not told me much of her home, or people, beyond that they were an old family and owned all the coalfields round about them. I had paid little or no attention at the time, for the girl — and not her people or position — was before all in my mind.

A long sheltered drive, between giant trees, presently brought us to a broad gravel sweep in front of a beautiful half-timbered house. I had scarcely time to see it, however, before I was hailed by a regular chorus of voices from a deep sunk lawn on the right of the house — it was curiously deep sunken. One is accustomed, I suppose, to see a lawn stretching away level with the house or almost, but this one, which I later learnt was always spoken of as the low lawn, was at least five or six feet below the drive; it almost gave one a feeling that if it had been a lake — it would have looked prettier that way — one seemed to have to look too far below for it — the walks and flowerbeds surrounding it were so high above it.

At one end of the lawn was a glorious copper beech, beneath which were grouped some seven or eight people near a tea-table, lavishly spread — for war days.

Two people detached themselves from the group and came to meet me — an elderly man with iron grey hair and slightly bent back, and a slim dark-haired girl, perhaps three or four years older than my Elsie. My welcome was warm, as warm as man could desire from the father of the girl he loved, though, man-like, few words were spoken, a firm hand-grip, a keen look, and then—

“I am very glad John to welcome the man our little girl has given her heart to. This is Maude, Elsie’s sister.”

Maude favoured me with a quick scrutinising glance, shook hands and turned away to a school-boy brother, who had followed close on her heels.

My ears, keenly sensitive through long nights on O P duties, caught the few words she murmured to him, as she met him.

“He’ll never stand it, Bob, he isn’t the sort, but mum’s the word.”

Bob glanced back at me, and then shook off the sisterly hand on his shoulder, and came up to me with a boyish grin.

“Game leg, sir? Sorry, lean on me, and come down the steps to Mater and some tea.”

“Right! many thanks,” was my reply in the same spirit. “I’ll be glad of some tea; it’s been my first journey since the horrible one back to Blighty.”

“Rotten luck, sir,” went on the young voice, “you’ll tell me about it sometime, won’t you?”

“Not much honour and glory about it, Bob,” I replied.

“But you’ve got a ribbon, sir, a purple and white ribbon; I know that wasn’t got with sitting still in a funk-hole!”

“No, not exactly,” I replied laughing, “but lots of chaps who will never get it, have earned that bit of ribbon better than I did. I’ll tell you some other time, if you like.”

He nodded his head and said—

“Mater, this is Elsie’s John, dying for some tea.”

“Mater” made the usual little fuss mothers do make, when something in khaki steals into her flock, and wants one of her lambs, and I was soon in a comfortable chair, my game leg on another, while I was refreshed with tea, war scones, honey, and strawberries as I surveyed the rest of the group — Mr and Mrs Falconer, Maude, Bob, a Captain McKlean and his sister Nora, staying in the house, a fair-haired girl in a dark severe-looking frock, whom I subsequently learned had charge of the three boisterous younger members of the family; the Rev L Roberts, a middle-aged man, who had evidently dropped in for a cup of tea, and the three young members, who lay sprawled on the grass beside their mother — Lottie, a cherub, aged six, with red-gold hair and impish blue eyes, Alec and Ken, twins, just at the knickerbocker stage and brimming over with every conceivable mischief — composed the group, of which, for the moment, I found myself the centre.

Talk drifted along from War to Rations, and back again; from battles to the keeping of pigs, and the price of eggs; from the scarcity of jam; to my purple and white ribbon; and so on, from grave to gay, until the sun, hitherto blazing in glory on lawn and flower beds, gradually began to sink behind the trees, in a pink glow, that lit up the house as if a pink limelight were thrown upon it. I was intently watching it, enjoying the beauty of it, when my attention was arrested by a sudden move among the group of people, as if with one accord they were seized with the same idea at the same moment.

Mrs Falconer got up, and trailed away with her knitting in her hand, her ball of wool dragging behind her, I made a move to retrieve it, but was stopped by Bob saying—

“Don’t worry, sir, if you begin, you’ll never stop. Mother’s things always trail after her, they arrive at the house in time; we never bother.” He softly kicked the ball of wool on its way, with a sly wink at me, adding—

“That’s how they get there, unless the Twins walk off with them in another direction, among the trees; it’s a wonder they didn’t spot it; oh! they’ve cleared, I might have known; it’s getting late.”

“Late!” I said. “Why it’s only just after five!”

“I mean late for the garden,” he said.

“Late for the garden?” I asked. “Why, it’s the loveliest time in a garden now, when the heat dies down, and the air is all perfume.”

“Maybe in most gardens,” he replied, “but this isn’t one of them.”

“Why it’s perfect,” I said.

“That’s all right, sir, but I wouldn’t stay too long, it gets — er — damp and — er — well damp,” he said, stuffing his hands in his pockets, as he strolled away whistling.

“It seems an interesting place, Mr Roberts,” I said, turning to face the parson. “I do not know this part of the country at all, perhaps you’ll light a pipe, and tell me about my surroundings.”

The parson got to his feet — hurriedly, awkwardly — blew his nose violently, and said — “Yes, yes, my dear Major, I shall be most delighted, any time — er — that is, any other time, but now I must hurry away, my parish, you see, my work, er — my duties — you’ll come and see my library, yes, yes, a fine collection. Good-bye, come very soon — er — good-bye.” And his long lean figure was scuttling over the lawn ere I had managed to gasp a reply.

A circle of empty chairs, a tableful of empty plates, myself, and little Miss Dorcas, the governess, only remained. She was sewing “Comforts bags” for wounded men — the joy of the Tommys’ hearts. If only more people who can sew, would get on and make thousands more!

I lit a cigarette and then said—

“Are you vanishing also, Miss Dorcas?”

“I suppose so,” she answered.

“Won’t you stay and talk a bit?” I asked. “You see I have to sit still most of my time.”

“You will be more comfortable in the smoke-room, or billiard-room,” she said, still intent upon her sewing.

“I couldn’t be,” I said. “A garden like this, a comfy chair, my pipe, and a warm July evening; it doesn’t appeal to me to leave it for a billiard-room.”

“No,” she said, “not yet, but it will.”

“Oh! I must go,” rising as she spoke, and hurriedly folding her work. “You will come in when you’ve had enough, I suppose.”

“Enough what?” I asked, smiling.

“Enough garden,” she answered, as she hurried away, leaving me the now sole survivor of the cheery group I had come into, not two hours ago.

Idly I lay back in my chair, puffing away at my war-worn pipe, the drowsy hum of insects lulled me, the scent of flowers soothed, the silence rested my tired nerves and body. I didn’t particularly want to think, but my mind kept wondering what was the need of all these good folks to hurry away to other occupations, one and all leaving their rather crippled guest, without apparently a thought as to how I should get my lame leg up the deep grass steps and into the house later. I wished Elsie had been here, but she had decided to come in a few days, leaving me to get to know her family without her helpful influence.

Well! I must make the best of it; at least, I could rest and enjoy the peace of it all. I did my best to go to sleep, but signally failed, though nothing could be more perfect than my surroundings for such a mode of passing a little of the time I seemed destined to spend alone. It was gloriously warm, and I was pleased to find no trace of damp, such as I had feared, and which would certainly necessitate my moving. No, it certainly was not damp, of that I was sure, then what was it? For it was something, though what I meant by it, I haven’t the remotest idea. I felt confused, surely I must be sleepy, for my mind, usually alert, seemed dulled, almost as if I were once again under the noxious influence of morphia, as I lay in my chair endeavouring to collect wits that appeared to have a tendency to become scattered, I saw coming across the lawn an elderly man-servant. He approached the tea-table, and with one eye on me, stolidly began to clear away the tea-things. Then he coughed, and hesitatingly said to me—

“Are you thinking of going in, sir? Can I help you?”

“Well, I wasn’t,” I replied, “but perhaps I will, if you will give me an arm, when you have cleared away. I am not in any hurry.”

“Very good, sir, but I’ll help you first if you wish, though it is getting a bit late.”

“Late!” The same word, and again I asked—

“Late — for what?”

“Late — er — for the teacups, sir,” he replied.

“For the teacups!” I said, astonished.

“Yes, sir, I mustn’t be late.” Saying which, he gathered them up on his large tray, and set off with his load. He hadn’t gone more than five or six yards when he appeared to stumble or slip, staggered to recover himself, and the tray and china crashed to the ground.

“There,” he gasped, amidst the wreckage, “I knew it was late.”

I regret to say my first feeling was one of idiotic merriment, something about the old man, amidst the debris of china and odds and ends of food, struck a latent sense of humour in me, and I laughed unrestrainedly. Not so the worthy butler — he, with an expression that baffles description, slowly rose and stood staring at the broken china for the space of a full minute, before turning to me, as if to reprove my merriment. I frustrated him, by saying—

“I am sorry to laugh at you, but ‘over there’ we somehow learnt to laugh at calamities, and it seemed to help.”

“Very good, sir,” he answered, stiffly, “I understand, but it isn’t funny, sir, not leastways what I call funny.”

“No,” I said, “I can see your point of view. I suppose it means censure for breaking good china.”

“No, sir, it isn’t that, for it isn’t good china, it’s cheap — because any delay means a smash, and we’re late today, as I said.”

“I fail to understand you, my good man,” I answered, “I’ve seen many queer incidents lately, but I can’t see why the clearing of a few tea-things from a garden table should mean they will be smashed if left late, though it is but 5.30 now.”

“Quite true, sir. May I help you in now?” he said.

“Won’t you remove the smash first?” I asked.

“No, sir,” was his emphatic reply. “I will not, they wait till morning, they do.”

I shrugged my shoulders, feeling the hopelessness of it — the old man must surely have a slate off. I would perhaps hear further of the smash later. Meantime, I was conscious of a wish for a more cheery spot, so turning to the old butler, remarked—

“I will try the steps now if you will give me an arm, but I cannot go quickly.”

“No, sir,” he replied, “you certainly cannot, leastways not here, and we’ll maybe get there sooner by going slower.”

As an Irishman, that speech appealed to me, and I chuckled as we started our crawl towards the steps. True, I was compelled to move slowly, but I certainly had every intention of moving at least as quickly as I had been able to do during the last few weeks. This, however, was far from the case, some inexplicable “Something” retarded my every step! I found myself trying to put into words my inability to get along, in a joking way. I said to the worthy butler—

“I must have grown stiff sitting still so long, I feel as if my feet were unable to carry me.”

“Quite so, sir,” he answered, imperturbably, “lean on me, sir.”

I did, but speedily found I was trusting to a broken reed, for the man stumbled at every other step. To an onlooker we must have had every appearance of a couple of very drunken reprobates struggling home after a wildly dissipated night, and not, as we were, a worn soldier with a game leg, leaning for support on the shoulder of a worthy grey-haired family retainer, crossing a little space of smooth green turf, leaving behind us a heap of smashed china! If I had been asked to describe that march, I should have said—

“Oh yes! I am aware that I was said to be walking across a smooth expanse of velvety lawn, without so much as a croquet hoop to trip me up,” but seemingly I was struggling through a close tangle of strong briars, which entwined themselves round me as if they were endowed with sense, and each successive one was struggling to twist and pull harder than the other. That was my impression; yet, on that expanse of smooth green, there was not a single item to suggest such a state of affairs. Slowly, slowly, inch by inch, with the perspiration streaming from us, we reached at last the steps, mounted the first, and were confronted by a heavy pressure, as if to force us back.

“Stick to it, sir,” whispered the old man. And we did, but it took all my limited strength and his combined, to press through that invisible barrier, and finally reach the top. The presence relaxed then suddenly, and I breathed more freely, nor did it need the butler’s muttered “Hurry in, now, sir,” to urge me to the greatest speed my exhausted frame was capable of.

I entered the hall, with a word of thanks to my worthy friend, who disappeared in haste through a baize door, mopping his face.

I dropped into the nearest chair, feeling far more done than I ever remembered feeling after long hours in the trenches, and was content to lie back with my eyes shut, until I heard a mocking voice say—

“Drink this, John, you’ll be all square in a minute.”

I wearily drank what was offered to me, opening my eyes to see the slightly quizzical face of Maude looking at me.

“Thanks!” I murmured, “it’s a trying day.”

“Very,” she responded, “in the garden. I watched you coming in. Rest a few minutes, and then I will take you to the others. They are in our indoor garden; we prefer it.” Then she went away, leaving me to rest. I must have dozed for a few brief moments for again I did not hear her until she spoke, in a voice that, to my sensitive ears, still had a mocking note—

“Come along, John, you are quite alive, you know, come to the others.”

She helped me up, with a good strong pull — the kind of pull our young women are beginning to acquire since they metaphorically took their coats off, and gave up fancy work and crochet for making shells, milking cows, and tilling the land — and having got me on to my feet, she calmly tucked my arm through hers, saying, laughing—

“Elsie won’t mind, you know.” And led me down a long stone corridor with a broad crimson carpet running down the centre, a few old coaching scenes on the walls, one or two heavy oak chairs on either side, and in each of the two windows an old-fashioned flower-stand filled with flowering plants.

“What a ripping corridor!” I said.

“Yes,” she answered, “it’s rather nice, but this is nicer,” she added, throwing open a big glass door and drawing me forward into what I can best describe as a gigantic greenhouse, though Maude’s words of “our indoor garden”, more aptly describes it. It was immense, having a dome-shaped roof, painted a clear pale blue. Three sides of the place were of glass, through which lovely views were seen, the fourth side was an exquisitely painted landscape of a hayfield and trees stretching away into the distance. For a moment one scarcely realised whether one was looking at real scenes or painted ones, or where one began and the other ended. Clumps of shrubs here and there made secluded corners, where cosy chairs and couches were placed. A hammock was slung under another tree — one side of the place was trellis-work, with glorious roses rambling over it, and everywhere were flowers or flowering plants. The ground was dull green, like a solid linoleum; in one corner clock golf was marked out; Badminton occupied another place, and under an orange tree was a large round table, with writing materials and many magazines; the dome top could be worked by pulleys and rolled back, the whole idea giving one the atmosphere of a lovely foreign garden.

All the family were present, though each seemed intent on his or her occupation and no one seemed to have the remotest thought of leaving it for a stroll in the garden outside, though a most perfect summer evening was vainly calling.

An hour ago I should unhesitatingly have said they were cranks, or had bees in their bonnets, but now — well — I was not sure what I truly thought.

“Won’t you come and sit down, John?” called Mrs Falconer.

“Thanks!” I said, “I was feeling rather struck in a heap, this is such an unusual greenhouse.”

“It isn’t a greenhouse,” chimed in a little shrill voice, “it’s a ’ninside garding, come and see ’noranges,” and a moist chubby hand was thrust into my hand.

“I’m very tired, Lottie,” I said, “may I come in a minute?”

“That’s just like grown-ups,” lisped the little kiddie, “vey al-ways say, ‘in a minute’ — they forgets.”

Mrs Falconer smiled, and patted the chair at her side saying — “Run away, Lottie, John’s tired.”

“John is,” I answered, gladly sinking into the cushioned chair. “Why am I tired, Mrs Falconer?” I asked. “What is the meaning of it all?”

“All what?” she asked blankly.

“The garden,” I said, “the difficulty of coming in.”

“You’ve been asleep,” she said, “and got stiff.”

“And the broken tea-things,” I went on.

“Oh! that’s Jacobs, he’s always having smashes.” And the good lady went on placidly knitting her soldier’s socks.

Nothing to be learnt there, I thought, as I started chatting about the lovely “garden” in which we sat.

“It’s like a wonderful Winter Garden,” I said.

“It is,” she smiled, “only it’s a summer garden as well, after five o’clock.”

“Maude!” she called suddenly, as if remembering, “you haven’t fed the birds. I’ll do it myself.” And she moved away, wool as usual trailing in her wake.

I was left to my own devices once more. What an unconventional crowd they were, or is it, they don’t want to talk, I was wondering idly as I smoked a cigarette, when Bob sidled up to the vacant chair and perched himself upon its arm.

“You’ll come in earlier tomorrow, sir, won’t you?” he asked half-shyly, “it kind of knocks one about to stay late.”

But I was going to play the same game as others, so answered casually—

“Oh! does it? It didn’t knock me about.”

“Didn’t it, sir? It did Jacobs,” he added slyly, “he’s what he calls ‘all of a dither’.”

“I saw nothing to ‘dither’ about,” I said.

“No, sir, I daresay you didn’t, but it isn’t what you see that does it.”

“And I most certainly didn’t hear anything odd,” I went on.

“I hope you won’t, sir, I did once, and (lowering his voice) I had brain fever afterwards. You won’t catch me out after five.”

“Bob, come here, I want you,” rang out Maude’s compelling voice.

“Oh! blow!” muttered the boy, “they are dead scared for fear I tell you, and you cut off and leave Elsie.” With which cryptic “give away” of his relations he strolled off, hands in pockets.

Once more I was alone, and content to be so, to light another cigarette and have a review of the rapid sequence of events — my arrival, tea, the sudden scattering of the group beneath the trees, the broken china and my desperate attempt to cross a few yards of turf. I could not make “head nor tail” of any of it — sufficient for me I was in love and prepared to put up with a good deal to await the coming of the little girl I loved. My musings were interrupted by the sound of a bell in the distance.

“Dressing-bell, John,” shouted someone. “I’ll take you to your room,” called Bob.

“Many thanks, I’ll be glad,” I said, “I — I’m not very good at stairs alone.”

“You aren’t upstairs, you’re on this floor, Pater thought you’d like it, though I’m blessed if I should — too near the garden for this child to — hang on, sir, I’m pretty tough.”

Together we traversed again the long stone corridor, through the hall, along a similar corridor, but of more recent date, being of polished pine, instead of grey stones.

Bob opened a door about half-way down, saying — “There you are, I hope you’ll like it — shout, I mean ring, if you want things. Neither Mum nor Dad ever remember visitors.”

“Right,” I said, “but I’ll manage,” turning as I spoke to open the window.

“I wouldn’t, sir,” said the lad, “it’s beastly — er — damp—”

There were three windows in my spacious bedroom, two on one side, one at a queer angle, in a built-out corner, this latter was heavily shuttered, barred up and padlocked.

“Great guns!” I cried, “Who on earth are you expecting to get in — it’s like being walled in — where does it look out? If it’s ever opened!”

“It’s opened till five pm,” said the lad, “and it looks on to the low lawn. I’d leave it at that, sir, if I were you.” And he edged himself through the door.

“Alone again!” I thought, lighting the inevitable cigarette. What an extraordinary family they seemed to be, so detached, as it were, so self-absorbed, but above all, so skilful at playing into each other’s hands — even the smallest of them aiding in the now apparent determination of each one not to remain alone with their wounded guest, and future relative! Why? I wondered. What did they fear? This last thought was a sub-conscious one, for I had not hitherto consciously thought of fear in any form. Well, time would reveal perhaps, meantime, it was a fresh interest — an unusual interest to find myself a guest in a unique house, full of unique people, all doing their best to keep me from finding out “Something” — well — “Something” that so far hadn’t a name — it would amuse me to circumvent them, and help to pass the days until my girl came. And now to dress for another scene; the scenes were certainly following one another in rather rapid succession — perhaps too rapidly for a “convalescent” and yet, I have a firm and fixed belief that the quickest way for a sick person to become a well one, is to keep the mind occupied, busy, interested, to fill up the days and hours, leaving no time for brooding, or speculation as to the why or wherefore of one’s apparent slow healing; thoughts of health bring health, just as quickly as brooding melancholy brings depression, and subsequent ills in its train. It has been truthfully said, that the wounded lads who have recovered best are those whose outlook has been buoyant and cheery, those of whom “even a swamp did not depress them”, as Mark Tapley would have said. My days certainly gave promise of being full enough.

I had finished my leisurely dressing to the running accompaniment of this train of thought, just as a silver chime of low notes rang through the house. “Pretty” I thought, “and much better than the dull boom of the orthodox family gong, which always suggested to me the dullest of meals.”

No one seemed to be passing my way, no cheery voice called out to me their offer of escort. Very well, I would find my own way, since it did not appear to have struck anyone that so far I had not been in any room other than the “Indoor Garden” — if it could be called a room, or that I had not any idea of my bearings.

I switched off the light in my room, and started to locate the dining room. I need not have hesitated, for the whole family were gathered in the Hall, talking, laughing, and in high spirits.

There were not any other guests, simply a family party. The Hall was beautifully lighted from above by reflected lights — I mean the actual lights were not visible. The windows — there were three — were heavily draped in a light shade of gold, almost giving the idea of sunlight, as they caught the light from above. I am not a great hand at describing these things, sufficient to say the place gave one a feeling of brightness and comfort, without glare or striking colour.

I was nodded to as if I were one of them, as with one accord, we moved away to the dining-room.

Probably I was expecting the usual sombre dining-room of an ancient family mansion — oak furniture, sideboard like a silver-smith’s window, family portraits in gilt frames — but whatever I expected, it certainly was not the gay room in which I now found myself. There were not any pictures, nor did one miss them, for the walls were painted a shade of deep cream, with exquisite flowers, in groups, and sprays upon them; the chairs were of some highly-polished light wood — in appearance like a bird’s eye maple — in place of the usual dado round the room, was a curved-in recess, filled with plants and flowers with tiny electric lights among them here and there, deftly shaded by foliage and flowers. The dinner-table was a blaze of wild flowers, spotless linen, and shining glass.

I was slightly breathless as I took my seat. Mrs Falconer smiled, and I explained my rather gasping condition, by saying — “Your rooms do take a man’s breath away, Mrs Falconer, they seem to transport one into a fairyland of flowers.”

“Yes,” she said, “I hope they do. You see—” and she hesitated a second — “we cannot enjoy them outside the house, as most people can, so we have them and a gardener inside.”

“I should miss a garden,” I said bluntly.

“You wouldn’t miss ours,” she said, as she turned away to speak to Bob on her other side.

I enjoyed my dinner, which was perfect in a simple way, and in the glory of that room of flowers, I did not notice, not until when next I found myself in my own room, that, on an August evening, I had dined in a room hermetically sealed, as far as an open window or fresh air was concerned. Later we gathered again in the Indoor Garden for smokes, games and music. There was not any drawing-room, which also delighted me, as I have a wholesome horror of those abominable apartments with their set chairs, cushions of silk only to be looked at. Silver table — neither use nor ornament — and corners filled with framed photographs of friends, so-called, for whom you care nothing at all, do not miss, and whose pictures you often keep in a drawer until a day when they come to call, when you at once put the right set out, trusting to luck that no one will give you away, though occasionally they have been known to do so!

It was about 9.40 when the sudden need of some fresh air seized me with uncontrollable longing. I had lived in the air so long, it was impossible for me I felt to remain shut up indoors, especially as there seemed an unwritten law forbidding the opening of windows anywhere.

I was idly wondering how I could best escape to smoke a quiet pipe in the fresh air, before turning in, when my worthy father-in-law to be dropped into a chair beside me.

“Getting tired, John?” he asked. “I should turn in early if I were you, we are all early-to-bed folks here.”

“No thanks,” I replied, “I’m not tired, I was admiring that painted view of the far end of this lovely place, though I should have thought glass on all sides would have better carried out your idea. What would the view be if that end were also glass?”

“It all depends upon the time of day,” was his reply. “In the morning it would show you the garden, the Low Lawn,” he said, “but — now for instance — well, it wouldn’t, or if it did, you would rather not see it.”

He left me no chance to comment on his explanation, merely stated the fact, leaving me to make of it what I chose.

I didn’t make much, needless to say, except to make up my mind more firmly to fathom what they were fast leading me to look upon as a “Mystery”, and as I have the healthy Englishman’s dislike of mysteries, I did not intend it to be one for longer than I could manage.

“Very well,” I thought, “independence is my attitude henceforth, for when I came to think of it, I had been led, influenced, ringed about, as it were in an unobtrusive kind of way ever since my arrival a few hours ago. We would see!”

I rose, shook out my pipe, strolling away as I did so, to where the piano stood under a bank of roses. Maude was playing soft snatches of ragtimes. Bob was lounging by her side, Mrs Falconer nodding over her knitting close beside Mr Falconer, who was reading, while Captain McKlean and his sister Nora, with whom I had not so far had any conversation, were idly knocking the clock golf ball about.

“Come along, John, and sing,” said Maude, breaking into the old familiar “Long, long trail”. “All soldiers sing this, so begin.”

“I’m not just in singing form at the moment,” I replied, “and I’m a little tired. I’m just going to smoke a pipe out of doors, before I turn in,” was my calm announcement. But, had I dropped a bomb in the midst of them, the effect of my few words could not have been more startling. Mr Falconer dropped his paper, with a muttered “God bless my soul!”; Maude crashed into a jumble of wrong notes; Bob said but one word — “Golly!”; and Captain McKlean and his sister dropped their putters, joining the little circle hurriedly. Mrs Falconer woke — I don’t mean she merely opened her eyes — she seemed suddenly galvanised, as she rose, saying—

“John, as my future son-in-law, I ask you not to leave the house tonight!” There was a tense silence for a brief second, but I was determined.

“I’m sorry, Mrs Falconer, but I see no reason to comply with such a curious request. I am a soldier accustomed to be out and about in all weathers. I am not a hothouse plant, and if I do not breathe some fresh air, I shall neither rest nor sleep; my little evening walk is my best sedative, and I must ask your kind indulgence of my whim — Fresh air I must have.”

Bob’s was the sole reply—

“If you could get it fresh, sir, it would be all right.”

Mrs Falconer seated herself again, without further words. Mr Falconer had disappeared.

I bowed, wished them all “Good-night”, moving away feeling like anything but an honoured! guest. I wended my way back to the hall; it was empty, so, slipping on a coat and my hat, I made for the front door, beneath the golden curtains. I pulled one back and stared idiotically at the solid wall beneath it; there wasn’t the faintest suggestion of a door, yet I had entered by one — that, I knew. I walked all round. An unbroken carved cedar wood panelling ran right round to a depth of four feet. There wasn’t a chink nor an opening, except the way to my sleeping corridor and the stone passage I had just come along. I felt as if I should lose my temper in a minute, but determined as I was, I retraced my steps to the Indoor Garden, meaning to ask where was the door, or any door. I reached the place only to find it dark, silent, empty; one and all must have gone to their rooms by some other way, probably suspecting exactly what had happened, would happen. Annoyed and irritated at being thus foiled in my desire, I had no choice but to go to my bedroom. The whole house seemed sunk in the silence of sleep, though it was but 10.30, and I shut my door with a rather vicious slam that echoed and re-echoed along the corridor.

“Now for my windows,” I murmured, “for a breath of fresh air I must and will have —”

Futile wish! unattainable longing! my windows were thick plate glass, minus fastening of any description — “Foiled again!” I murmured, as I began a minute inspection of the iron-shuttered window, which was some three or four feet above the floor, with a broad windowsill. A bit of a risk to get on to that I thought, with a lame leg. I’d best leave it for tonight, but it worried me to be beaten — so with a good deal of pain, I dragged myself up on to a chair, from whence I could at least feel and inspect the shutter. My inspection brought forth a prolonged whistle! I had discovered a weak point — true it was padlocked — but the hasp through which the padlock passed was thin, and needed only a good file and a steady hour’s work to cut it through, when, so far as I could see, the shutter could be rolled back to its socket.

“Right-o!” I said gaily, “that is for tomorrow. Tomorrow, I will buy or steal a file, and then—”

Feeling more settled in my mind now, I got into my bed, determined on two points — tomorrow would see that window open, and that I would to all intents, play the game, nor appear conscious of what was an actual fact, that after 5 pm, I, an able-bodied — or fairly so — member of HM Forces, was a prisoner.

I did not expect to sleep, lacking fresh air, but as I got into bed, the coolest breeze blew round me, and I noticed for the first time, that at either end of the room, high up, were steel electric fans, moving silently and rapidly.

“Then the ‘Prisoner’ isn’t to smother,” I thought, as I dropped into a profound sleep.

I awoke feeling rested, refreshed and fit, in spite of a night of closed windows, to which I was quite unaccustomed; tea was brought to me at 7.30 and I rose, feeling ready for whatever the day might bring; it was not going to bring my little girl, alas! though she hoped to be with me within the next day or two. In my heart was a lingering feeling that it was just as well, for she might, probably would have, interfered with my plans.

I joined the family party in the hall a little before nine. All were in the best of form, the hall door stood wide open though I carefully refrained from taking any apparent notice of the fact.

Breakfast was served in the dining-room, which had undergone a slight change — there were fewer plants, fewer flowers, and two large windows were thrown wide open to the sun and air. The same detached spirit was plainly seen, as last night, all were intent upon their own devices. It struck me as unusual that the three guests — one of them a cripple — should not be consulted in the smallest degree, as to their tastes, ideas or wishes for the day. Not a single comment was made as to the previous day, its doings, or the evening of it. It gave one a feeling that “sufficient for the day” was a saying ably carried out. I waited for a kindly suggestion, such as — “Would I care to drive? Would I prefer a lounge in the garden?” Nothing, however, was forthcoming, so I asked blandly—

“McKlean, are you coming to smoke a pipe in the garden?”

“Captain McKlean is coming with me,” answered Maude. “I have to go to town for somethings.”

“Town”, I might mention, was a small market town, called Singletown, consisting of a main Street, a Bank, and in the high Street, varied shops of a small mixed kind, and boasting quite a good ironmonger’s, a lending library and hospital, up to date.

Now this began to look awkward, obviously I should be de trop, yet reach that ironmonger’s I must and will.

“I wonder if you would take a passenger to town, as well?” I asked. “I have a little shopping to do, and cannot walk far.”

“We are only going to be an hour,” replied Maude. “Can’t I shop for you?”

“Sorry!” I said, “I am afraid not.”

I knew in her heart Maude was hating me for a spoil sport, but I had to get that file, so at the risk of being voted a nuisance, I smilingly asked again to be taken.

I was taken, but I knew in every fibre of my being I was all that I feared, a spoil sport. I had to put my feelings in my pocket, and when duly dropped at the best stationers, slipped from there into the ironmonger’s without delay, the moment their backs were turned. Joyfully I selected three good files, stowing them away in an inner pocket, while ostentatiously carrying a library book and packet of stationery as well as a box of toffee — of a war kind — as a peace offering for the huffy lady. We reached the house again, well before lunch-time.

As before, I was struck with the total lack of exchange of news, none seemed to know or care what the other had been doing; it was perhaps as well, for I might now spend my time as best suited me, irrespective of anyone else.

I was deep in thought when Mrs Falconer made the only remark as to any arrangement.

“Tea will be on the Low Lawn, John, at four o’clock. We all come in at five.”

“Oh! do we?” I thought. “Well I for one don’t. I’m not being imprisoned a second time, from five until bedtime, if I can help it.” So I just murmured — “Thanks, I will have a rest first and join you there for tea.”

Then I sought my room, ostensibly to rest, in reality to study the lie of the land, and the iron shutter. I carefully made a mental study of the position of the house, its windows, their outlook, and so on, as I went to my room. I hated my room, hated its big shut-up windows, hated its ugly iron one, above all hated the imprisoned atmosphere of it. I studied the view from those windows. They overlooked a walled fruit garden, beyond which stretched a belt of trees. I craned my neck, squirming violently in my endeavour to locate the part of the grounds the iron window would overlook; finding by my memorized plan of house and grounds that as it was a jutting out angle of the house, it would, as I more than half expected, command an uninterrupted view of the Low Lawn.

“What a pity I could not begin my work now,” I thought, “and have a view of that lawn about 5.30.” But alas! that could not be. Very well, I would endeavour to possess my soul in patience, meaning to retire early on a plea of tiredness. I spent an hour on the couch in my room, dozing lightly under the pretence of reading, and 3.30 found me wending my steps to the Low Lawn but with a dire thought in my mind—

“Suppose my iron window should be barricaded outside as well!”

I had not long joined the group on the lawn before my misgivings were put to rest. I had spotted the iron windows, also immediately above it a similar one, it was an odd angle in a house, though, if left as windows, might have made an attractive corner in the rooms. I would for once, question, but whom? Mrs Falconer would rise grandiloquently to the occasion flooring me with a single terse reply, that was a foregone conclusion. Maude, not yet having forgiven my intrusion in the morning, would probably loftily disdain to reply at all. Bob was most accessible, so I rose stiffly from my chair, saying—

“Come and be kind, Bob, my leg is worrying me and needs a little gentle exercise. Will you lend me that strong shoulder of yours, in return for a war yarn?”

“Won’t I just,” he answered, springing to his feet, and placing himself ready for my encircling arm to rest along his shoulders. I kept my promise, during three turns slowly up and down the lawn I spun out my yarn a little, making it end about the centre of the lawn as we faced the house.

“Half a second, old man,” I then said. “I must have a breath.” We stood, and I gazed at the house.

“Jolly old place,” I said.

“Yes,” he answered. “Are you ready, sir?”

“In a jiff,” I replied. “I’m trying if I am clever enough to spot my room. I’ll bet you a bob I can.”

“Right!” said the lad, all eagerness now. “Try, sir.”

I made one or two feeble shots, which were received with yells of derision.

“I give it up,” I said at length. “You’ve won your bob, so tell me.”

“Why, there,” he cried, pointing, there with the blank window looking this way, with another window like it higher up.

“Of course,” I said, “how dense of me. I remember now — that dull window spoils the pretty room.”

“Might spoil it more, sir, if it wasn’t dull,” he replied.

“Oh, I don’t think so, Bob,” I went on, “look what a picture the lawn would be from it.”

“A pretty picture — I don’t think! I guess you’d jolly quick pack up your traps and quit, if you saw the pretty picture, sir.”

“Look here, Bob,” I began, in wheedling tones, “let’s be chums, and you tell me all about that picture in return for my yarn.”

Scornfully the young voice answered me. “I didn’t think you were a rotter, sir. I thought you were a sport, but a real sport would see this old shop is dad’s nightmare and play the game. I’m a boy scout, sir, and I try to play the game, it isn’t the game for a soldier to try and make a scout fail to be a sport.”

Humbly, I begged his pardon, feeling about three inches high as I did so, and wondering what his opinion would be of me if it transpired that I had broken open the window — though I hoped to defy detection. In silence we retraced our steps, but I had fallen from my high estate in Bob’s eyes, and could feel I was not any longer a hero, even with a purple and white ribbon — so do our youthful judges censure and condemn!

Tea was somewhat more of a rag than previous meals, possibly because little Miss Dorcas, with her three charges, joined us at tea, though their other meals were taken in the seclusion of the schoolroom.

I was keeping a furtive eye on my wristwatch, and wondering which of the party would make the first move, when I saw Mrs Falconer nod to Miss Dorcas, who promptly rose, calling the children to come as she went. I wondered by what means such obedience had been taught and enforced since nine out of every ten children would have begged for “just ten more minutes”.

“The kiddies trot in early,” I remarked, to no one in particular.

“You bet,” answered Bob, “they always go through the fruit garden to the schoolroom, and if they get there before the sun leaves the apricot wall, they can pick one — you bet they don’t miss!”

I smiled, thinking to myself how apt it all was — seemingly so natural — though every move was planned.

Maude and the McKleans were the next to go — Maude talking volubly about finishing the Badminton set begun last evening.

They had barely gone before old Jacobs hurried up — this time with a trim maid in attendance — the two cleared the tea things, and departed without loss of time. There was not to be any delay this evening, that was plain.

Mr and Mrs Falconer only remained, they were going to sit me out, so to speak!

I would alter that plan. I rose, saying—

“Might I, too, venture in search of an apricot.”

Mrs Falconer — a barely perceptible shade of relief flashing over her face — answered — “Yes, surely, and go in by the schoolroom door, from there you can join us in the Indoor Garden.”

Mr Falconer rose, as if to accompany me, but his wife’s glance restrained him, evidently it was a little further than even they could, with courtesy, go — to accompany a guest to the fruit garden, as if fearing wholesale robbing of fruit trees. So I was permitted to go alone.

My idea was, of course, to visit the fruit garden, but not to enter the schoolroom door, joining the caged-up company, from then onwards, until bedtime. Oh! no, I was merely going to get an apricot — dawdle a while until the coast was clear and retrace my steps, almost to the Low Lawn, but instead of descending to it, skirt right round the top of it, and so indoors, when I felt disposed.

I reached the fruit garden, took my apricot, waved gaily to little Lottie in the window — disregarded the beckoning hand of little Miss Dorcas, who was gazing at me through the long window, with almost a look of fear in her dark eyes, and retraced my steps to the path which led right round the sunk lawn.

I walked along it on the far side from the steps leading down into it, half-way along past the group of fine trees, where the tea was usually put. I paused — paused because I had to — I knew that, but tried not to think it. I wasn’t exactly held up, nor was I conscious of briars tripping me up as last night — I had merely stopped — stopped to breathe. Yes, that was it, only I wasn’t out of breath — there just wasn’t anything to breathe; foolishly I found myself saying this idiotic sentence over and over again “not out of breath, but nothing to breathe.”

I had been once in a gas-cloud in France, but this wasn’t like that. This was like nothing; I struggled a few more yards, and gazed. The house seemed to have receded, the lawn seemed further below me, and appeared veiled in a bluish haze, thicker and thicker it seemed to get, and as I gazed, I fancied I could discern swiftly, hurrying forms moving to and fro. I struggled on again, intent only on reaching the house. As I advanced, the bluish fog closed round me, shutting me in, in an impenetrable wall. In vain I struggled, in vain I peered; at last, even beating the fog with my hands, as if to force a passage through. Nothing availed me, and ever and anon I could see the hurrying forms below me. Terror struck me! Would that I were safely in the Indoor Garden with its warmth and light and beauty, instead of here, enveloped in fog with other forms of which I dared not think, hurrying below me. Would that I had been guided instead of going my own obstinate way. Vain were such repinings now. The shapes seemed more defined, the atmosphere more dense. Feebly, I struggled to see the time by my luminous watch — Eight o’clock! Have I been wandering here so long — it seemed incredible! I must, and will, reach the house, but now I seemed to have lost the house, all trace of it had vanished.

Last night I grumbled that I was a prisoner — indoors. Tonight I was to be kept “Outside the House.”

Denser and denser grew the appalling thickness of the air. I feared to move a yard in advance. “If only it would lift a little, just enough to enable me to go forward in safety.” Even as I spoke, the atmosphere grew perceptibly clearer. I took one step forward, to find myself standing on the edge of a precipice or what seemed like one. I was now facing the sunk lawn — sunk indeed! — for it seemed far, far below me, with a drop from where I was standing of I dare not contemplate what depth, where shapes were ever hurrying to and fro. Cautiously I bent nearer, in a way almost glad to gaze on some movement, rather than into the impenetrable wall before me. As I gazed, a figure seemed to come close up to me out of the void, stretching its arms towards me as if to drag me with it. I saw no face, no definite shape, beyond the shadowy outline, and the arms. I shrank back, and back, to find myself pressing against the shrubs. “Could I keep in that position without losing my bearings?” I wondered, for if I could, I was then backing away from lawn and house. How far the fog extended, I could not guess, but to press back from the lawn seemed the only thing to attempt. I was weak, spent, almost done, but I threw my last ounce of strength into this move. Crash! crash! went branches behind me, my weak leg was failing me, and I found myself feebly trying to pray for help. And now the shadowy forms seemed to follow me, closer, closer, they pressed forward, as I pressed back. Suddenly, I fancied I heard a faint shout, then another. I tried to answer, but was powerless, terror had made me dumb. Another shout—

“John, where are you?”

I could not answer, but gave one last push, and fell.

I opened my eyes to find not a search party, not a feverish gang of people, fussing over me, but merely Mrs Falconer, with a flash of brandy in one hand, a light rug over her arm, leading a magnificent hound by a long chain. His acquaintance I had not made; he was licking my face and hands, when with a long shudder I sat up.

“Mrs Falconer,” I said.

“Yes, John, Gelert and I. Do you feel able to walk? We have some way to go, before you can rest.”

“Are we far from the house?” I asked.

“The house, as far as we are concerned, has ceased to exist until daylight,” she answered.

“I do not understand,” I said.

“Of course you don’t,” she replied, “and were not content to be guided.”

“No,” I said ruefully, “but how topping of you to come.”

“No one else can,” she said, “only Gelert and I can come. But now you must try to move.”

I took a little of the brandy, and struggled to my feet, to find I was on the extreme edge of the shrubberies, beyond which appeared to be meadows. With my final twist back, I had landed on my back into the meadow, nothing resisting my strength, and, of course, fell.

“How deep is the shrubbery I backed through, Mrs Falconer?” I asked.

“A matter of perhaps thirty or forty yards,” she said. “Fortunately it occurred to you to back.”

“Why?” I said.

“Never mind why, just now,” she replied, “we must hurry. Look.”

I looked, and saw the fog creeping after us. Gelert growled menacingly, ever and anon turning to face the way we were leaving, once, springing as if to grasp something, his eyes like fire, saliva dripping from his massive jaws. A few moments passed, and Mrs Falconer breathed — “Hurry John, you must.”

“I can’t,” I gasped.

“You must,” she said. But even as she spoke, I felt the impress of a hand heavily on my shoulder. The hound growled, prepared for a spring, I thought, at my throat, as with a quick word and sudden jerk, Mrs Falconer dragged me through a gate, sinking down on the roadside with a whispered “Thank God!”

I suppose I lost consciousness for a few moments, for when next I opened my eyes, I was covered with the rug, my head on Mrs Falconer’s knee, Gelert beside her, with his great paws close to her.

A faint, grey light, as of coming dawn, was visible, the atmosphere was clear and balmy, and very silent.

Mrs Falconer rose, and her voice was once again the cold, unemotional tones of my hostess. I vaguely wondered if it had been all part of a horrible nightmare, and had I dreamed that across it I heard her voice, anguished, distressed, calling, calling.

There was nothing now, in either her voice or bearing, other than the lady I had hitherto known.

“If you are rested, John, we will go home,” she said, in slightly ironical tones, “you will no doubt be glad of a bath and sleep.”

“Thank you,” I answered, in the same offhand way. “I shall.”

I was deadly tired, sick with pain, and now, in the quickly-coming dawn, felt, and I should not hesitate to say, looked, like a truant schoolboy, caught out of bounds, and conveyed home to receive due chastisement. I felt cowed — no other word describes it, yet deep in my heart lay a feeling of annoyance, that I had been found. I was quite conscious of not feeling nearly as grateful as I ought, and of being still a long way from discovering the why and wherefore of strange and terrifying happenings.

That I had seen things, not of this world, in the ordinary meaning of the word, I was well aware. Nor was I unduly fearful of them, the horror lay in the suffocating fog, and in the apparent wish to haul me into some abyss. I was not afraid of mere forms. Some of us out in “No-Man’s-Land” were not unknowing of other forms being present as well as our comrades in the flesh. There are those of us, who, in spite of the jeerings of scoffers, still say, that the Angels of Mons were not the fantasy of unhinged minds, nor even a mirage due to a tot of rum. Therefore, I, among many others, have learned to be less sceptical and not to take non-understandable things as impossibilities.

The truant school-boy feeling clung to me all the way home. I shouldn’t have felt surprised had Mrs Falconer taken me by the hand and bidden me trot along. As we neared the house, I observed smoke from one or two chimneys. What time it was I did not know, nor greatly care. In silence we entered the hall, hearing a large clock boom five as we did so.

A small round table was drawn near a blazing freshly kindled fire, a kettle steamed on the hob, toast, and bread and butter were there, but not a sign of any person.

Still in silence, Mrs Falconer threw off her fur coat and cap, and warming her hands at the blaze, she uttered one of her usual terse remarks — “When you have had food, John, I advise a bath, bed, and a still tongue. The household are aware you remained outside when you had better have been in. Details of your experience are not desirable, and for Elsie’s sake, I do not advise a repetition of foolhardiness, I also ask you to conform to the house rules, which are made as little irksome as possible.”

I did not reply beyond a mild bow and she went on — “I am going to lock Gelert up now. I counsel bed for you, and the Doctor to see your leg in the morning. Good-bye.”

I had prepared an elaborate speech of thanks for her timely help, but she cut me short, saying — “Your best thanks, John, will be to conform to rules; no one else has ever tried to kick them over quite so deliberately before.”

She left me then, and I dragged my throbbing limb to bath and bed, too weary to think or conjecture further.

When next I awakened it was 10 am. No one apparently had been near me, so I rang my bell. Old Jacob answered it, looking at me reproachfully, as he asked if he might bring breakfast because “Madam has ’phoned the doctor to call.”

“There was no need,” I said — “he may even order me to lie still.”

“Yes, sir,” said Jacobs, his tone implying “that’s it.”

A plentiful breakfast tray speedily arrived, and with it Bob, who perched himself on the foot of my bed, eyeing me as one who wished to know without inquiring. I vouchsafed no information, so he started off.

“Rotten luck, sir, but only your own fault — quite instructive and very thrilling — Hurt your leg, sir?”

“A bit,” I answered.

Then lowering his voice he whispered — “Anything touch you? Fog, I suppose, and people.”

“Oh, no,” I said, “at least I don’t think so.”

“Think so!” he ejaculated, “there would not be any think about it.”

“What’s it all about, Bob?” I asked.

“Better ask the Gov’nor, sir, not me.”

“P’raps so — clear now, Bob — I’m going to dress.”

“Right-o, sir,” said he as he lounged away.

Fearing a doctor’s visit to maul me about, I dressed and tubbed quickly, and was just about to put my jacket on, when I noticed a long tear in the shoulder, also the shoulder strap was missing.

“Then someone did touch me,” I said aloud, staring aghast at the ripped shoulder, dismayed to think what a giveaway it was to the household as it was my only available coat for day. I had better concoct a yarn to account for it, and get a maid to mend it, while I dressed.

I rang the bell and a plain-looking person with glasses and a long nose answered it.

“Did you ring, sir?” she asked, in rasping tones.

“Eh, yes,” I said, “I’ve had an accident and torn my coat, I shall be obliged if someone will mend it.”

She took it without answering, and I continued dressing until she re-appeared saying—

“I’ve done what I could, sir, it’s a tailor’s job, but may do until you leave.”

“Until I leave?” I said, somewhat startled.

“Yes, sir,” she replied. “You’ll be leaving I expect. It’s no use staying, sir, when things like that begin to happen,” pointing to my coat as she spoke.

I was about to try a question, softened by a half-crown, when there was a sharp knock at the door, and another maid entered with a salver on which lay a wire. With a murmured “Thanks” I ripped it open, reading—

“Coming today, why don’t you do as you are told. Elsie.”

Forgotten were the horrors of last night, forgotten torn coats, rules, regulations, everything, in the delight of my little girl’s coming. I thanked the two women, flung on my coat, whistling like a schoolboy, as I tramped to the hall on my way to breakfast.

A curious restraint met me — something indefinable, a kind of lack of genuineness in the “Good-mornings” I received, which gave me a feeling of being in disgrace, but no amount of that was going to damp my spirits, so I ignored it, though don’t mind admitting the chill rather spoilt the morning, and I was not sorry to escape with a pipe to have a look at a timetable.

Mrs Falconer did not appear during the morning which did not unduly worry me, but when Mr Falconer asked me to be good enough to follow him to his study, I had visions of the birch-rod, and my footsteps lagged as befitted my part, when I obeyed his request. He asked me to be seated, but instead of a whipping, he mildly said—

“John, Elsie will arrive at 12.40, will you drive to meet her?”

“Thanks very much, I was hoping to,” I answered.

“She knows,” he went on, “that you — er — that you — had an unpleasant night. I regret that you do not seem able to take us as we are obliged to be, and I admit it is difficult to make one’s guests understand and respect our arrangements for their welfare, without explanations, which we are not permitted to give; for Elsie’s sake, I warn you, less worse befall, to conform to rule.”

This was a whipping without a doubt; and I felt a qualm of conscience as he spoke, knowing, as I did, my pig-headed temperament and determination to know more.

I thanked him, offered him a cigarette, but evaded any promises, though he eyed me questioningly as if he awaited something of the kind.

The next few hours I passed aimlessly, wandering about alone, since one and all of the party seemed bent on avoiding me. I had a stroll to the Low Lawn; though, bathed in sunshine, it looked peaceful and serene, making me wonder vaguely had I dreamed the horrid fantasy. I was glad when the hour came to meet my little girl. I enjoyed the swift run. I was glad beyond measure to see her bright face at the railway carriage window.

“You are looking fit, old boy,” she said; adding, without any hesitancy, “in spite of your silly tricks last night.”

“How did you know?” I asked.

“Mother wired me to come,” she replied, “and take charge of you, as you had been out too late. I knew all that meant;” she said, with a shudder.

“Will you tell me about it, Kiddie?” I coaxed, but her little face took a graver look, as she answered:

“No, John, I can’t; you must just trust us and do as we do. Stay with me, dear, this evening; never mind trying to fathom things, others have tried before you. Promise me you will not think of it anymore.”

“Dear child, I’m a man with a thinking machine. I can’t promise not to think,” I said.

“Well, promise you won’t stay out after time,” she said.

“Very well,” I assented, “I’ll promise that.”

She nestled to my side in dear content at that, and our drive back was a happy one.

Elsie was greeted with happy comradeship on our arrival, so lunch was a more cheery meal, and the afternoon was passed as usual, in a rest, a stroll, and tea beneath the old trees on the Low Lawn. At five, as usual, a general move was made to the house. Elsie held out her hand to me, merely saying:

“Come, John”; but, man-like, I wanted to remain, and was reluctant to obey that little outstretched hand, but gave in with a good grace, consenting to be imprisoned for the rest of the summer evening within the glassed garden. To a man accustomed to be out of doors, the enforced imprisonment palled, despite the games, music, gay talk, and general attempt to keep things cheery.

Little Miss Dorcas and her charges joined us for a while; and I had an idea, that if I could get her alone, she would perhaps give me some information. I would try; so invited her to a putting match, leaving Elsie to chat to her mother.

“You are playing wildly, Major,” said my partner, in a few moments.

“Yes,” I answered, “I’m afraid my thoughts were ‘outside’, and not in. I had a strange evening last evening, you know.”

“Yes,” she said. “I hope it is one that will not be repeated.”

“Oh no,” I answered, “I’m not likely to repeat it.”

“I suppose not,” she replied, “at least not in that way.”

“That way?” I asked. “What do you mean, is there any other way?”

“Unfortunately, yes,” she answered, gravely. “Oh! Mrs Falconer is watching us,” she said, suddenly — “play, oh, do play! I’ll try and say something while we play. I don’t think it is right to keep you in ignorance of your danger; they do, and no one will warn you.”

“Tell me,” I muttered, as I played.

“I can’t,” she whispered. “She is coming across, look in the books on your shelf tonight. There! I’ve won,” she said, in the same breath, as she waved her putter in triumph, just as Mrs Falconer came up.

“Don’t overdo it, John,” she said. “Elsie is waiting for you, and the children are getting tired, Miss Dorcas.”

So our game and little talk came to an abrupt end. From then on, I was given no chance for talks, except with Elsie; but when we separated to dress for dinner, and I found myself alone, I pondered deeply over a quiet pipe. “Warn me of my danger” Miss Dorcas had said, then was there danger, whether I ventured outside or not? And the bookshelf, that probably meant a note. Surely I was safe inside, I thought, for I was fully determined to get the iron shutter out of my way. Well, I would leave it now, and, as they say, “wait and see.”

Dinner was cheery, but I was rapidly beginning to detest the Indoor Garden, with its continual constraint, and made up my mind to press for an early wedding and take my little girl to more congenial surroundings.

The evening drew to a close at last! though I was happy with Elsie, and, in a secluded corner, had asked and carried my point of an early wedding.

By 10.30 all had dispersed; indeed, I am certain all hated the enforced seclusion as much in their hearts as I did. I bid them all “Good night!” and, with a sigh of relief, flung myself into the armchair in my cosy bedroom. My eyes suddenly fell on to a book, slightly awry on the shelf, and I sprang up as quickly as my lame leg permitted, and took it down; a tiny note which lay between the pages read thus:

“You have given a loophole and are waited for, take care you are not taken ‘outside the house’. Keep from your windows. — J D”

“Ho! ho!” I said; ““keep from my windows’. “That little warning gives me a clue, but surely, if I do not open them, all will be well. I only desire to see through them, and what’s more, I will.”

I took my coat off, mounted a chair with difficulty, managing to seat myself sideways on the broad window-ledge, armed with my files, and a soft cloth, to dull the sound as much as possible. Luckily the file was sharp, and the metal soft, and in a short time I had made a deep dent. It was now 11.30, all was silent, presumably the whole house was wrapt in slumber. Steadily I worked for another half-hour; the hasp was almost through. I paused for a brief rest. As I paused, there sprang into being, probably from my subconscious, the thought: “Suppose real danger did lie in wait for me, suppose some horror undreamed of should cost me my life, or, worse, my reason, and none knew of this attempt of mine to lay bare a secret so carefully guarded.” I prolonged my rest sufficiently to climb from my windowsill, add a few lines to my carefully kept notes of events since I came here, put the bundle of papers in a long envelope, sealed it, and addressed it to Captain Percy Hesketh. Having done which, I remounted the windowsill and endeavoured to complete my task. There seemed some slight hesitancy in my movements, probably because I was now nearing the goal I had set out to win. I braced myself and started again.

How still it was, though the wind seemed to have risen a little. I could hear it moaning round the corner of the house, fitfully, as if a sudden summer storm was coming up. The hasp bent, gave way, and came in two in my fingers. Gently I moved the heavy shutter, an inch — it creaked — creaked, it seemed to me, loudly enough to wake the “seven sleepers”. Did I imagine it, or did I hear a step overhead? I must hurry. I scrambled down, switched off all lights, climbed up again, and waited breathlessly. All was silent. Carefully I slid down on to the chair below me, and cautiously drew the shutter back a couple of inches more, then waited — still all quiet — swung it wide — CRACK!

I dimly remember calling Percy, calling with my soul more than with my voice.

•   •   •

When next I remembered anything, it was to become conscious that I was in a bed in a bright, lofty room, a white-capped nurse was by my bed, holding a glass. Percy Hesketh was sitting by my side — a fact which gave me joy without an atom of surprise. It was as if I had expected him to be there.

“If you swallow this, you may say a few words,” said the nurse.

I swallowed it, and gave my hand into the warm grasp of my friend.

“John,” he said, “I have your papers. Try to tell me what followed the cracking of the pane of glass.”

Feebly, haltingly, I tried, as I stumblingly, shudderingly, told him:

“Following the crack, the window splintered before my eyes, from top to bottom. I bent back, expecting to be covered with falling glass. It did not fall, but a pale, unearthly light illuminated it, lighting up to my horrified gaze, faces pressed against the window peering in upon me, but faces such as I never in life beheld. They were dark, almost black, with sunken, fiercely gleaming eyes, the cheekbones protruding, flesh sunken, looking almost like living skeletons, save for the skin which stretched tightly over the bones; anger, despair, ferocity, hunger, terror — all were depicted upon those awful faces. Through the cracked glass, deadly fumes began to steal, my room seemed cloudy, I was as if transfixed, unable to move, to call, to reach the lights, to do aught but stand staring, tremblingly. The faces pressed closer and yet closer; they reached the glass, it cracked again, and more fumes poured in; long arms (there seemed hundreds of them) reached wildly up, skinny hands, like those of skeletons, were held out as if to grasp. I tried to step back to get away from the window, as with a terrific crash, the glass fell in. Arms and hands stretched through, faces came nearer, nearer — I felt myself seized, held, lifted, drawn upwards.

I was on the windowsill again, held in an inexorable grip. I felt myself lifted through, felt the cold air on my face, was just able to discern the hurrying figures in the thick mist, and to know, beyond all doubt, that I was being borne swiftly, by claw-like hands, towards the Low Lawn.”

•   •   •

(Continued by
Captain Percy Hesketh):

As my poor friend uttered his final words, he sank back into my arms in a state of unconsciousness, from which he never fully recovered, though in the many hours of watching over him, which were permitted by the Hospital Staff, I witnessed again and again the agony of mind and horror he passed through.

My painful task it was to bring the girl he loved to his bedside, to witness her grief, as he failed to remember her name, or face, all my life I shall remember that afternoon.

The sun was shining on the floor of the Ward — lighting up stray corners and patches, as I gently led Elsie Falconer to my friend’s bedside. He was sitting up, laughingly pointing to the sunny patches, babbling about the funny light. He took no notice of the girl, beyond asking me: “Why does that girl cry?”

“Do you know her, John?” I asked.

“No,” he replied, “but she is pretty, tell her to look at the funny patches, then she will laugh. Take her away,” he added, “she cries.”

Nurse led the weeping girl away, and I was thankful she had gone. One or another came to see him, it was always the same, no glimmer of memory seemed to return, though at times he would make a little more sensible remark.

One day he spoke to me, saying:

“Who was the old man who called me ‘John’? I’m not ‘John’. I wish my brains wouldn’t keep running round and round like a glass ball full of colours. I could listen to people if the glass ball would keep still,” he rambled on, and, uneasy and fearful, I called the Nurse. I saw by her face, it was the end, as, with sudden strength, he flung himself against the pillows, shouting as loudly as he could:

“Hark! there are the guns, at it again, are they — give me my rifle, I’ll show them. Now boys, come on — over the top, and at ’em.” They were his last words, and the day after the following notice appeared in the papers:

“On September 30th, at the Hospital, Singleton, Major John Longworth, MC, after four years’ service, from shock, following an accident, aged 39.”

•   •   •

Some years later, I ventured to read through my late friend’s notes of the experience which cost him his life, and to re-write them to the best of my ability, for this, I believe, was what he wished done.

It cost me an effort to re-visit the scenes of such horror, even after a lapse of years, but I desired also to learn, if I could, what really was the story of the place which my friend — bravely, though foolishly — gave his life to discover.

The landlord of the Village Inn gave me the story, as told to him by his grandfather, who knew the former tenants of the house. It seems the family had owned all the coal mines round, for generations, growing more and more wealthy as the years passed. The former owner, grandfather of my friend Francis, was an avaricious man, hard and grasping.

There was warning given, one day, of danger in the mine nearest to the house, warning that it was unsafe to permit the men to descend. Old Falconer, with his greed for money, preferred to risk men’s lives rather than lose by delay, and ignored the warning — in fact had it contradicted — and the men went down — to their death — some four hundred of them. Old Falconer added to his crime, by refusing to spend money for rescue work, saying it was useless, that the earth had closed the mine completely. Apparently it had, though there were those who told of groans and shrieks coming from the bowels of the earth.

Falconer went on his way, disregarding all that was said, and in time the ground above the buried mine was cultivated, and turned into a lawn, below the level of the house.

When the old man died, he passed on the dire legacy to his sons, leaving them the whole of his fortune on condition that they lived in the house, making them promise that none on the premises would be out of the house after five in the evening, stating that the entombed men haunted the place.

None ever knew what the old man had seen or heard, but it is said that the miners had slowly starved to death, and could have been rescued at the time, but now haunted the place, intent upon finding victims to drag below with them. There had, said the landlord, been one or two sad happenings, but the worst trouble was the most recent, when a Major Longworth, MC, who was engaged to Miss Falconer, and who had been severely wounded in France, came to stay with the family, and did not rest until he had witnessed the whole of the awful happenings.

Mr Falconer was awakened in the night, it is said, by the sound of shattering glass, and rushed into Major Longworth’s room in time to see him borne away towards the ill-fated lawn.

The big hound, kept on the place, was loosed, and dashed across the lawn, in which a vast crack had appeared. Mr Falconer described a furious fight for the body of Major Longworth, between the hound and something unseen, but that the hound succeeded in hauling the body out of the crack in the ground, into which it appeared to be slipping, dragging it, mauled and bleeding, back to the house.

“Major Longworth died in the hospital, here, sir,” went on my garrulous host, “and Miss Falconer entered a nursing sisterhood.

“People say the house will collapse someday — have a look at it, sir, if you’ve time, before it gets late.”

I thanked him, and went my way. I found the house, desolate and dilapidated. The vast glass-house on one side of it, full of dead plants and broken chairs — dirty beyond description.

The gardens were a tangle of briars and weeds, the paths had become mere grass tracks. The Low Lawn, grown rank and rough, its greenness marred by a vast blackened crack right across it, as if a subsidence had taken place.

A brooding sense of mystery and disaster hangs over the place; nor do I hesitate to believe when I hear on all sides how the place is shunned, still less can I doubt my friend’s written words of all that befell him in spite of all warnings to conform to orders, and not venture “Outside the House.”

Out of the Silence (1920)

IN THE WOODS

Amyas Northcote

1921

The old woman raised herself from stooping among her vegetables, and looked upwards towards the wood topping the hill above her. Her glance was arrested by a pair of moving figures. Shading her eyes with her hand against the westering sun, the old woman gazed more attentively at them, and distinguished, outlined against the blackness of the fir-trees, the figures of a young girl and a large dog. Slowly they mounted the grassy slope, and as they drew near the wood its shadow seemed to her to stretch itself forward to meet them. They passed on, and vanished in its recesses. The old woman bent again to her task

•   •   •   •   •

The girl was tired, tired and unhappy.

She was tired with that tiredness that at seventeen seems hopeless and unending. It is a tiredness of the mind, an ill far worse than any physical fatigue. She was unhappy with an unhappiness that, being in a sense causeless, is all the more unbearable. She felt herself to be neglected, to be misunderstood. Not, be it remarked, that she was neglected in the sense in which we apply it to those in poverty and distress. On the contrary, she was doubtless, and she herself knew it, an object of envy to many. She lacked for no bodily comfort, she owned to no neglect of the mind. Governesses had implanted that which we call knowledge in her, affectionate parents had lavished their love and care upon her. She had been watched, guided, advised, taught with all possible care. She knew all this; and she knew that if she expressed a reasonable wish for any concrete thing she would promptly possess it. But yet she felt herself neglected. A lonely child, without brother or sister, and lacking the power or the will to find close friends among the other girls of her neighbourhood, she had been compelled to rely on her parents and their friends. In childhood she had been happy, but now, with the passing of the years, she felt, dimly and indistinctly perhaps, that she was isolated and alone.

She moved onwards into the recesses of the wood, the great St. Bernard beside her, treading with familiar steps the well-known track, letting her eyes rest on the stately beauty of the trees and her tired thoughts draw repose from their profound calm. Her way led gradually upwards over the crest of a ridge covered with the dark grandeur of Scotch firs. In a few moments after entering the wood the trees, closing their ranks behind her, blotted out every glimpse of the valley whence she had come. In front and on each side of her they rose, towering, straight and tall, with clean stems, upwards to where their dark-green foliage branched out and almost hid the sky. Here and there rare gaps appeared, and in these open spaces the bracken leapt up to gaze upon the sun, and waved its green fronds in the gentle breeze. Her footsteps fell noiseless on the smooth dry pine-needles as she hurried on, drinking in the first feelings of rest, the rest and peace of the great woods.

Presently the trees began to thin in front of her, the gaps among them became more frequent and larger, and soon, passing out of the fir-wood, she gazed down on to a happy valley between two ridges. Beyond the valley the fir-trees recommenced, black and formidable-looking against the slowly setting sun, except away to her left, where the declining ridge opposite sank gently into more open country, and she could descry beyond the trees a fair prospect of unwooded fields. In front of her, as she emerged from among the pines, was a pool of still water, fed by a little brook, which meandered down a green and wooded valley, a valley of osiers and willow and hazel, carpeted at this season with buttercups and ragged-robin, and fringed by tall foxgloves, by flowering elder and mountain ash. Among these lesser plants an occasional oak towered up, gnarled and misshapen, resembling, beside the stately firs, some uncouth giant of a bygone age.

The wood was very still, the afternoon hush lay upon it, there were no sounds save a gentle whispering of the wind among the fir-tops and the occasional harsh cry of a jay, startled by the rare sight of a human form, or the metallic note of a moor-hen swimming across the pool with its queer clockwork-like motion. With these sounds mingled the gentle tinkle of water escaping from the pool over a hoary floodgate, and trickling away towards the cultivated lands below. All else was silent and moveless, and the girl, seating herself on the stump of a long-vanished tree, relapsed into absolute quiet, the dog lying equally still beside her.

The peacefulness of the scene calmed the vexed thoughts that had perplexed her; gradually the last gift of Pandora reasserted itself. She began to feel more confident in herself and in her future. True, the way was weary and long, lack of sympathy, lack of interest prevented her, but she felt that within herself lay the seeds of great deeds; the world would yet hear of her, success would yet be at her feet. Formless were the dreams, uncertain even in which direction they would be realized, but chief among them was her dream of music, her beloved music. The paths to many an ambition are closed to women, this she bitterly realized, but at any rate music lies open to them. The visions became more clearly defined, the tinkling water, the rustling pines resolved themselves into stirring rhythms and interlacing harmonies. In her excitement she moved slightly; the great dog, opening his eyes, glanced up, and licked the hand of his companion. This recalled her to herself; she looked up with a start, first at the evening sky and then at her watch, and with a little exclamation at the lateness of the hour hastened to retrace her footsteps through the trees. Presently she emerged again on the open hillside, and hurried downwards; the trees, bending to the rising wind, seemed to reach out long arms after her.

The woods enthralled her.

Her days were spent more and more dreaming in their recesses. She was much alone. Her father, a busy man, breakfasted, and was gone till evening, before she came down of a morning, an early tradition of delicate health having made her a late riser. In the evening, on his return, he was usually tired, kind but tired. Her mother, long an invalid, was away from home on an interminable cure, and in her absence even the rare visits of dull, country neighbours ceased. And so she lived, surrounded by comforts, a forgotten girl!

She grew more and more abstracted and dreamy: she neglected her duties, even her personal appearance suffered. The servants, who had long regarded her as eccentric, began to grow anxious, even a little alarmed. She became irregular in all her habits; she would stray away into the woods for hours, careless of time. In her rambles she became familiar with every corner of the woods; she was a familiar figure to the watchful gamekeeper and to the old woodman at his work. With these she was on a friendly footing. Once convinced that the great St. Bernard harboured no evil intentions as regards his pheasants, the keeper was civil enough and, after a word or two of salutation, used to stand and watch the lithe, lonely, brown-clad figure slipping away from him among the brown tree trunks with a queer mixture of sympathy and bewilderment. But with the old woodman the young girl made closer friends. She loved to watch him at his solitary toil, and to note in his lined face the look of one who has lived his life in solitude among the beauties of the woods, and who has become cognizant of their glories and of part of their mysteries. She would speak to the old man but little, she spoke to few and rarely in those days, but her watch of him was sympathetic, and she seemed to be trying to draw from him something of that woodland mystery in which he was steeped.

And alone in the woods she grew ever closer to them; the trees began to be for her more than mere living trees: they began to become personalities. At first only certain of them were endowed with personality, but gradually she became aware that each tree was a living and a sentient being. She loved them all, even the distorted oak-trees were her friends. Lying prone in her favourite corner overhanging the pool, the forest become more and more alive, and the firs waving and rustling in the wind were souls lifting up their voices to God. She imagined them each with a living, separate soul, and mourned for a fallen giant as if it were a friend. Ever more and more rapt she became, more and more silent and unresponsive to her fellow-men. At times her father would gaze earnestly at the silent girl, clad in her simple white frock, seated opposite him, but he could discern nothing to disturb him. Her mother wrote, and the girl answered; letters of affection, but covering up within herself all the deep mysteries and yearnings of her heart.

The woods enthralled her.

In them, as she paced to and fro or rested on the stem of some fallen tree, listening to the rustling of the branches around, she became conscious that they were ringing with melody. She felt that here, and here alone among the trees, she could produce that divine music which her soul held expressionless within her. Vainly she would strive in her music room to reach even the lowest terrace of that musical palace whose grandest halls were freely opened to her among the solitudes of the woods.

Little by little did she become absorbed into them; she dared not as yet visit them at night, on account of the certain annoyance of her father, but by day she almost lived in them, and her belief in the souls of the trees grew stronger and ever stronger. She would sit for hours motionless, hoping, believing, that at any moment the revelation might come to her, and that she would see the Dryads dancing, and hear the pipes of Pan. But there was nothing. “Another day of disappointment,” she would cry.

The summer passed on, one of those rare summers which only too seldom visit our English land, but which, when they do appear, by their wonderful beauty and delight, serve to make us thankful to be alive if only to enjoy the joys of Nature.

On one of these glorious days the girl had wandered out, as usual, into the woods. It was afternoon, the sky was cloudless, the wind was almost still, but at times a gentle breath from the west made a soft rustling amongst the pine branches far overhead. As the girl moved on she gazed around her on the well-known trees. All was as usual; Nature spread her beauties before her, glorious, mysterious, veiled from the ken of the human soul. The girl stopped. “Is there nothing,” she cried, “nothing behind this? Is Nature all a painted show? Oh, I have so longed for Nature, to find the peace, and pierce the mystery of the woods, and nothing comes in answer to my soul’s call!” She moved on again, passionate, eager, yearning, with all the yearning of youth and growth for the new, the wonderful. Presently she reached her seat above the pool, and sitting down buried her face in her hands. Her shoulders heaved, her feet beat the ground in hasty emotion, her soul cried out in longing.

Suddenly she ceased to move, for a moment longer she sat in her old attitude, then, lifting her face, she gazed around her. Something had happened! Something, in those few moments! To her outward eye all was unchanged, the pool still lay silent in the sunlight, the breeze still murmured in the treetops, the goldenrod still nodded in the sun at the verge of the pool, and the heather still blazed on the lower slopes of the ridge opposite her. But there had come a change! — an unseen change! — and in a flash the girl understood. The woods were aware of her, the trees knew of her presence and were watching her, the very flowers and shrubs were cognizant of her! A feeling of pride, of joy, of a little fear, possessed her; she stretched out her arms, “Oh, my beloved playmates,” she cried, “you have come at last!”

She listened, and the gentle breeze among the pine-trees seemed to change, and she could hear its voices, nay, the very sentences of those voices, calling to each other in a language still strange to her ears, but which she felt she knew she would soon understand. She knew she was being watched, discussed, appraised, and a faint sense of disappointment stole over her. Where was the love and the beauty of Nature; these woods, were they friendly or hostile, surely such beauty could mean nothing but love? She began to grow fearful, what was going to happen next? She knew something great was coming, something awe-inspiring, something, perchance, terrible! Already she began to feel invisible, inaudible beings closing, in upon her, already she began to know that slowly her strength, her will, were being drawn out of her. And for what end? Terror began to possess itself of her, when suddenly on the farther side of the pool she saw the old woodman, slowly plodding on his homeward way. The sight of the familiar figure, clad in his rough fustian clothes, bending under a new-cut faggot to which was tied the bright red handkerchief containing the old man’s dinner-pail, a splash of bright colour outlined against the green verdure by the pool, was as a dash of cold water over a fainting man. She braced herself up, and watched the distant figure — as she did so, as silently, as suddenly as the mysterious door had opened, it closed again. The woods slept again, ignorant of and indifferent to the young girl.

But, that night, long after the household slept, the girl was at her window, gazing out across the valley to where the fir woods crowned the opposite hill. Long she watched them as they towered, irregular and mysterious, overhanging the grey moonlit fields and sleeping village below them. They seemed to her now to be a strong, thick wall defending the quiet valley below, and guarding it from ill, and now to be the advance guard of an enemy overhanging her peaceful village home and waiting but the word to swoop down and overwhelm it.

The woods enthralled her.

She felt herself on the point of penetrating their mystery, a glimpse had been given her, and now she hesitated and doubted, torn between many emotions. The fascination of fear possessed her, she dreaded and yet she loved the woods. For a day or two after her adventure she shunned them, but they lured her to them, and again and again she went, seeking, hoping for, dreading, what she knew must come. But her search was vain, silently and blindly the woods received her, though again and again she felt that after she had passed she was noted, she was discussed, and that her coming was watched for. The fascination and the fear grew; her food, her few duties, were all neglected, she felt, she knew, that her eyes would soon be opened.

The summer was over. September was upon the world of the woods: the bracken was turning into a thousand shades of yellows and browns, the heather was fading, the leaves of the early trees were browning, the bulrushes hung their dying heads, the flowers were nearly over; the goldenrod alone seemed to defy the changing year. The young rabbits, the fledgling birds, the young life, had all disappeared. At times one saw a lordly cock pheasant, or his more modest wife, strut across the woodland rides. Once in a while, with a loud clapping of wings, wild duck would rise from the pool; among the hazel bushes the squirrels were busy garnering their winter store, and from the distant fields the young girl, as she sat in her well-loved corner of the woods, could hear the far-off lowing of cattle. The afternoon was heavy and oppressive; a dull sensation of coming change hung over the woods, dreaming their last dreams of summer. The firs stood dark and motionless, with a faint aspect of menace in their clustering ranks; no birds were moving among them, no rabbit slipped from one patch of yellowing bracken to another. All was still as the young girl sat musing by her well-loved pool.

Suddenly she started up, listening. Far off, up the green valley, beyond where a cluster of osiers hid the bend, she seemed to hear a sound of piping. Very faint and far off it seemed; very sweet and enthralling; sweet, with a tang of bitter in the sweet, enthralling, with a touch of threatening. As she stood listening eagerly, and with the air of one who hears what he has hoped and longed and dreaded to hear, that same well-remembered sudden, subtle change passed over the woods. Once more she became aware that the trees were alive, were watching her, and this time she felt that they were closer, their presences were more akin to her than before. And it seemed to her as if everywhere, figures, light, slender, brown-clad figures, were passing to and fro, coming from, fading into, the brown trunks of the trees. She could not discern these figures clearly; as she turned to watch they faded out, but sidelong they seemed to flock and whirl in a giddy dance. Ever the sound of the piping drew nearer, bringing with it strange thoughts, overpowering sensations, sensations of growth, of life, thoughts of the earth, vague desires, unholy thoughts, sweet but deadly. As the sounds of the piping drew nearer, the vague, elusive figures danced more nimbly, they seemed to rush towards the girl, to surround her from behind, from each side, never in front, never showing clearly, always shifting, always fading. The girl felt herself changing. Wild impulses to leap into the air, to cry aloud, to sing a new strange song, to join in the wild woodland dance, possessed her. Joy filled her heart, and yet, mingling with the joy, came fear; fear, at first low-lying, hidden, but gradually gaining; a fear, a natural fear, of the secret mysteries unfolding before her. And still the piping drew nearer; IT was coming, IT was coming! IT was coming down the quiet valley, through the oak-trees that seemed to spring to attention to greet IT, as soldiers salute the coming of their King. The piping rose louder and more clear. Beautiful it was, and entrancing, but evil and menacing; the girl knew, deep in her consciousness she knew, that when IT appeared, evil and beauty would come conjoined in it. Her terror and her sense of helplessness grew; IT was very near now; the dancing, elusive forms were drawing closer around her, the fir woods behind her were closing against her escape. She was like a bird charmed by a serpent, her feet refused to fly, her conscious will to act. And the Terror drew ever nearer. Despairingly she looked around her, despairingly uttered a cry of helpless agony.

The great St. Bernard lying at her feet, disturbed by her cry, raised himself to his haunches and looked up into her face. The movement of the dog recalled him to her thoughts; she looked down at him, into the wise old eyes that gazed up at her with love and with the calm look of the aged, the experienced, of one from whom all the illusions of Life had faded. In the peaceful, sane, loving look of the dog the girl saw safety, escape. “Oh, Bran, save me, save me,” she cried, and clung to the old dog’s neck. Slowly he arose, stretched himself, and, with the girl holding fast to his collar, turned towards the homeward path. As they moved forwards together the whirling forms seemed to fade and to recede, the menacing, clustered firs fell back, the piping changed and, harsh and discordant, resolved itself into the whistle of the rising wind, the very sky seemed to grow lighter, the air less heavy.

And so they passed through the woods together; and emerging from their still clutching shadows stood gazing across the valley darkening in the evening light, towards the gates of home, lit up by the cheerful rays of the setting sun.

•   •   •   •   •

The old woman, resting her aching back, looked up and saw the girl descending from the woods with quick light steps. “I wish I were as young and care free as she be,” she muttered, and stooped again among her vegetables.

In Ghostly Company (1921)

THE OUTCAST

E. F. Benson

1922

When Mrs. Acres bought the Gate-house at Tarleton, which had stood so long without a tenant, and appeared in that very agreeable and lively little town as a resident, sufficient was already known about her past history to entitle her to friendliness and sympathy. Hers had been a tragic story, and the account of the inquest held on her husband’s body, when, within a month of their marriage, he had shot himself before her eyes, was recent enough, and of as full a report in the papers as to enable our little community of Tarleton to remember and run over the salient grimness of the case without the need of inventing any further details — which, otherwise, it would have been quite capable of doing.

Briefly, then, the facts had been as follows. Horace Acres appeared to have been a heartless fortune-hunter — a handsome, plausible wretch, ten years younger than his wife. He had made no secret to his friends of not being in love with her but of having a considerable regard for her more than considerable fortune. But hardly had he married her than his indifference developed into violent dislike, accompanied by some mysterious, inexplicable dread of her. He hated and feared her, and on the morning of the very day when he had put an end to himself he had begged her to divorce him; the case he promised would be undefended, and he would make it indefensible. She, poor soul, had refused to grant this; for, as corroborated by the evidence of friends and servants, she was utterly devoted to him, and stated with that quiet dignity which distinguished her throughout this ordeal, that she hoped that he was the victim of some miserable but temporary derangement, and would come to his right mind again. He had dined that night at his club, leaving his month-old bride to pass the evening alone, and had returned between eleven and twelve that night in a state of vile intoxication. He had gone up to her bedroom, pistol in hand, had locked the door, and his voice was heard screaming and yelling at her. Then followed the sound of one shot. On the table in his dressing-room was found a half-sheet of paper, dated that day, and this was read out in court. “The horror of my position,” he had written, “is beyond description and endurance. I can bear it no longer: my soul sickens…” The jury, without leaving the court, returned the verdict that he had committed suicide while temporarily insane, and the coroner, at their request, expressed their sympathy and his own with the poor lady, who, as testified on all hands, had treated her husband with the utmost tenderness and affection.

For six months Bertha Acres had travelled abroad, and then in the autumn she had bought Gate-house at Tarleton, and settled down to the absorbing trifles which make life in a small country town so busy and strenuous.

•  •  •

Our modest little dwelling is within a stone’s throw of the Gate-house; and when, on the return of my wife and myself from two months in Scotland, we found that Mrs. Acres was installed as a neighbour, Madge lost no time in going to call on her. She returned with a series of pleasant impressions. Mrs. Acres, still on the sunny slope that leads up to the tableland of life which begins at forty years, was extremely handsome, cordial, and charming in manner, witty and agreeable, and wonderfully well dressed. Before the conclusion of her call Madge, in country fashion, had begged her to dispose with formalities, and, instead of a frigid return of the call, to dine with us quietly next day. Did she play bridge? That being so, we would just be a party of four; for her brother, Charles Alington, had proposed himself for a visit….

I listened to this with sufficient attention to grasp what Madge was saying, but what I was really thinking about was a chess-problem which I was attempting to solve. But at this point I became acutely aware that her stream of pleasant impressions dried up suddenly, and she became stonily silent. She shut speech off as by the turn of a tap, and glowered at the fire, rubbing the back of one hand with the fingers of another, as is her habit in perplexity.

“Go on,” I said.

She got up, suddenly restless.

“All I have been telling you is literally and soberly true,” she said. “I thought Mrs. Acres charming and witty and good-looking and friendly. What more could you ask from a new acquaintance? And then, after I had asked her to dinner, I suddenly found for no earthly reason that I very much disliked her; I couldn’t bear her.”

“You said she was wonderfully well dressed,” I permitted myself to remark…. If the Queen took the Knight—

“Don’t be silly!” said Madge. “I am wonderfully well dressed too. But behind all her agreeableness and charm and good looks I suddenly felt there was something else which I detested and dreaded. It’s no use asking me what it was, because I haven’t the slightest idea. If I knew what it was, the thing would explain itself. But I felt a horror — nothing vivid, nothing close, you understand, but somewhere in the background. Can the mind have a ‘turn,’ do you think, just as the body can, when for a second or two you suddenly feel giddy? I think it must have been that — oh! I’m sure it was that. But I’m glad I asked her to dine. I mean to like her. I shan’t have a ‘turn’ again, shall I?”

“No, certainly not,” I said. … If the Queen refrained from taking the tempting Knight—

“Oh, do stop your silly chess-problem!” said Madge. “Bite him, Fungus!”

Fungus, so called because he is the son of Humour and Gustavus Adolphus, rose from his place on the hearth-rug, and with a horse laugh nuzzled against my leg, which is his way of biting those he loves. Then the most amiable of bulldogs, who has a passion for the human race, lay down on my foot and sighed heavily. But Madge evidently wanted to talk, and I pushed the chessboard away.

“Tell me more about the horror,” I said.

“It was just horror,” she said — “a sort of sickness of the soul….”

I found my brain puzzling over some vague reminiscence, surely connected with Mrs. Acres, which those words mistily evoked. But next moment that train of thought was cut short, for the old and sinister legend about the Gate-house came into my mind as accounting for the horror of which Madge spoke. In the days of Elizabethan religious persecutions it had, then newly built, been inhabited by two brothers, of whom the elder, to whom it belonged, had Mass said there every Sunday. Betrayed by the younger, he was arrested and racked to death. Subsequently the younger, in a fit of remorse, hanged himself in the panelled parlour. Certainly there was a story that the house was haunted by his strangled apparition dangling from the beams, and the late tenants of the house (which now had stood vacant for over three years) had quitted it after a month’s occupation, in consequence, so it was commonly said, of unaccountable and horrible sights. What was more likely, then, than that Madge, who from childhood has been intensely sensitive to occult and psychic phenomena, should have caught, on that strange wireless receiver which is characteristic of “sensitives,” some whispered message?

“But you know the story of the house,” I said. “Isn’t it quite possible that something of that may have reached you? Where did you sit, for instance? In the panelled parlour?”

She brightened at that.

“Ah, you wise man!” she said. “I never thought of that. That may account for it all. I hope it does. You shall be left in peace with your chess for being so brilliant.”

•  •  •

I had occasion half an hour later to go to the post-office, a hundred yards up the High Street, on the matter of a registered letter which I wanted to despatch that evening. Dusk was gathering, but the red glow of sunset still smouldered in the west, sufficient to enable me to recognise familiar forms and features of passers-by. Just as I came opposite the post-office there approached from the other direction a tall, finely built woman, whom, I felt sure, I had never seen before. Her destination was the same as mine, and I hung on my step a moment to let her pass in first. Simultaneously I felt that I knew, in some vague, faint manner, what Madge had meant when she talked about a “sickness of the soul.” It was no nearer realisation to me than is the running of a tune in the head to the audible external hearing of it, and I attributed my sudden recognition of her feeling to the fact that in all probability my mind had subconsciously been dwelling on what she had said, and not for a moment did I connect it with any external cause. And then it occurred to me who, possibly, this woman was….

She finished the transaction of her errand a few seconds before me, and when I got out into the street again she was a dozen yards down the pavement, walking in the direction of my house and of the Gate-house. Opposite my own door I deliberately lingered, and saw her pass down the steps that led from the road to the entrance of the Gate-house. Even as I turned into my own door the unbidden reminiscence which had eluded me before came out into the open, and I cast my net over it. It was her husband, who, in the inexplicable communication he had left on his dressing-room table, just before he shot himself, had written “my soul sickens.” It was odd, though scarcely more than that, for Madge to have used those identical words.

•  •  •

Charles Alington, my wife’s brother, who arrived next afternoon, is quite the happiest man whom I have ever come across. The material world, that perennial spring of thwarted ambition, physical desire, and perpetual disappointment, is practically unknown to him. Envy, malice, and all uncharitableness are equally alien, because he does not want to obtain what anybody else has got, and has no sense of possession, which is queer, since he is enormously rich. He fears nothing, he hopes for nothing, he has no abhorrences or affections, for all physical and nervous functions are in him in the service of an intense inquisitiveness. He never passed a moral judgement in his life, he only wants to explore and to know. Knowledge, in fact, is his entire preoccupation, and since chemists and medical scientists probe and mine in the world of tinctures and microbes far more efficiently than he could do, as he has so little care for anything that can be weighed or propagated, he devotes himself, absorbedly and ecstatically, to that world that lies about the confines of conscious existence. Anything not yet certainly determined appeals to him with the call of a trumpet: he ceases to take an interest in a subject as soon as it shows signs of assuming a practical and definite status. He was intensely concerned, for instance, in wireless transmission, until Signor Marconi proved that it came within the scope of practical science, and then Charles abandoned it as dull. I had seen him last two months before, when he was in a great perturbation, since he was speaking at a meeting of Anglo-Israelites in the morning, to show that the Scone Stone, which is now in the Coronation Chair at Westminster, was for certain the pillow on which Jacob’s head had rested when he saw the vision at Bethel; was addressing the Psychical Research Society in the afternoon on the subject of messages received from the dead through automatic script, and in the evening was, by way of a holiday, only listening to a lecture on reincarnation. None of these things could, as yet, be definitely proved, and that was why he loved them. During the intervals when the occult and the fantastic do not occupy him, he is, in spite of his fifty years and wizened mien, exactly like a schoolboy of eighteen back on his holidays and brimming with superfluous energy.

I found Charles already arrived when I got home next afternoon, after a round of golf. He was betwixt and between the serious and the holiday mood, for he had evidently been reading to Madge from a journal concerning reincarnation, and was rather severe to me….

“Golf!” he said, with insulting scorn. “What is there to know about golf? You hit a ball into the air—”

I was a little sore over the events of the afternoon.

“That’s just what I don’t do,” I said. “I hit it along the ground!”

“Well, it doesn’t matter where you hit it,” said he. “It’s all subject to known laws. But the guess, the conjecture: there’s the thrill and the excitement of life. The charlatan with his new cure for cancer, the automatic writer with his messages from the dead, the reincarnationist with his positive assertions that he was Napoleon or a Christian slave — they are the people who advance knowledge. You have to guess before you know. Even Darwin saw that when he said you could not investigate without a hypothesis!”

“So what’s your hypothesis this minute?” I asked.

“Why, that we’ve all lived before, and that we’re going to live again here on this same old earth. Any other conception of a future life is impossible. Are all the people who have been born and have died since the world emerged from chaos going to become inhabitants of some future world? What a squash, you know, my dear Madge! Now, I know what you’re going to ask me. If we’ve all lived before, why can’t we remember it? But that’s so simple! If you remembered being Cleopatra, you would go on behaving like Cleopatra; and what would Tarleton say? Judas Iscariot, too! Fancy knowing you had been Judas Iscariot! You couldn’t get over it! you would commit suicide, or cause everybody who was connected with you to commit suicide from their horror of you. Or imagine being a grocer’s boy who knew he had been Julius Caesar…. Of course, sex doesn’t matter: souls, as far as I understand, are sexless — just sparks of life, which are put into physical envelopes, some male, some female. You might have been King David, Madge and poor Tony here one of his wives.”

“That would be wonderfully neat,” said I.

Charles broke out into a shout of laughter.

“It would indeed,” he said. “But I won’t talk sense any more to you scoffers. I’m absolutely tired out, I will confess, with thinking. I want to have a pretty lady to come to dinner, and talk to her as if she was just herself and I myself, and nobody else. I want to win two-and-sixpence at bridge with the expenditure of enormous thought. I want to have a large breakfast tomorrow and read The Times afterwards, and go to Tony’s club and talk about crops and golf and Irish affairs and Peace Conferences, and all the things that don’t matter one straw!”

“You’re going to begin your programme tonight, dear,” said Madge. “A very pretty lady is coming to dinner, and we’re going to play bridge afterwards.”

Madge and I were ready for Mrs. Acres when she arrived, but Charles was not yet down. Fungus, who has a wild adoration for Charles, quite unaccountable, since Charles has no feelings for dogs, was helping him to dress, and Madge, Mrs. Acres, and I waited for his appearance. It was certainly Mrs. Acres whom I had met last night at the door of the post-office, but the dim light of sunset had not enabled me to see how wonderfully handsome she was. There was something slightly Jewish about her profile: the high forehead, the very full-lipped mouth, the bridged nose, the prominent chin, all suggested rather than exemplified an Eastern origin. And when she spoke she had that rich softness of utterance, not quite hoarseness, but not quite of the clear-cut distinctness of tone which characterises northern nations. Something southern, something Eastern….

“I am bound to ask one thing,” she said, when, after the usual greetings, we stood round the fireplace, waiting for Charles — “but have you got a dog?”

Madge moved towards the bell.

“Yes, but he shan’t come down if you dislike dogs,” she said. “He’s wonderfully kind, but I know—”

“Ah, it’s not that,” said Mrs. Acres. “I adore dogs. But I only wished to spare your dog’s feelings. Though I adore them, they hate me, and they’re terribly frightened of me. There’s something anti-canine about me.”

It was too late to say more. Charles’s steps clattered in the little hall outside, and Fungus was hoarse and amused. Next moment the door opened, and the two came in.

Fungus came in first. He lolloped in a festive manner into the middle of the room, sniffed and snorted in greeting, and then turned tail. He slipped and skidded on the parquet outside, and we heard him bundling down the kitchen stairs.

“Rude dog,” said Madge. “Charles, let me introduce you to Mrs. Acres. My brother, Mrs. Acres: Sir Charles Alington.”

•  •  •

Our little dinner-table of four would not permit of separate conversations, and general topics, springing up like mushrooms, wilted and died at their very inception. What mood possessed the others I did not at that time know, but for myself I was only conscious of some fundamental distaste of the handsome, clever woman who sat on my right, and seemed quite unaffected by the withering atmosphere. She was charming to the eye, she was witty to the ear, she had grace and gracefulness, and all the time she was something terrible. But by degrees, as I found my own distaste increasing, I saw that my brother-in-law’s interest was growing correspondingly keen. The “pretty lady” whose presence at dinner he had desired and obtained was enchaining him — not, so I began to guess, for her charm and her prettiness; but for some purpose of study, and I wondered whether it was her beautiful Jewish profile that was confirming to his mind some Anglo-Israelitish theory, whether he saw in her fine brown eyes the glance of the seer and the clairvoyante, or whether he divined in her some reincarnation of one of the famous or the infamous dead. Certainly she had for him some fascination beyond that of the legitimate charm of a very handsome woman; he was studying her with intense curiosity.

“And you are comfortable in the Gate-house?” he suddenly rapped out at her, as if asking some question of which the answer was crucial.

“Ah! but so comfortable,” she said — “such a delightful atmosphere. I have never known a house that ‘felt’ so peaceful and homelike. Or is it merely fanciful to imagine that some houses have a sense of tranquillity about them and others are uneasy and even terrible?”

Charles stared at her a moment in silence before he recollected his manners.

“No, there may easily be something in it, I should say,” he answered. “One can imagine long centuries of tranquillity actually investing a home with some sort of psychical aura perceptible to those who are sensitive.”

She turned to Madge.

“And yet I have heard a ridiculous story that the house is supposed to be haunted,” she said. “If it is, it is surely haunted by delightful, contented spirits.”

Dinner was over. Madge rose.

“Come in very soon, Tony,” she said to me, “and let’s get to our bridge.”

But her eyes said, “Don’t leave me long alone with her.”

Charles turned briskly round when the door had shut.

“An extremely interesting woman,” he said.

“Very handsome,” said I.

“Is she? I didn’t notice. Her mind, her spirit — that’s what intrigued me. What is she? What’s behind? Why did Fungus turn tail like that? Queer, too, about her finding the atmosphere of the Gate-house so tranquil. The late tenants, I remember, didn’t find that soothing touch about it!”

“How do you account for that?” I asked.

“There might be several explanations. You might say that the late tenants were fanciful, imaginative people, and that the present tenant is a sensible, matter-of-fact woman. Certainly she seemed to be.”

“Or—” I suggested.

He laughed.

“Well, you might say — mind, I don’t say so — but you might say that the — the spiritual tenants of the house find Mrs. Acres a congenial companion, and want to retain her. So they keep quiet, and don’t upset the cook’s nerves!”

Somehow this answer exasperated and jarred on me.

“What do you mean?” I said. “The spiritual tenant of the house, I suppose, is the man who betrayed his brother and hanged himself. Why should he find a charming woman like Mrs. Acres a congenial companion?”

Charles got up briskly. Usually he is more than ready to discuss such topics, but tonight it seemed that he had no such inclination.

“Didn’t Madge tell us not to be long?” he asked. “You know how I run on if I once get on that subject, Tony, so don’t give me the opportunity.”

“But why did you say that?” I persisted.

“Because I was talking nonsense. You know me well enough to be aware that I am an habitual criminal in that respect.”

•  •  •

It was indeed strange to find how completely both the first impression that Madge had formed of Mrs. Acres and the feeling that followed so quickly on its heels were endorsed by those who, during the next week or two, did a neighbour’s duty to the newcomer. All were loud in praise of her charm, her pleasant, kindly wit, her good looks, her beautiful clothes, but even while this Lobgesang was in full chorus it would suddenly die away, and an uneasy silence descended, which somehow was more eloquent than all the appreciative speech. Odd, unaccountable little incidents had occurred, which were whispered from mouth to mouth till they became common property. The same fear that Fungus had shown of her was exhibited by another dog. A parallel case occurred when she returned the call of our parson’s wife. Mrs. Dowlett had a cage of canaries in the window of her drawing-room. These birds had manifested symptoms of extreme terror when Mrs. Acres entered the room, beating themselves against the wires of their cage, and uttering the alarm-note…. She inspired some sort of inexplicable fear, over which we, as trained and civilised human beings, had control, so that we behaved ourselves. But animals, without that check, gave way altogether to it, even as Fungus had done.

Mrs. Acres entertained; she gave charming little dinner-parties of eight, with a couple of tables at bridge to follow, but over these evenings there hung a blight and a blackness. No doubt the sinister story of the panelled parlour contributed to this.

This curious secret dread of her, of which as on that first evening at my house, she appeared to be completely unconscious differed very widely in degree. Most people, like myself, were conscious of it, but only very remotely so, and we found ourselves at the Gate-house behaving quite as usual, though with this unease in the background. But with a few, and most of all with Madge, it grew into a sort of obsession. She made every effort to combat it; her will was entirely set against it, but her struggle seemed only to establish its power over her. The pathetic and pitiful part was that Mrs. Acres from the first had taken a tremendous liking to her, and used to drop in continually, calling first to Madge at the window, in that pleasant, serene voice of hers, to tell Fungus that the hated one was imminent.

Then came a day when Madge and I were bidden to a party at the Gate-house on Christmas evening. This was to be the last of Mrs. Acres’s hospitalities for the present, since she was leaving immediately afterwards for a couple of months in Egypt. So, with this remission ahead, Madge almost gleefully accepted the bidding. But when the evening came she was seized with so violent an attack of sickness and shivering that she was utterly unable to fulfil her engagement. Her doctor could find no physical trouble to account for this: it seemed that the anticipation of her evening alone caused it, and here was the culmination of her shrinking from our kindly and pleasant neighbour. She could only tell me that her sensations, as she began to dress for the party, were like those of that moment in sleep when somewhere in the drowsy brain nightmare is ripening. Something independent of her will revolted at what lay before her….

•  •  •

Spring had begun to stretch herself in the lap of winter when next the curtain rose on this veiled drama of forces but dimly comprehended and shudderingly conjectured; but then, indeed, nightmare ripened swiftly in broad noon. And this was the way of it.

Charles Alington had again come to stay with us five days before Easter, and expressed himself as humorously disappointed to find that the subject of his curiosity was still absent from the Gate-house. On the Saturday morning before Easter he appeared very late for breakfast, and Madge had already gone her ways. I rang for a fresh teapot, and while this was on its way he took up The Times.

“I only read the outside page of it,” he said. “The rest is too full of mere materialistic dullnesses — politics, sports, money-market—”

He stopped, and passed the paper over to me.

“There, where I’m pointing,” he said — “among the deaths. The first one.”

What I read was this:

“Acres, Bertha. Died at sea, Thursday night, 30th March, and by her own request buried at sea. (Received by wireless from P. & O. steamer Peshawar.)”

He held out his hand for the paper again, and turned over the leaves.

“Lloyd’s,” he said. “The Peshawar arrived at Tilbury yesterday afternoon. The burial must have taken place somewhere in the English Channel.”

•  •  •

On the afternoon of Easter Sunday Madge and I motored out to the golf links three miles away. She proposed to walk along the beach just outside the dunes while I had my round, and return to the club-house for tea in two hours’ time. The day was one of most lucid spring: a warm south-west wind bowled white clouds along the sky, and their shadows jovially scudded over the sand-hills. We had told her of Mrs. Acres’s death, and from that moment something dark and vague which had been lying over her mind since the autumn seemed to join this fleet of the shadows of clouds and leave her in sunlight. We parted at the door of the club-house, and she set out on her walk.

Half an hour later, as my opponent and I were waiting on the fifth tee, where the road crosses the links, for the couple in front of us to move on, a servant from the club-house, scudding along the road, caught sight of us, and, jumping from his bicycle, came to where we stood.

“You’re wanted at the club-house, sir,” he said to me. “Mrs. Carford was walking along the shore, and she found something left by the tide. A body, sir. ’Twas in a sack, but the sack was torn, and she saw — It’s upset her very much, sir. We thought it best to come for you.”

I took the boy’s bicycle and went back to the club-house as fast as I could turn the wheel. I felt sure I knew what Madge had found, and, knowing that, realised the shock…. Five minutes later she was telling me her story in gasps and whispers.

“The tide was going down,” she said, “and I walked along the high-water mark…. There were pretty shells; I was picking them up…. And then I saw it in front of me — just shapeless, just a sack…. and then, as I came nearer, it took shape; there were knees and elbows. It moved, it rolled over, and where the head was the sack was torn, and I saw her face. Her eyes were open, Tony, and I fled…. All the time I felt it was rolling along after me. Oh, Tony! she’s dead, isn’t she? She won’t come back to the Gate-house? Do you promise me?… There’s something awful! I wonder if I guess. The sea gives her up. The sea won’t suffer her to rest in it….”

The news of the finding had already been telephoned to Tarleton, and soon a party of four men with a stretcher arrived. There was no doubt as to the identity of the body, for though it had been in the water for three days no corruption had come to it. The weights with which at burial it had been laden must by some strange chance have been detached from it, and by a chance stranger yet it had drifted to the shore closest to her home. That night it lay in the mortuary, and the inquest was held on it next day, though that was a bank-holiday. From there it was taken to the Gate-house and coffined, and it lay in the panelled parlour for the funeral on the morrow.

Madge, after that one hysterical outburst, had completely recovered herself, and on the Monday evening she made a little wreath of the spring-flowers which the early warmth had called into blossom in the garden, and I went across with it to the Gate-house. Though the news of Mrs. Acres’s death and the subsequent finding of the body had been widely advertised, there had been no response from relations or friends, and as I laid the solitary wreath on the coffin a sense of the utter loneliness of what lay within seized and encompassed me. And then a portent, no less, took place before my eyes. Hardly had the freshly gathered flowers been laid on the coffin than they drooped and wilted. The stalks of the daffodils bent, and their bright chalices closed; the odour of the wallflowers died, and they withered as I watched…. What did it mean, that even the petals of spring shrank and were moribund?

•  •  •

I told Madge nothing of this; and she, as if through some pang of remorse, was determined to be present next day at the funeral. No arrival of friends or relations had taken place, and from the Gate-house there came none of the servants. They stood in the porch as the coffin was brought out of the house, and even before it was put into the hearse had gone back again and closed the door. So, at the cemetery on the hill above Tarleton, Madge and her brother and I were the only mourners.

The afternoon was densely overcast, though we got no rainfall, and it was with thick clouds above and a sea-mist drifting between the grave-stones that we came, after the service in the cemetery-chapel, to the place of interment. And then — I can hardly write of it now — when it came for the coffin to be lowered into the grave, it was found that by some faulty measurement it could not descend, for the excavation was not long enough to hold it.

Madge was standing close to us, and at this moment I heard her sob.

“And the kindly earth will not receive her,” she whispered.

There was awful delay: the diggers must be sent for again, and meantime the rain had begun to fall thick and tepid. For some reason — perhaps some outlying feeler of Madge’s obsession had wound a tentacle round me — I felt that I must know that earth had gone to earth, but I could not suffer Madge to wait. So, in this miserable pause, I got Charles to take her home, and then returned.

Pick and shovel were busy, and soon the resting-place was ready. The interrupted service continued, the handful of wet earth splashed on the coffin-lid, and when all was over I left the cemetery, still feeling, I knew not why, that all was not over. Some restlessness and want of certainty possessed me, and instead of going home I fared forth into the rolling wooded country inland, with the intention of walking off these bat-like terrors that flapped around me. The rain had ceased, and a blurred sunlight penetrated the sea-mist which still blanketed the fields and woods, and for half an hour, moving briskly, I endeavoured to fight down some fantastic conviction that had gripped my mind in its claws. I refused to look straight at that conviction, telling myself how fantastic, how unreasonable it was; but as often as I put out a hand to throttle it there came the echo of Madge’s words: “The sea will not suffer her; the kindly earth will not receive her.” And if I could shut my eyes to that there came some remembrance of the day she died, and of half-forgotten fragments of Charles’s superstitious belief in reincarnation. The whole thing, incredible though its component parts were, hung together with a terrible tenacity.

•  •  •

Before long the rain began again, and I turned, meaning to go by the main-road into Tarleton, which passes in a wide-flung curve some half-mile outside the cemetery. But as I approached the path through the fields, which, leaving the less direct route, passes close to the cemetery and brings you by a steeper and shorter descent into the town, I felt myself irresistibly impelled to take it. I told myself, of course, that I wished to make my wet walk as short as possible; but at the back of my mind was the half-conscious, but none the less imperative need to know by ocular evidence that the grave by which I had stood that afternoon had been filled in, and that the body of Mrs. Acres now lay tranquil beneath the soil. My path would be even shorter if I passed through the graveyard, and so presently I was fumbling in the gloom for the latch of the gate, and closed it again behind me. Rain was falling now thick and sullenly, and in the bleared twilight I picked my way among the mounds and slipped on the dripping grass, and there in front of me was the newly turned earth. All was finished: the grave-diggers had done their work and departed, and earth had gone back again into the keeping of the earth.

It brought me some great lightening of the spirit to know that, and I was on the point of turning away when a sound of stir from the heaped soil caught my ear, and I saw a little stream of pebbles mixed with clay trickle down the side of the mound above the grave: the heavy rain, no doubt, had loosened the earth. And then came another and yet another, and with terror gripping at my heart I perceived that this was no loosening from without, but from within, for to right and left the piled soil was falling away with the press of something from below. Faster and faster it poured off the grave, and ever higher at the head of it rose a mound of earth pushed upwards from beneath. Somewhere out of sight there came the sound as of creaking and breaking wood, and then through that mound of earth there protruded the end of the coffin. The lid was shattered: loose pieces of the boards fell off it, and from within the cavity there faced me white features and wide eyes. All this I saw, while sheer terror held me motionless; then, I suppose, came the breaking-point, and with such panic as surely man never felt before I was stumbling away among the graves and racing towards the kindly human lights of the town below.

I went to the parson who had conducted the service that afternoon with my incredible tale, and an hour later he, Charles Alington, and two or three men from the undertaker’s were on the spot. They found the coffin, completely disinterred, lying on the ground by the grave, which was now three-quarters full of the earth which had fallen back into it. After what had happened it was decided to make no further attempt to bury it; and next day the body was cremated.

•  •  •

Now, it is open to anyone who may read this tale to reject the incident of this emergence of the coffin altogether, and account for the other strange happenings by the comfortable theory of coincidence. He can certainly satisfy himself that one Bertha Acres did die at sea on this particular Thursday before Easter, and was buried at sea: there is nothing extraordinary about that. Nor is it the least impossible that the weights should have slipped from the canvas shroud, and that the body should have been washed ashore on the coast by Tarleton (why not Tarleton, as well as any other little town near the coast?); nor is there anything inherently significant in the fact that the grave, as originally dug, was not of sufficient dimensions to receive the coffin. That all these incidents should have happened to the body of a single individual is odd, but then the nature of coincidence is to be odd. They form a startling series, but unless coincidences are startling they escape observation altogether. So, if you reject the last incident here recorded, or account for it by some local disturbance, an earthquake, or the breaking of a spring just below the grave, you can comfortably recline on the cushion of coincidence….

•  •  •

For myself, I give no explanation of these events, though my brother-in-law brought forward one with which he himself is perfectly satisfied. Only the other day he sent me, with considerable jubilation, a copy of some extracts from a mediaeval treatise on the subject of reincarnation which sufficiently indicates his theory. The original work was in Latin, which, mistrusting my scholarship, he kindly translated for me. I transcribe his quotations exactly as he sent them to me.

“We have these certain instances of his reincarnation. In one his spirit was incarnated in the body of a man; in the other, in that of a woman, fair of outward aspect, and of a pleasant conversation, but held in dread and in horror by those who came into more than casual intercourse with her…. She, it is said, died on the anniversary of the day on which he hanged himself, after the betrayal, but of this I have no certain information. What is sure is that, when the time came for her burial, the kindly earth would receive her not, but though the grave was dug deep and well it spewed her forth again…. Of the man in whom his cursed spirit was reincarnated it is said that, being on a voyage when he died, he was cast overboard with weights to sink him; but the sea would not suffer him to rest in her bosom, but slipped the weights from him, and cast him forth again on to the coast…. Howbeit, when the full time of his expiation shall have come and his deadly sin forgiven, the corporal body which is the cursed receptacle of his spirit shall at length be purged with fire, and so he shall, in the infinite mercy of the Almighty, have rest, and shall wander no more.”

“Hutchinson’s Magazine”, Apr. 1922

Visible and Invisible (1923)

THE INN

Guy Preston

1932

The life of a country doctor is apt to prove rather strenuous, particularly when his practice extends over an area of twenty square miles, and his sole vehicle happens to be a worn-out bicycle of antediluvian manufacture; consequently it was with an exclamation of annoyance that Dr Sutton awoke, at about half past four one winter’s morning, to hear the front doorbell ringing furiously. His only servant had departed the previous day on a long-promised visit to her mother in Keswick, and as he was a bachelor he was, of course, alone in the house.

“Let them ring, confound them,” he muttered to himself, “disturbing a hard-working body at this ungodly hour! And,” he added, “after all the rumpus, I suppose it’s the usual cry of ‘Come at once — Willie has a pain in the toe.’ Some folks seem to think a doctor has no right to a few hours’ sleep.”

He snuggled himself still farther under the bedclothes, and tried to ignore the bell and the knocker, which had now come into play, but to no purpose.

BANG! BANG! BANG! Whoever it was out there had no intention of being denied, for the house shook under the thunder of the knocking, and at last Dr Sutton rose, and slipping on his dressing-gown, went grumbling to the door.

As he opened it, peering into the darkness, a figure darted through into the house, slamming the door to after him, and clutched at the doctor’s arm with a trembling hand.

The doctor made to free himself, but the stranger clung the tighter. “I was told a doctor lives here,” he gasped, his breath coming in great gulps, that made a hoarse tearing sound in his throat. “Dr Sutton! Are you the doctor? I want a doctor!”

The doctor surveyed him calmly before leading the way to his study. The surgery was a sort of out-house and as cold as an ice-well, but here, in the doctor’s private study, a few embers still glowed despite the lateness of the hour, and the room was still warm.

“Yes, I am he,” he replied, and threw a log on the fire.

“Then for God’s sake, tell me — am I mad?”

Dr Sutton looked at him before replying. He presented an extraordinary appearance. His hair was wild and thick with dust and sweat, his clothes tom, and his face, which normally would be pleasing, was now cut and bleeding and begrimed with filth. A wild look was in his eyes, but in his voice was such a note of anxious pleading that, startled as he was by the stranger’s queer aspect, the doctor was reassured.

“You have had a bad scare,” was his answer. He motioned the man to a chair, into which he immediately collapsed, and went to the bureau upon which reposed half a dozen bottles and a siphon.

“Drink this!”

The man swallowed the brandy gratefully, and gradually the colour crept back into his cheeks. The doctor regarded him keenly during the few moments of silence that followed. There was no need to hurry him; he would tell his own story when he had sufficiently recovered. He now lolled back in the chair, his right hand thrust deep into his coat pocket, his left tapping nervously on the arm, and from time to time wiping imaginary stains from off his coat and the knees of his trousers.

Obviously he was in great distress, and his nerves had been taxed to their utmost.

Presently he began to speak, and this is the tale that he told.

•   •   •

“My name is Methuen — — Frank Methuen — and I travel in photographic accessories. My firm Messrs Bardsey and Black — switched me up to this district only a fortnight ago. Previously I had done only the South Coast towns, and I may say that I disliked intensely shooting up to Cumberland, away from all my friends, to break entirely fresh ground with my goods. However, somebody had to go, and as luck would have it I was the one to be chosen.”

He paused, and the doctor nodded encouragingly.

“We all have to do things occasionally that go against the grain,” he said. “It was not my choice to be buried in the moors like this, with a practice stretching from Gretna halfway to Whitehaven. Speaking figuratively, of course,” he added with a smile, as Methuen looked incredulous. “There are times when I long for the bustle and noise of a big town, and would willingly exchange this house, cosy as it is, for a flat and a practice among the slums of Glasgow.”

“Then you can imagine how I felt, a Londoner, used to travelling as I am, when I found myself deposited by the LNER at a dirty little station near Cockermouth — Hayra, I think it was called.”

The doctor nodded again and poured out two more drinks. He was becoming interested in the man who had so unfeelingly dragged him from his bed before even the dawn had come. There were few new faces in his life, and one could get so stale with only farm labourers and petty shopkeepers to talk to. Besides, he was feeling wide awake now, and cold, despite the burning log which had now caught and was roaring up the chimney. Yes, a drink was clearly indicated.

Methuen thanked him and continued:

“I spent the first week trying to persuade a Cumbrian of Scotch ancestry to start a new line of P.O.P., but could make as much impression on him as I could on a piece of concrete by beating it with a feather. The next few days I wandered about the neighbouring villages, pushing the same and other articles, but without much success, and at last I decided to make for the Workington and Whitehaven district. Accordingly I mounted my motor bike late last night in an endeavour to reach the Royal Hotel, Whitehaven, in time for a bath and a good night’s rest before starting early the next morning on my rounds; but Fate was against me.

“I was in the middle of a desolate tract of moorland when my bike conked out, and on dismounting I found that somehow my petrol tank had received a ding, whether my fault or through the carelessness of the people at the last garage, I don’t know, and was leaking badly. It was, in fact, entirely empty; and on examining my spare tin, which I always carry, I discovered that someone had been liberally helping himself, and there were only a few drops left. I plugged the hole as best I could with a piece of chewing-gum — useful stuff that — and refilling with my remaining spot of juice, recommenced my journey. I had got no farther than a quarter of a mile or so when the darn thing petered out again; my mending had been futile, I was stranded.

“It was by now about ten o’clock at night, pitch dark, and as far as I could estimate, at least six miles to the nearest village. I looked about for a house or farm of some sort, but could see nothing, and to add to my discomfort a thick moorland mist began to creep up.”

He broke off.

“You know this country well, I presume?”

“Passably,” admitted the doctor.

“Well, I don’t, and I don’t mind confessing that I found myself growing horribly afraid. Here was I, a stranger, landed miles from anywhere, absolutely alone on the Cumberland moors, without a sight or a sound of a living human being, and that accursed mist growing denser every second. It was ghastly!”

Methuen stopped, and putting his left hand before his eyes made a movement as though to wipe away the recollection. Then he seemed to steady himself with an effort, and resumed:

“I am not considered a coward so far as I know by my acquaintances, but here, somehow, I seemed to get an impression of evil — intense evil, as though something malevolent was with me, watching me, gloating over my inability to get away. I could almost feel its vile breath upon me, the pressure of something like tentacles stealing softly about my body with a sickening gentleness, like some loathsome caress, luring me, urging me, forcing me onward towards a gap in the hedge. I struggled, but to resist was useless. I was powerless in the grasp of this strange malign influence.

“Imagine my joy, then, when on reaching the gap and stepping through I felt this evil presence slip from my shoulders like a discarded mantle, and saw facing me the very shelter that I sought — an inn. It was like a friendly gesture in a foreign country!

“It stood, it is true, entirely in darkness, but I had no doubt that I could soon rouse the landlord, and visions of a hearty supper of ham and eggs, well fried, with perhaps a tankard of ale, rose rapidly before my eyes.

“This side of the hedge the feeling of fear had entirely vanished, and I laughed at myself for my qualms of a few moments before. The path to the inn lay almost hidden among a mass of straggling undergrowth, and this and the overhanging trees must have accounted for my not noticing it from the road.

“It was quite a fair-sized building, a low, rambling structure of old-world design, and swinging creakily in the cool night air I recognized a painted signboard, though it was too dark for me to read its portent from where I was standing. Though I noticed nothing unusual at the time, I may say that since it has struck me forcibly that there was something uncanny in the fact that, although the other side of the hedge the mist was thick and the air still as death, here, in what might be called the garden of the inn, there was no mist, and little currents of wind eddied about through the trees, fanning my face and swinging the great signboard with a strange persistency. I went up to the door and knocked loudly. My motor bike could remain where I had left it, for I had quite made up my mind that wild horses would not drag me back into that ghastly atmosphere I had just encountered in the road.

“At first there was no response, and I repeated the summons, examining the old tavern more closely during the period I was kept waiting. Here, under the eaves of the porch, I could now discern — my eyes having become accustomed to the darkness — -some semblance of a picture half-obliterated by exposure to many seasons of wind and rain, upon the inn sign. This was in the nature of a coffin supported by six headless bearers goose-stepping towards a white headstone, and underneath this somewhat forbidding daub with grim irony ran the legend: ‘Ye Journey’s End’.

“Evidently the landlord was a man with either a peculiar sense of humour or gifted with an enormous propensity for continuing a tradition, for it was plain that the inn was a relic of ancient and more stirring days, and it was possible that his love of old things made him hesitate to change this gruesome, though exceedingly interesting, old sign.

“While I was thus conjecturing I heard a movement within the house, and a faint glimmer of light appeared from behind one of the windows above the porch to my right. After an appreciable pause this was suddenly extinguished, and I concluded that whoever was within the inn had decided they had imagined my knocking and retired to bed again. I had just raised my hand to deliver a sound drubbing to the massive front door when I sensed, rather than heard, a faint flip-flop of loosely slippered feet approaching the door from the inside. The next instant came the welcome sound of heavy iron bolts being withdrawn, and the big door swung slowly inwards.

“The man who confronted me was a singularly unprepossessing individual, and I had a sensation, as I viewed him, as though someone had lightly run a brush fitted with many sharp-pointed and icy bristles down my spinal column.

“He stood squarely before me, a short squat man, with a smooth round face white as a full moon and entirely hairless. An old-fashioned nightcap covered his scalp, and about his shoulders depended a long cloak of some dark colour. But what struck the greatest chill of all was this — he had no eyes!

“From the bald place where the eyebrows should have been, to the top of the puffy cheeks, stretched a thick layer of parchment-like skin, and he groped before him with his hands, using them like the antennae of some fat white slug. Ugh!”

Methuen shivered, and the doctor leaned forward in his chair. “Go on!” he said.

“Behind him stood a woman holding an old-fashioned candlestick, and the contrast between them was extraordinary. She was of middle height and of a good figure, and was draped in a kind of wrapper of filmy texture. A very goddess of a creature!

“She was handsome in a rather impudent, bold way, full-lipped and black browed, and her large eyes seemed to glow with a strange lustre as she stood there watching me.

“I explained my circumstances and asked for shelter, and at the sound of my voice the landlord — for I presume it was he — reached out for my face, feeling it all over with his pulpy fingers as if to satisfy himself as to my appearance.

“I suppose the woman must have seen the look of disgust upon my features, for she called out to him, ‘Let him enter, he will do well enough’, and at the words he stood aside and beckoned me in. I may as well tell you now that had there been anything, even a barn or a fowl house, in the neighbourhood where I could have spent the night secure from the cold and the penetrating damp of the mist, I would have sought it rather than pass an hour here. But this was no time to indulge fancies. I was a stranger and must count myself lucky to be admitted, and if my landlord filled me with a strange, unaccountable dread, I should have to put up with it unless I wished once more to face the terrors of that awful road outside.

“I entered, and the woman silently conducted me to a bedroom on the first floor. I should have stated before that the inn had only the two storeys, and I was now immediately below the roof. At my request for some supper and a bath she shook her head, and concluding that probably she was tired, I let it go at that, after first regretting that I had disturbed her slumbers, and wishing her a ‘goodnight’. She smiled mysteriously and withdrew with a little curtsy, closing the door after her. I was alone in the room.

“I glanced round it; it was bare enough but it would do. In one corner was a small wash-hand stand and towels, a couple of chairs stood against one wall, and against another was a massive oak chest. A huge four-poster bed occupied nearly the whole of one side of the room, and the remaining side was entirely bare except for a small door, which, on my trying it, refused to yield. I put my eye to the keyhole and peeped through, but of course could make out nothing because of the darkness.

“Well, I was tired and began to undress. My one illumination was a vast bronze lamp, so heavy that it must have taken three men to place it where it now stood on a pedestal in the comer near the window, and the bad light it gave made me wish my hosts had a little less love of the antique and little more of ordinary everyday comfort. As I gratefully threw off my clothes, I considered. Surely that bold beauty who had guided me to my room could not be the wife of that monstrosity who had met me at the door? And if so, what a terrible existence for her! To be shut up with such a creature alone on these desolate moors — what wrong could a mere girl do to merit such a diabolical punishment? It was against the laws of Nature! It was an outrage! Thus my chivalrous spirit took up the cause of beauty, and condemned the beast.

“At last, when I was ready for bed, the yearning for a bath once more came over me.

“I wondered — was it possible? — and crossed once more to the little door in the wall. Yes, it was locked, but that alone would not deter me. I have always made a point of carrying with me any old keys that I have ever used or even found, in case they may come in useful later on. My idiosyncrasy was rewarded, and on trying one of my bunch in the lock, to my joy I found it fitted.

“I turned it and the door opened. Rapture — a bathroom! Dirty, ill-kept, but still the joy of all Englishmen — a bathroom! I glanced round for a candle, as the lamp was too heavy to shift, but, as usual, when one needs a thing it is never to be found anywhere. Well, I would bathe in the dark, that was all!

“I turned on the tap. Even in the gloom, with only the light which escaped from my bedroom to see by, I could see that the water ran dark with iron, or, more probably, rust from disuse and the old pipes and cistern which wheezed and gurgled over my head. The bath itself was an iron one of primitive construction, not like the enamelled luxuries we are used to today. I returned to my room while the water ran, or, rather, trickled, and tried my bed.

“Here at any rate was comfort, and again I laughed at my earlier fears. I might fare a great deal worse than spend a night on this feathered mattress, and if I filched a bath, even a cold one, and no one the wiser — well, it was all to the good. I began at last to consider myself in luck’s way. I whistled cheerfully as I returned to the bathroom and slipped off my dressing-gown ; I chuckled at my deceit as I turned off the water and stepped into the bath. Then I caught my breath, transfixed. God in heaven! What was this?

“The sides and bottom of the bath were thick and slippery with blood! I reeled and leapt out, and then for a moment I think I must have fainted.

“When I recovered I was lying at the side of that foul receptacle, and my feet and ankles were red with the rapidly congealing fluid, which something told me was unquestionably the lifeblood of a human being.

At first I was too dazed to think coherently. The macabre ablutions I had so nearly performed were too hideous to contemplate. When at last my strength had returned sufficiently to permit me to regain my own room and wipe the malodorous beastliness, now grown sticky and glutinous, from my feet with my towel, I felt better, and tried to consider the whole affair in a calm light. It seemed impossible! Yet there were the vile stains upon my towel to convince me that I had suffered no monstrous hallucination. It was real! It was horrible! It was harrowing, revolting, but undeniably true!

“For how long I remained sitting hunched upon my bed, striving to collect my scattered wits, I do not know. It may have been five minutes, but it seemed an eternity.

“At last I gathered my things together and began to dress. To sleep was impossible with the knowledge of that horror lying so near and so silent in the next room. For that the body was concealed somewhere within that fatal bathroom I had no doubt; the body of the poor victim drained of his blood as though he had been sucked dry by some mighty leech, which in tum had disgorged its ghastly meal into that reeking bath.

“A leech! In a flash it came to me, the simile I had sought to fit to my blind landlord. That was what it was he reminded me of so forcibly — a great loathsome white leech, glutted with blood, and greedy, greedy for more!

“Who would be next? I shuddered, then I flew to the window. No! Escape that way was out of the question, for I saw now what had previously eluded my notice. From top to bottom of my window, fixed firmly into the masonry, ran six stout iron bars, and whatever else in the inn might have fallen into decay, these remained in a perfect state of preservation.

“I ran to the door — it was locked! I was a prisoner! “Then as I stood there wondering what to do, I heard again the steady flip-flop, flip-flop of loosely fitting slippers on the stairs. They came nearer, nearer; they reached my door; they ceased!

“Watching with eyes dilated with fear, I saw the lock slip noiselessly back in its socket and the door knob begin to tum slowly, almost imperceptibly, round.

“I stood rooted to the spot, paralysed with terror, my heart pounding in my throat, the blood hammering in my temples with the noise of muffled drums.

“The silence was awful!

“Not a sound broke the stillness save the whistling of my breath between my teeth and the slow drip-drip-drip from the bathroom tap. Then I felt a tremor of icy air fan my cheek, which gradually grew to a steady draught — the door was stealthily opening!

“Somehow I found my voice.

“‘Go away!’ I screamed, a thin, unnatural sound, and threw my whole weight against this last barrier between myself and — What? I felt a moment’s resistance, then it yielded and shut, and as I lay clawing at the panels in a paroxysm of fright, I heard the shuffling footsteps recede until once more absolute stillness reigned. For some minutes longer I lay there panting, cursing myself for a coward, and wondering why I had not brained the blind horror and made good my escape, but somehow it seemed that in the presence of this creature every vestige of manliness was drained from me, and I was left a. craven, cowed by the awful sense of evil that emanated from him.

“After a little while I plucked up my courage and opened the door. The landing was in darkness, but what was more important the key was missing from the other side of the door. It was consequently impossible for me to lock myself in, and not for a kingdom would I risk an attempt to get out that way.

“I closed the door again, and, crossing the room, tried to shift the great oak chest. With a big effort I found this to be possible, so bit by bit, I eased it nearer, until at last it rested across my threshold, and I heaved a sigh of relief.

“Here at any rate was a barrier to be reckoned with! Now there was nothing for it but to wait until daylight, and leaving the lamp still burning, I flung myself down fully dressed on the bed, resolved to bear with the circumstances as best I could.

“I have mentioned that the bed was an old four-poster one, and it was hung with faded green curtains which depended in the usual style from the canopy overhead to my right and left and round at the back, excluding all draught.

“As I lay there I examined these with idle interest, casting my eyes up until I reached the canopy itself.

“I am not fastidious, as you may have guessed, but if there is one insect which fills me with more disgust than another it is a spider, and there, dangling by a single thread immediately above my face, was a great fat monster of the species. A long point of metal stuck down from the middle of the canopy, which had been used, I conjectured, at some time for forming the base of a swinging lantern, and from this the insect had spun its web across to one of the poles at the head of the bed. He had now returned to the centre of his trap, and as I have said, dangled precariously over my face.

“I watched him, fascinated, but by now I was worn out, and from time to time caught myself dozing. I strove to keep awake, but Nature asserted herself, and at last I succumbed to her wooing. I slept.

“The next thing I remember was feeling the plop of the wretched insect as it landed on my cheek and scuttled down my neck. With a smothered cry I leapt from my bed, and as I did so the long metal point fell with a swish and embedded itself in the depression just vacated by my body. I tell you, sir, that spider saved my life!

“Wondering, and not a little afraid, I ungratefully brushed the creature from my person and approached the bed. Then I think I realized what it meant. That metal point was part of a long spear-like contrivance, whose shaft vanished through a small hole in the ceiling, the whole being the most damnable invention for murder ever conceived by the brain of a fiend!

“Its fall had broken the web, and, presumably, the preliminary trembling of the shaft before its release had frightened the spider, which had alighted on my face, warning me in its turn.

“A Providential escape!

“As I paused irresolute in the middle of the room I thought I heard a slight movement outside the door, but may have been mistaken. I waited a few moments longer to reassure myself that this was but the outcome of extreme nervous tension, and stood listening intently. Then from behind the wall at the side of the bed there came the unmistakable sound of something scratching softly, scratching and fumbling, and the sound of a click.

“I wheeled round.

“Slowly, very slowly, a crack appeared in the wall itself, and from within showed the faint glimmer of a light.

“In a trice I was across the room and had put out my lamp. This time I had no intention of letting my fears overcome my faculties. With the courage born of desperation I forced myself again to enter that loathsome bathroom and pushed the door to, taking care to leave it just sufficiently ajar to enable me to watch whatever might be about to occur, while at the same time keeping myself free from observation. From my new point of vantage I saw the gap in the panel widen. I saw the pulpy hands like the antennae of a huge slug come feeling along the wall, and then, like the obscene figment of an unhealthy imagination, my landlord stepped into the room. For a moment he paused, listening, his hands pawing the air before him as if uncertain of his direction, and then stealthily, noiselessly he turned and moved, groping towards my bed.

“Behind him, framed in the space of the open panel, stood the woman, her hand still grasping the candle in the same way in which she had met me at the door, but on her face was such an expression of ghoulish exultation that I shivered, for only a devil could exult as she did then.

“By now the man had reached the side of the bed, and softly his hands felt over the sheets, groping, groping. They touched the spear-shaft, and with a sound like the contented purr of a giant cat he slid his hands down the shaft, feeling for the body which had so lately lain there.

“Suddenly he snarled and started back, and at the sound the woman came into the room. With one glance she comprehended the situation and seized him by the arm.

“‘Quick! The bathroom!’ she whispered, and half pushing, half dragging the blind, groping creature, moved swiftly in my direction. There was no time to lose. Like a flash I cast round for some means of egress from this charnel-house. Above the cistern, which was over the bath, something winked and twinkled — a star. Like lightning I clawed my way up the pipes to the skylight, and lay there gasping. A foul stench assailed my nostrils, but I dare not move. Indeed, I had hardly gained the top of the cistern and flung myself flat before the door opened and my pursuers stood on the threshold. Would they see me?

“I think I prayed then as I have never prayed before. Right from my heart I sent up a cry to heaven for assistance.

“The woman said something and stooped, feeling under the bath. When she stood up again I saw that she held an axe in her hand, and she began to laugh horribly. It was like the roar of a wild animal that smells raw meat.

“‘Come down!’ she cried. ‘You must pay for your lodging,’ and, when I made no movement, thrust the candle into the man’s hand and made to climb up after me.

“It was the work of a second to put my elbow through the glass and break the window, and as I struggled to get through I heard her clambering up after me with the agility of a young tigress.

“Once I slipped and fell, striking the lid of the cistern, which gave way beneath my weight, and my feet and hands came in contact with some soft and flabby substance. I looked down — horror of horrors! I was kneeling on a heap of mutilated corpses!

“Men and women were there, some untouched by the hand of corruption, others in the final stages of decomposition; the bodies of wayfarers like myself who had tasted the hospitality of this appalling inn.

“I scrambled out, and, reaching the window, threw myself out upon the sloping tiles of the roof. I could see the face of the woman distorted with fury, as she, too, began to squeeze her way through the skylight. I edged myself nearer the eaves to a spot where a branch of a tree overhung the roof, holding out promise of escape. I had almost grasped this blessed branch in my hands, when suddenly my foot slipped on a piece of moss and I slithered to the edge and clung there with all my might.

“To fall now might mean a broken limb, and that spelt capture, with all that it entailed.

“I hesitated and was lost.

“With a scream of triumph the woman was upon me. Horrified, I saw her whirl the axe aloft. Hypnotized, I watched the instrument descend, relentless, cruel, and heard it swish as it cleaved the air. Then there came a stinging sensation in my right hand, and I found myself slipping, falling to the ground below.

“Somehow I staggered to my feet and fled.

“How long I ran through the night like a mad thing I don’t know. I only know that when at last I did look back for a possible pursuer, the place where the inn had stood was a blaze of flame, and the sky above glowed crimson in the surrounding darkness.”

Methuen ceased, and the sweat was standing out in great beads on his brow, as though he had lived again his harrowing experience.

“Very interesting,” remarked the doctor. “So the inn caught fire? How was that?”

“I can only conclude that when the woman gave the blind man the candle to hold he must have placed it against his flannelette nightgown inadvertently, and blundered out of the bathroom in his panic, to come up against some such draperies as those about the four-poster.”

The doctor smiled.

“You are certainly adept at explaining things,” he admitted.

Methuen rose and went behind his chair. He was very pale, and placed his left hand on the back of it as though to support himself as he faced the doctor.

“So you do think I’m mad?” he exclaimed slowly.

The doctor shrugged.

“Then how do you account for this?”

With a sudden gesture he withdrew his right arm from his coat pocket and thrust it out before him.

All four fingers of the hand were missing, and the roughly improvised bandages hung loosely, sticky and wet with blood.

Dr Sutton caught him as he swayed and fell.

Grim Death (1932)

BETWEEN SUNSET AND MOONRISE

R. H. Malden

1943

During the early part of last year it fell to me to act as executor for an old friend. We had not seen much of each other of late, as he had been living in the west of England, and my own time had been fully occupied elsewhere. The time of our intimacy had been when he was vicar of a large parish not very far from Cambridge. I will call it Yaxholme, though that is not its name.

The place had seemed to suit him thoroughly. He had been on the best of terms with his parishioners, and with the few gentry of the neighbourhood. The church demanded a custodian of antiquarian knowledge and artistic perception, and in these respects too my friend was particularly well qualified for his position. But a sudden nervous breakdown had compelled him to resign. The cause of it had always been a mystery to his friends, for he was barely middle-aged when it took place, and had been a man of robust health. His parish was neither particularly laborious nor harassing; and, as far as was known, he had no special private anxieties of any kind. But the collapse came with startling suddenness, and was so severe that, for a time, his reason seemed to be in danger. Two years of rest and travel enabled him to lead a normal life again, but he was never the man he had been. He never revisited his old parish, or any of his friends in the county; and seemed to be ill at ease if conversation turned upon the part of England in which it lay. It was perhaps not unnatural that he should dislike the place which had cost him so much. But his friends could not but regard as childish the length to which he carried his aversion.

He had had a distinguished career at the University, and had kept up his intellectual interests in later life. But, except for an occasional succés d’estime in a learned periodical, he had published nothing. I was not without hope of finding something completed among his papers which would secure for him a permanent lace in the world of learning. But in this I was disappointed. His literary remains were copious, and a striking testimony to the vigour and range of his intellect. But they were very fragmentary. There was nothing which could be made fit for publication, except one document which I should have preferred to suppress. But he had left particular instructions in his will that it was to be published when he had been dead for a year. Accordingly I subjoin it exactly as it left his hand. It was dated two years after he had left Yaxholme, and nearly five before his death. For reasons which will be apparent to the reader I make no comment of any kind upon it.

The solicitude which my friends have displayed during my illness has placed me under obligations which I cannot hope to repay. But I feel that I owe it to them to explain the real cause of my breakdown. I have never spoken of it to anyone, for, had I done so, it would have been impossible to avoid questions which I should not wish to be able to answer. Though I have only just reached middle-age I am sure that I have not many more years to live. And I am therefore confident that most of my friends will survive me, and be able to hear my explanation after my death. Nothing but a lively sense of what I owe to them could have enabled me to undergo the pain of recalling the experience which I am now about to set down.

Yaxholme lies, as they will remember, upon the extreme edge of the Fen district. In shape it is a long oval, with a main line of railway cutting one end. The church and vicarage were close to the station, and round them lay a village containing nearly five-sixths of the entire population of the parish. On the other side of the line the Fen proper began, and stretched for many miles. Though it is now fertile corn land, much of it had been permanently under water within living memory, and would soon revert to its original condition if it were not for the pumping stations. In spite of these it is not unusual to see several hundred acres flooded in winter.

My own parish ran for nearly six miles, and I had therefore several scattered farms and cottages so far from the village that a visit to one of them took up the whole of a long afternoon. Most of them were not on any road, and could only be reached by means of droves. For the benefit of those who are not acquainted with the Fen I may explain that a drove is a very imperfect sketch of the idea of a road. It is bounded by hedges or dykes, so that the traveller cannot actually lose his way, but it offers no further assistance to his progress. The middle is simply a grass track, and as cattle have to be driven along it the mud is sometimes literally knee-deep in winter. In summer the light peaty soil rises in clouds of sable dust. In fact I seldom went down one without recalling Hesiod’s unpatriotic description of his native village in Boeotia. “Bad in winter; intolerable in summer; good at no time.”

At the far end of one of these lay a straggling group of half a dozen cottages, of which the most remote was inhabited by an old woman whom I will call Mrs. Vries. In some ways she was the most interesting of all my parishioners, and she was certainly the most perplexing. She was not a native, but had come to live there some twenty years before, and it was hard to see what had tempted a stranger to so unattractive a spot. It was the last house in the parish: her nearest neighbour was a quarter of a mile away, and she was fully three miles from a hard road or a shop. The house itself was not at all a good one. It had been unoccupied, I was told, for some years before she came to it, and she had found it in a semi-ruinous condition. Yet she had not been driven to seek a very cheap dwelling by poverty, as she had a good supply of furniture of very good quality, and, apparently, as much money as she required. She never gave the slightest hint as to where she had come from, or what her previous history had been. As far as was known she never wrote or received any letters. She must have been between fifty and sixty when she came. Her appearance was striking, as she was tall and thin, with an aquiline nose, and a pair of very brilliant dark eyes, and a quantity of hair — snow-white by the time I knew her. At one time she must have been handsome; but she had grown rather forbidding, and I used to think that, a couple of centuries before, she might have had some difficulty in proving that she was not a witch. Though her neighbours, not unnaturally, fought rather shy of her, her conversation showed that she was a clever woman who had at some time received a good deal of education, and had lived in cultivated surroundings. I used to think that she must have been an upper servant — most probably lady’s maid — in a good house, and, despite the ring on her finger, suspected that the “Mrs.” was brevet rank.

One New Year’s Eve I thought it my duty to visit her. I had not seen her for some months, and a few days of frost had made the drove more passable than it had been for several weeks. But, in spite of her interesting personality, I always found that it required a considerable moral effort to call at her cottage. She was always civil, and expressed herself pleased to see me. But I could never get rid of the idea that she regarded civility to me in the light of an insurance, which might be claimed elsewhere. I always told myself that such thoughts were unfounded and unworthy, but I could never repress them altogether, and whenever I left her cottage it was with a strong feeling that I had no desire to see her again. I used, however, to say to myself that that was really due to personal pique (because I could never discover that she had any religion, nor could I instil any into her), and that the fault was therefore more mine than hers.

On this particular afternoon the prospect of seeing her seemed more than usually distasteful, and my disinclination increased curiously as I made my way along the drove. So strong did it become that if any reasonable excuse for turning back had presented itself I am afraid I should have seized it. However, none did: so I held on, comforting myself with the thought that I should begin the New Year with a comfortable sense of having discharged the most unpleasant of my regular duties in a conscientious fashion.

When I reached the cottage I was a little surprised at having to knock three times, and by hearing the sound of bolts cautiously drawn back. Presently the door opened and Mrs. Vries peered out. As soon as she saw who it was she made me very welcome as usual. But it was impossible not to feel that she had been more or less expecting some other visitor, whom she was not anxious to see. However, she volunteered no statement, and I thought it better to pretend to have noticed nothing unusual. On a table in the middle of the room lay a large book in which she had obviously been reading. I was surprised to see that it was a Bible, and that it lay open at the Book of Tobit. Seeing that I had noticed it Mrs. Vries told me — with a little hesitation, I thought — that she had been reading the story of Sarah and the fiend Asmodeus. Then — the ice once broken — she plied me almost fiercely with questions. “To what cause did I attribute Sarah’s obsession, in the first instance?” “Did the efficacy of Tobias’ remedy depend upon the fact that it had been prescribed by an angel?” and much more to the same effect. Naturally my answers were rather vague, and her good manners could not conceal her disappointment. She sat silent for a minute or two, while I looked at her — not, I must confess, without some alarm, for her manner had been very strange — and then said abruptly, “Well, will you have a cup of tea with me?” I assented gladly, for it was nearly half-past four, and it would take me nearly an hour and a half to get home. She took some time over the preparations and during the meal talked with even more fluency than usual. I could not help thinking that she was trying to make it last as long as possible.

Finally, at about half-past five, I got up and said that I must go, as I had a good many odds and ends awaiting me at home. I held out my hand, and as she took it said, “You must let me wish you a very happy New Year.”

She stared at me for a moment, and then broke into a harsh laugh, and said, “If wishes were horses beggars might ride. Still, I thank you for your good will. Goodbye.” About thirty yards from her house there was an elbow in the drove. When I reached it I looked back and saw that she was still standing in her doorway, with her figure sharply silhouetted against the red glow of the kitchen fire. For one instant the play of shadow made it look as if there were another, taller, figure behind her, but the illusion passed directly. I waved my hand to her and turned the corner.

It was a fine, still, starlight night. I reflected that the moon would be up before I reached home, and my walk would not be unpleasant. I had naturally been rather puzzled by Mrs. Vries’ behaviour, and decided that I must see her again before long, to ascertain whether, as seemed possible, her mind were giving way.

When I had passed the other cottages of the group I noticed that the stars were disappearing, and a thick white mist was rolling up. This did not trouble me. The drove now ran straight until it joined the high-road, and there was no turn into it on either side. I had therefore no chance of losing my way, and anyone who lives in the Fens is accustomed to fogs. It soon grew very thick, and I was conscious of the slightly creepy feeling which a thick fog very commonly inspires. I had been thinking of a variety of things, in somewhat desultory fashion, when suddenly — almost as if it had been whispered into my ear — a passage from the Book of Wisdom came into my mind and refused to be dislodged. My nerves were good then, and I had often walked up a lonely drove in a fog before; but still just at that moment I should have preferred to have recalled almost anything else. For this was the extract with which my memory was pleased to present me.

“For neither did the dark recesses that held them guard them from fears, but sounds rushing down rang around them; and phantoms appeared, cheerless with unsmiling faces. And no force of fire prevailed to give them light, neither were the brightest flames of the stars strong enough to illumine that gloomy night. And in terror they deemed the things which they saw to be worse than that sight on which they could not gaze. And they lay helpless, made the sport of magic art.” (Wisdom xvii. 4-6).

Suddenly I heard a loud snort, as of a beast, apparently at my elbow. Naturally I jumped and stood still for a moment to avoid blundering into a stray cow, but there was nothing there. The next moment I heard what sounded exactly like a low chuckle. This was more disconcerting: but common sense soon came to my aid. I told myself that the cow must have been on the other side of the hedge and not really so close as it had seemed to be. What I had taken for a chuckle must have been the squelching of her feet in a soft place. But I must confess that I did not find this explanation as convincing as I could have wished.

I plodded on, but soon began to feel unaccountably tired. I say “unaccountably” because I was a good walker and often covered much more ground than I had done that day.

I slackened my pace, but, as I was not out of breath, that did not relieve me. I felt as if I were wading through water up to my middle, or through very deep soft snow, and at last was fairly compelled to stop. By this time I was thoroughly uneasy, wondering what could be the matter with me. But as I had still nearly two miles to go there was nothing for it but to push on as best I might.

When I started again I saw that the fog seemed to be beginning to clear, though I could not feel a breath of air. But instead of thinning in the ordinary way it merely rolled back a little on either hand, producing an effect which I had never seen before. Along the sides of the drove lay two solid banks of white, with a narrow passage clear between them. This passage seemed to stretch for an interminable distance, and at the far end I “perceived” a number of figures. I say advisedly “perceived,” rather than “saw,” for I do not know whether I saw them in the ordinary sense of the word or not. That is to say — I did not know then, and have never been able to determine since, whether it was still dark. I only know that my power of vision seemed to be independent of light or darkness. I perceived the figures, as one sees the creatures of a dream, or the mental pictures which sometimes come when one is neither quite asleep nor awake.

They were advancing rapidly in orderly fashion, almost like a body of troops. The scene recalled very vividly a picture of the Israelites marching across the Red Sea between two perpendicular walls of water, in a set of Bible pictures which I had had as a child. I suppose that I had not thought of that picture for more than thirty years, but now it leapt into my mind, and I found myself saying aloud, “Yes: of course it must have been exactly like that. How glad I am to have seen it.”

I suppose it was the interest of making the comparison that kept me from feeling the surprise which would otherwise have been occasioned by meeting a large number of people marching down a lonely drove after dark on a raw December evening.

At first I should have said there were thirty or forty in the party, but when they had drawn a little nearer they seemed to be not more than ten or a dozen strong. A moment later I saw to my surprise that they were reduced to five or six. The advancing figures seemed to be melting into one another, something after the fashion of dissolving views. Their speed and stature increased as their numbers diminished, suggesting that the survivors had, in some horrible fashion, absorbed the personality of their companions. Now there appeared to be only three, then one solitary figure of gigantic stature rushing down the drove towards me at a fearful pace, without a sound. As he came the mist closed behind him, so that his dark figure was thrown up against a solid background of white: much as mountain climbers are said sometimes to see their own shadows upon a bank of cloud. On and on he came, until at last he towered above me and I saw his face. It has come to me once or twice since in troubled dreams, and may come again. But I am thankful that I have never had any clear picture of it in my waking moments. If I had I should be afraid for my reason. I know that the impression which it produced upon me was that of intense malignity long baffled, and now at last within reach of its desire. I believe I screamed aloud. Then after a pause, which seemed to last for hours, he broke over me like a wave. There was a rushing and a streaming all round me, and I struck out with my hands as if I were swimming. The sensation was not unlike that of rising from a deep dive: there was the same feeling of pressure and suffocation, but in this case coupled with the most intense physical loathing. The only comparison which I can suggest is that I felt as a man might feel if he were buried under a heap of worms or toads.

Suddenly I seemed to be clear, and fell forward on my face. I am not sure whether I fainted or not, but I must have lain there for some minutes. When I picked myself up I felt a light breeze upon my forehead and the mist was clearing away as quickly as it had come. I saw the rim of the moon above the horizon, and my mysterious fatigue had disappeared. I hurried forward as quickly as I could without venturing to look behind me. I only wanted to get out of that abominable drove on to the high-road, where there were lights and other human beings. For I knew that what I had seen was a creature of darkness and waste places, and that among my fellows I should be safe. When I reached home my housekeeper looked at me oddly. Of course my clothes were muddy and disarranged, but I suspect that there was something else unusual in my appearance. I merely said that I had had a fall coming up a drove in the dark, and was not feeling particularly well. I avoided the looking-glass when I went to my room to change.

Coming downstairs I heard through the open kitchen door some scraps of conversation — or rather of a monologue delivered by my housekeeper — to the effect that no one ought to be about the droves after dark as much as I was, and that it was a providence that things were no worse. Her own mother’s uncle had — it appeared — been down just such another drove on just such another night, forty-two years ago come next Christmas Eve. “They brought ’im ’ome on a barrow with both ’is eyes drawed down, and every drop of blood in ’is body turned. But ’e never would speak to what ’e see, and wild cats couldn’t ha’ scratched it out of him.”

An inaudible remark from one of the maids was met with a long sniff, and the statement: “Girls seem to think they know everything nowadays.” I spent the next day in bed, as besides the shock which I had received I had caught a bad cold. When I got up on the second I was not surprised to hear that Mrs. Vries had been found dead on the previous afternoon. I had hardly finished breakfast when I was told that the policeman, whose name was Winter, would be glad to see me.

It appeared that on New Year’s morning a half-witted boy of seventeen, who lived at one of the other cottages down the drove, had come to him and said that Mrs. Vries was dead, and that he must come and enter her house. He declined to explain how he had come by the information: so at first Mr. Winter contented himself with pointing out that it was the first of January not of April. But the boy was so insistent that finally he went. When repeated knockings at Mrs. Vries’ cottage produced no result he had felt justified in forcing the back door. She was sitting in a large wooden armchair quite dead. She was leaning forward a little and her hands were clasping the arms so tightly that it proved to be a matter of some difficulty to unloose her fingers. In front of her was another chair, so close that if anyone had been sitting in it his knees must have touched those of the dead woman. The seat cushions were flattened down as if it had been occupied recently by a solid personage. The tea-things had not been cleared away, but the kitchen was perfectly clean and tidy. There was no suspicion of foul play, as all the doors and windows were securely fastened on the inside. Winter added that her face made him feel “quite sickish like,” and that the house smelt very bad for all that it was so clean.

A post-mortem examination of the body showed that her heart was in a very bad state, and enabled the coroner’s jury to return a verdict of “Death from Natural Causes.” But the doctor told me privately that she must have had a shock of some kind. “ In fact,” he said, “if anyone ever died of fright, she did. But goodness knows what can have frightened her in her own kitchen unless it was her own conscience. But that is more in your line than mine.”

He added that he had found the examination of the body peculiarly trying: though he could not, or would not, say why.

As I was the last person who had seen her alive, I attended the inquest, but gave only formal evidence of an unimportant character. I did not mention that the second armchair had stood in a corner of the room during my visit, and that I had not occupied it.

The boy was of course called and asked how he knew she was dead. But nothing satisfactory could be got from him. He said that there was right houses and there was wrong houses — not to say persons — and that “they” had been after her for a long time. When asked whom he meant by “they” he declined to explain, merely adding as a general statement that he could see further into a milestone than what some people could, for all they thought themselves so clever. His own family deposed that he had been absolutely silent, contrary to his usual custom, from tea-time on New Year’s Eve to breakfast-time next day. Then he had suddenly announced that Mrs. Vries was dead; and ran out of the house before they could say anything to him. Accordingly he was dismissed, with a warning to the effect that persons who were disrespectful to Constituted Authorities always came to a bad end.

It naturally fell to me to conduct the funeral, as I could have given no reason for refusing her Christian burial. The coffin was not particularly weighty, but as it was being lowered into the grave the ropes supporting it parted, and it fell several feet with a thud. The shock dislodged a quantity of soil from the sides of the cavity, so that the coffin was completely covered before I had had time to say “Earth to earth: Ashes to ashes: Dust to dust.”

Afterwards the sexton spoke to me apologetically about the occurrence. “I’m fair put about, Sir, about them ropes,” he said. “Nothing o’ that sort ever ’appened afore in my time. They was pretty nigh new too, and I thought they’d a done us for years. But just look ’ere, Sir.” Here he showed two extraordinarily ravelled ends. “I never see a rope part like that afore. Almost looks as if it ’ad been scratted through by a big cat or somethink.”

That night I was taken ill. When I was better my doctor said that rest and change of scene were imperative. I knew that I could never go down a drove alone by night again, so tendered my resignation to my Bishop. I hope that I have still a few years of usefulness before me: but I know that I can never be as if I had not seen what I have seen. Whether I met with my adventure through any fault of my own I cannot tell. But of one thing I am sure. There are powers of darkness which walk abroad in waste places: and that man is happy who has never had to face them.

If anyone who reads this should ever have a similar experience and should feel tempted to try to investigate it further, I commend to him the counsel of Jesus-ben-Sira:

“My son, seek not things that are too hard for thee: and search not out things that are above thy strength.”

Nine Ghosts (1943)