A Book of Ghosts: 40
Author: Various authors
Date: 1841-12-31T15:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Ghost Stories; Supernatural Fiction; Weird Fiction; Horror; Murder
Description: Thirteen chilling tales of the macabre: tales of mystery and madness and murder. _________ By various authors. ~ ~ ~ ~ Compiled by ECM.
Publisher: MobileRead.com
Rights: Public domain where copyright is “Life+70”.

A BOOK OF GHOSTS
– 40 –

THINGS THAT GO BUMP
IN THE NIGHT

MobileRead Edition
2022

Thirteen chilling tales of the macabre:  tales of mystery and madness and murder.
By various authors.
Compiled by ECM.

Contents were originally published 1842 ~ 1944. This book is in the public domain where copyright is “Life+70” or less.

CONTENTS:

- The Masque of the Red Death
– 1842
by Edgar Allan Poe
(1809–1849)

- Let Loose
– 1890
by Mary Cholmondeley
(1859–1925)

- The Striding Place
– 1896
by Gertrude Atherton
(1857–1948)

- The Ash-Tree
– 1904
by M. R. James
(1862–1936)

- The Ring
– 1919
by Sir Thomas Graham Jackson
(1835–1924)

- The Return of Imray
– 1891
by Rudyard Kipling
(1865–1936)

- His Brother’s Keeper
– 1922
by W. W. Jacobs
(1863–1943)

- His Beautiful Hands
– 1931
by Oscar Cook
(1888–1952)

- The Lonely Inn
– 1935
by Thomas Burke
(1886–1945)

- The Red Room
– 1896
by H. G. Wells
(1866–1946)

- The Coat
– 1934
by A. E. D. Smith
(1881–?)

- Fear
– 1944
by P. C. Wren
(1875–1941)

- The Sundial
– 1943
by R. H. Malden
(1879–1951)

A BOOK OF GHOSTS:
– 40 –

THE MASQUE OF THE RED DEATH

Edgar Allan Poe

1842

The “Red Death” had long devastated the country. No pestilence had ever been so fatal, or so hideous. Blood was its Avatar and its seal – the redness and the horror of blood. There were sharp pains, and sudden dizziness, and then profuse bleeding at the pores, with dissolution. The scarlet stains upon the body and especially upon the face of the victim, were the pest ban which shut him out from the aid and from the sympathy of his fellow-men. And the whole seizure, progress and termination of the disease, were the incidents of half an hour.

But the Prince Prospero was happy and dauntless and sagacious. When his dominions were half depopulated, he summoned to his presence a thousand hale and light-hearted friends from among the knights and dames of his court, and with these retired to the deep seclusion of one of his castellated abbeys. This was an extensive and magnificent structure, the creation of the prince’s own eccentric yet august taste. A strong and lofty wall girdled it in. This wall had gates of iron. The courtiers, having entered, brought furnaces and massy hammers and welded the bolts. They resolved to leave means neither of ingress or egress to the sudden impulses of despair or of frenzy from within. The abbey was amply provisioned. With such precautions the courtiers might bid defiance to contagion. The external world could take care of itself. In the meantime it was folly to grieve, or to think. The prince had provided all the appliances of pleasure. There were buffoons, there were improvisatori, there were ballet-dancers, there were musicians, there was Beauty, there was wine. All these and security were within. Without was the “Red Death.”

It was toward the close of the fifth or sixth month of his seclusion, and while the pestilence raged most furiously abroad, that the Prince Prospero entertained his thousand friends at a masked ball of the most unusual magnificence.

It was a voluptuous scene, that masquerade. But first let me tell of the rooms in which it was held. There were seven – an imperial suite. In many palaces, however, such suites form a long and straight vista, while the folding doors slide back nearly to the walls on either hand, so that the view of the whole extent is scarcely impeded. Here the case was very different; as might have been expected from the duke’s love of the bizarre. The apartments were so irregularly disposed that the vision embraced but little more than one at a time. There was a sharp turn at every twenty or thirty yards, and at each turn a novel effect. To the right and left, in the middle of each wall, a tall and narrow Gothic window looked out upon a closed corridor which pursued the windings of the suite. These windows were of stained glass whose color varied in accordance with the prevailing hue of the decorations of the chamber into which it opened. That at the eastern extremity was hung, for example, in blue – and vividly blue were its windows. The second chamber was purple in its ornaments and tapestries, and here the panes were purple. The third was green throughout, and so were the casements. The fourth was furnished and lighted with orange – the fifth with white – the sixth with violet. The seventh apartment was closely shrouded in black velvet tapestries that hung all over the ceiling and down the walls, falling in heavy folds upon a carpet of the same material and hue. But in this chamber only, the color of the windows failed to correspond with the decorations. The panes here were scarlet – a deep blood color. Now in no one of the seven apartments was there any lamp or candelabrum, amid the profusion of golden ornaments that lay scattered to and fro or depended from the roof. There was no light of any kind emanating from lamp or candle within the suite of chambers. But in the corridors that followed the suite, there stood, opposite to each window, a heavy tripod, bearing a brazier of fire that projected its rays through the tinted glass and so glaringly illumined the room. And thus were produced a multitude of gaudy and fantastic appearances. But in the western or black chamber the effect of the firelight that streamed upon the dark hangings through the blood-tinted panes, was ghastly in the extreme, and produced so wild a look upon the countenances of those who entered, that there were few of the company bold enough to set foot within its precincts at all.

It was in this apartment, also, that there stood against the western wall, a gigantic clock of ebony. Its pendulum swung to and fro with a dull, heavy, monotonous clang; and when the minute-hand made the circuit of the face, and the hour was to be stricken, there came from the brazen lungs of the clock a sound which was clear and loud and deep and exceedingly musical, but of so peculiar a note and emphasis that, at each lapse of an hour, the musicians of the orchestra were constrained to pause, momentarily, in their performance, to harken to the sound; and thus the waltzers perforce ceased their evolutions; and there was a brief disconcert of the whole gay company; and, while the chimes of the clock yet rang, it was observed that the giddiest grew pale, and the more aged and sedate passed their hands over their brows as if in confused revery or meditation. But when the echoes had fully ceased, a light laughter at once pervaded the assembly; the musicians looked at each other and smiled as if at their own nervousness and folly, and made whispering vows, each to the other, that the next chiming of the clock should produce in them no similar emotion; and then, after the lapse of sixty minutes, (which embrace three thousand and six hundred seconds of the Time that flies,) there came yet another chiming of the clock, and then were the same disconcert and tremulousness and meditation as before.

But, in spite of these things, it was a gay and magnificent revel. The tastes of the duke were peculiar. He had a fine eye for colors and effects. He disregarded the decora of mere fashion. His plans were bold and fiery, and his conceptions glowed with barbaric lustre. There are some who would have thought him mad. His followers felt that he was not. It was necessary to hear and see and touch him to be sure that he was not.

He had directed, in great part, the moveable embellishments of the seven chambers, upon occasion of this great fête; and it was his own guiding taste which had given character to the masqueraders. Be sure they were grotesque. There were much glare and glitter and piquancy and phantasm – much of what has been since seen in “Hernani.” There were arabesque figures with unsuited limbs and appointments. There were delirious fancies such as the madman fashions. There were much of the beautiful, much of the wanton, much of the bizarre, something of the terrible, and not a little of that which might have excited disgust. To and fro in the seven chambers there stalked, in fact, a multitude of dreams. And these – the dreams – writhed in and about, taking hue from the rooms, and causing the wild music of the orchestra to seem as the echo of their steps. And, anon, there strikes the ebony clock which stands in the hall of the velvet. And then, for a moment, all is still, and all is silent save the voice of the clock. The dreams are stiff-frozen as they stand. But the echoes of the chime die away – they have endured but an instant – and a light, half-subdued laughter floats after them as they depart. And now again the music swells, and the dreams live, and writhe to and fro more merrily than ever, taking hue from the many tinted windows through which stream the rays from the tripods. But to the chamber which lies most westwardly of the seven, there are now none of the maskers who venture; for the night is waning away; and there flows a ruddier light through the blood-colored panes; and the blackness of the sable drapery appals; and to him whose foot falls upon the sable carpet, there comes from the near clock of ebony a muffled peal more solemnly emphatic than any which reaches their ears who indulge in the more remote gaieties of the other apartments.

But these other apartments were densely crowded, and in them beat feverishly the heart of life. And the revel went whirlingly on, until at length there commenced the sounding of midnight upon the clock. And then the music ceased, as I have told; and the evolutions of the waltzers were quieted; and there was an uneasy cessation of all things as before. But now there were twelve strokes to be sounded by the bell of the clock; and thus it happened, perhaps, that more of thought crept, with more of time, into the meditations of the thoughtful among those who revelled. And thus, too, it happened, perhaps, that before the last echoes of the last chime had utterly sunk into silence, there were many individuals in the crowd who had found leisure to become aware of the presence of a masked figure which had arrested the attention of no single individual before. And the rumor of this new presence having spread itself whisperingly around, there arose at length from the whole company a buzz, or murmur, expressive of disapprobation and surprise – then, finally, of terror, of horror, and of disgust.

In an assembly of phantasms such as I have painted, it may well be supposed that no ordinary appearance could have excited such sensation. In truth the masquerade license of the night was nearly unlimited; but the figure in question had out-Heroded Herod, and gone beyond the bounds of even the prince’s indefinite decorum. There are chords in the hearts of the most reckless which cannot be touched without emotion. Even with the utterly lost, to whom life and death are equally jests, there are matters of which no jest can be made. The whole company, indeed, seemed now deeply to feel that in the costume and bearing of the stranger neither wit nor propriety existed. The figure was tall and gaunt, and shrouded from head to foot in the habiliments of the grave. The mask which concealed the visage was made so nearly to resemble the countenance of a stiffened corpse that the closest scrutiny must have had difficulty in detecting the cheat. And yet all this might have been endured, if not approved, by the mad revellers around. But the mummer had gone so far as to assume the type of the Red Death. His vesture was dabbled in blood – and his broad brow, with all the features of the face, was besprinkled with the scarlet horror.

When the eyes of Prince Prospero fell upon this spectral image (which with a slow and solemn movement, as if more fully to sustain its role, stalked to and fro among the waltzers) he was seen to be convulsed, in the first moment with a strong shudder either of terror or distaste; but, in the next, his brow reddened with rage.

“Who dares?” he demanded hoarsely of the courtiers who stood near him – “who dares insult us with this blasphemous mockery? Seize him and unmask him – that we may know whom we have to hang at sunrise, from the battlements!”

It was in the eastern or blue chamber in which stood the Prince Prospero as he uttered these words. They rang throughout the seven rooms loudly and clearly – for the prince was a bold and robust man, and the music had became [C,E: become] hushed at the waving of his hand.

It was in the blue room where stood the prince, with a group of pale courtiers by his side. At first, as he spoke, there was a slight rushing movement of this group in the direction of the intruder, who at the moment was also near at hand, and now, with deliberate and stately step, made closer approach to the speaker. But from a certain nameless awe with which the mad assumptions of the mummer had inspired the whole party, there were found none who put forth hand to seize him; so that, unimpeded, he passed within a yard of the prince’s person; and, while the vast assembly, as if with one impulse, shrank from the centres of the rooms to the walls, he made his way uninterruptedly, but with the same solemn and measured step which had distinguished him from the first, through the blue chamber to the purple – through the purple to the green – through the green to the orange – through this again to the white – and even thence to the violet, ere a decided movement had been made to arrest him. It was then, however, that the Prince Prospero, maddening with rage and the shame of his own momentary cowardice, rushed hurriedly through the six chambers, while none followed him on account of a deadly terror that had seized upon all. He bore aloft a drawn dagger, and had approached, in rapid impetuosity, to within three or four feet of the retreating figure, when the latter, having attained the extremity of the velvet apartment, turned suddenly and confronted his pursuer. There was a sharp cry – and the dagger dropped gleaming upon the sable carpet, upon which, instantly afterwards, fell prostrate in death the Prince Prospero. Then, summoning the wild courage of despair, a throng of the revellers at once threw themselves into the black apartment, and, seizing the mummer, whose tall figure stood erect and motionless within the shadow of the ebony clock, gasped in unutterable horror at finding the grave cerements and corpse-like mask which they handled with so violent a rudeness, untenanted by any tangible form.

And now was acknowledged the presence of the Red Death. He had come like a thief in the night. And one by one dropped the revellers in the blood-bedewed halls of their revel, and died each in the despairing posture of his fall. And the life of the ebony clock went out with that of the last of the gay. And the flames of the tripods expired. And Darkness and Decay and the Red Death held illimitable dominion over all.

“Graham’s Magazine”, May 1842

LET LOOSE

Mary Cholmondeley

1890

The dead abide with us! Though stark and cold

Earth seems to grip them, they are with us still.

Some years ago I took up architecture, and made a tour through Holland, studying the buildings of that interesting country. I was not then aware that it is not enough to take up art. Art must take you up, too. I never doubted but that my passing enthusiasm for her would be returned. When I discovered that she was a stern mistress, who did not immediately respond to my attentions, I naturally transferred them to another shrine. There are other things in the world besides art. I am now a landscape gardener.

But at the time of which I write I was engaged in a violent flirtation with architecture. I had one companion on this expedition, who has since become one of the leading architects of the day. He was a thin, determined-looking man with a screwed-up face and heavy jaw, slow of speech, and absorbed in his work to a degree which I quickly found tiresome. He was possessed of a certain quiet power of overcoming obstacles which I have rarely seen equalled. He has since become my brother-in-law, so I ought to know; for my parents did not like him much and opposed the marriage, and my sister did not like him at all, and refused him over and over again; but, nevertheless, he eventually married her.

I have thought since that one of his reasons for choosing me as his travelling companion on this occasion was because he was getting up steam for what he subsequently termed “an alliance with my family”, but the idea never entered my head at the time. A more careless man as to dress I have rarely met, and yet, in all the heat of July in Holland, I noticed that he never appeared without a high, starched collar, which had not even fashion to commend it at that time.

I often chaffed him about his splendid collars, and asked him why he wore them, but without eliciting any response. One evening, as we were walking back to our lodgings in Middleberg, I attacked him for about the thirtieth time on the subject.

“Why on earth do you wear them?” I said.

“You have, I believe, asked me that question many times,” he replied, in his slow, precise utterance; “but always on occasions when I was occupied. I am now at leisure, and I will tell you.”

And he did.

I have put down what he said, as nearly in his own words as I can remember them.

Ten years ago, I was asked to read a paper on English frescoes at the Institute of British Architects. I was determined to make the paper as good as I could, down to the slightest details, and I consulted many books on the subject, and studied every fresco I could find. My father, who had been an architect, had left me, at his death, all his papers and note-books on the subject of architecture. I searched them diligently, and found in one of them a slight unfinished sketch of nearly fifty years ago that specially interested me. Underneath was noted, in his clear, small hand –Frescoed east wall of crypt. Parish Church. Wet Waste-on-the-Wolds, Yorkshire (via Pickering).

The sketch had such a fascination for me that I decided to go there and see the fresco for myself. I had only a very vague idea as to where Wet Waste-on-the-Wolds was, but I was ambitious for the success of my paper; it was hot in London, and I set off on my long journey not without a certain degree of pleasure, with my dog Brian, a large nondescript brindled creature, as my only companion.

I reached Pickering, in Yorkshire, in the course of the afternoon, and then began a series of experiments on local lines which ended, after several hours, in my finding myself deposited at a little out-of-the-world station within nine or ten miles of Wet Waste. As no conveyance of any kind was to be had, I shouldered my portmanteau, and set out on a long white road that stretched away into the distance over the bare, treeless wold. I must have walked for several hours, over a waste of moorland patched with heather, when a doctor passed me, and gave me a lift to within a mile of my destination. The mile was a long one, and it was quite dark by the time I saw the feeble glimmer of lights in front of me, and found that I had reached Wet Waste. I had considerable difficulty in getting anyone to take me in; but at last I persuaded the owner of the public-house to give me a bed, and, quite tired out, I got into it as soon as possible, for fear he should change his mind, and fell asleep to the sound of a little stream below my window.

I was up early next morning, and inquired directly after breakfast the way to the clergyman’s house, which I found was close at hand. At Wet Waste everything was close at hand. The whole village seemed composed of a straggling row of one-storied grey stone houses, the same colour as the stone walls that separated the few fields enclosed from the surrounding waste, and as the little bridges over the beck that ran down one side of the grey wide street. Everything was grey. The church, the low tower of which I could see at a little distance, seemed to have been built of the same stone; so was the parsonage when I came up to it, accompanied on my way by a mob of rough, uncouth children, who eyed me and Brian with half-defiant curiosity.

The clergyman was at home, and after a short delay I was admitted. Leaving Brian in charge of my drawing materials, I followed the servant into a low panelled room, in which, at a latticed window, a very old man was sitting. The morning light fell on his white head bent low over a litter of papers and books.

“Mr er—?” he said, looking up slowly, with one finger keeping his place in a book.

“Blake.”

“Blake,” he repeated after me, and was silent.

I told him that I was an architect; that I had come to study a fresco in the crypt of his church, and asked for the keys.

“The crypt,” he said, pushing up his spectacles and peering hard at me. “The crypt has been closed for thirty years. Ever since—” and he stopped short.

“I should be much obliged for the keys,” I said again.

He shook his head.

“No,” he said. “No one goes in there now.”

“It is a pity,” I remarked, “for I have come a long way with that one object,” and I told him about the paper I had been asked to read, and the trouble I was taking with it.

He became interested. “Ah!” he said, laying down his pen, and removing his finger from the page before him, “I can understand that. I also was young once, and fired with ambition. The lines have fallen to me in somewhat lonely places, and for forty years I have held the cure of souls in this place, where, truly, I have seen but little of the world, though I myself may be not unknown in the paths of literature. Possibly you may have read a pamphlet, written by myself, on the Syrian version of the Three Authentic Epistles of Ignatius?”

“Sir,” I said, “I am ashamed to confess that I have not time to read even the most celebrated books. My one object in life is my art. Ars longa, vita brevis, you know.”

“You are right, my son,” said the old man, evidently disappointed, but looking at me kindly. “There are diversities of gifts, and if the Lord has entrusted you with a talent, look to it. Lay it not up in a napkin.”

I said I would not do so if he would lend me the keys of the crypt. He seemed startled by my recurrence to the subject and looked undecided.

“Why not?” he murmured to himself. “The youth appears a good youth. And superstition! What is it but distrust in God!”

He got up slowly, and taking a large bunch of keys out of his pocket, opened with one of them an oak cupboard in the corner of the room.

“They should be here,” he muttered, peering in; “but the dust of many years deceives the eye. See, my son, if among these parchments there be two keys; one of iron and very large, and the other steel, and of a long and thin appearance.”

I went eagerly to help him, and presently found in a back drawer two keys tied together, which he recognized at once.

“Those are they,” he said. “The long one opens the first door at the bottom of the steps which go down against the outside wall of the church hard by the sword graven in the wall. The second opens (but it is hard of opening and of shutting) the iron door within the passage leading to the crypt itself. My son, is it necessary to your treatise that you should enter this crypt?”

I replied that it was absolutely necessary.

“Then take them,” he said, “and in the evening you will bring them to me again.”

I said I might want to go several days running, and asked if he would not allow me to keep them till I had finished my work; but on that point he was firm.

“Likewise,” he added, “be careful that you lock the first door at the foot of the steps before you unlock the second, and lock the second also while you are within. Furthermore, when you come out lock the iron inner door as well as the wooden one.”

I promised I would do so, and, after thanking him, hurried away, delighted at my success in obtaining the keys. Finding Brian and my sketching materials waiting for me in the porch, I eluded the vigilance of my escort of children by taking the narrow private path between the parsonage and the church which was close at hand, standing in a quadrangle of ancient yews.

The church itself was interesting, and I noticed that it must have arisen out of the ruins of a previous building, judging from the number of fragments of stone caps and arches, bearing traces of very early carving, now built into the walls. There were incised crosses, too, in some places, and one especially caught my attention, being flanked by a large sword. It was in trying to get a nearer look at this that I stumbled, and, looking down, saw at my feet a flight of narrow stone steps green with moss and mildew. Evidently this was the entrance to the crypt. I at once descended the steps, taking care of my footing, for they were damp and slippery in the extreme. Brian accompanied me, as nothing would induce him to remain behind. By the time I had reached the bottom of the stairs, I found myself almost in darkness, and I had to strike a light before I could find the keyhole and the proper key to fit into it. The door, which was of wood, opened inwards fairly easily, although an accumulation of mould and rubbish on the ground outside showed it had not been used for many years. Having got through it, which was not altogether an easy matter, as nothing would induce it to open more than about eighteen inches, I carefully locked it behind me, although I should have preferred to leave it open, as there is to some minds an unpleasant feeling in being locked in anywhere, in case of a sudden exit seeming advisable.

I kept my candle alight with some difficulty, and after groping my way down a low and of course exceedingly dank passage, came to another door. A toad was squatting against it, who looked as if he had been sitting there about a hundred years. As I lowered the candle to the floor, he gazed at the light with unblinking eyes, and then retreated slowly into a crevice in the wall, leaving against the door a small cavity in the dry mud which had gradually silted up round his person. I noticed that this door was of iron, and had a long bolt, which, however, was broken. Without delay, I fitted the second key into the lock, and pushing the door open after considerable difficulty, I felt the cold breath of the crypt upon my face. I must own I experienced a momentary regret at locking the second door again as soon as I was well inside, but I felt it my duty to do so. Then, leaving the key in the lock, I seized my candle and looked round. I was standing in a low vaulted chamber with groined roof, cut out of the solid rock. It was difficult to see where the crypt ended, as further light thrown on any point only showed other rough archways or openings, cut in the rock, which had probably served at one time for family vaults. A peculiarity of the Wet Waste crypt, which I had not noticed in other places of that description, was the tasteful arrangement of skulls and bones which were packed about four feet high on either side. The skulls were symmetrically built up to within a few inches of the top of the low archway on my left, and the shin bones were arranged in the same manner on my right. But the fresco! I looked round for it in vain. Perceiving at the further end of the crypt a very low and very massive archway, the entrance to which was not filled up with bones, I passed under it, and found myself in a second smaller chamber. Holding my candle above my head, the first object its light fell upon was – the fresco, and at a glance I saw that it was unique. Setting down some of my things with a trembling hand on a rough stone shelf hard by, which had evidently been a credence table, I examined the work more closely. It was a reredos over what had probably been the altar at the time the priests were proscribed. The fresco belonged to the earliest part of the fifteenth century, and was so perfectly preserved that I could almost trace the limits of each day’s work in the plaster, as the artist had dashed it on and smoothed it out with his trowel. The subject was the Ascension, gloriously treated. I can hardly describe my elation as I stood and looked at it, and reflected that this magnificent specimen of English fresco painting would be made known to the world by myself. Recollecting myself at last, I opened my sketching bag, and, lighting all the candles I had brought with me, set to work.

Brian walked about near me, and though I was not otherwise than glad of his company in my rather lonely position, I wished several times I had left him behind. He seemed restless, and even the sight of so many bones appeared to exercise no soothing effect upon him. At last, however, after repeated commands, he lay down, watchful but motionless, on the stone floor.

I must have worked for several hours, and I was pausing to rest my eyes and hands, when I noticed for the first time the intense stillness that surrounded me. No sound from me reached the outer world. The church clock which had clanged out so loud and ponderously as I went down the steps, had not since sent the faintest whisper of its iron tongue down to me below. All was silent as the grave. This was the grave. Those who had come here had indeed gone down into silence. I repeated the words to myself, or rather they repeated themselves to me.

Gone down into silence.

I was awakened from my reverie by a faint sound. I sat still and listened. Bats occasionally frequent vaults and underground places.

The sound continued, a faint, stealthy, rather unpleasant sound. I do not know what kinds of sounds bats make, whether pleasant or otherwise. Suddenly there was a noise as of something falling, a momentary pause – and then – an almost imperceptible but distant jangle as of a key.

I had left the key in the lock after I had turned it, and I now regretted having done so. I got up, took one of the candles, and went back into the larger crypt – for though I trust I am not so effeminate as to be rendered nervous by hearing a noise for which I cannot instantly account; still, on occasions of this kind, I must honestly say I should prefer that they did not occur. As I came towards the iron door, there was another distinct (I had almost said hurried) sound. The impression on my mind was one of great haste. When I reached the door, and held the candle near the lock to take out the key, I perceived that the other one, which hung by a short string to its fellow, was vibrating slightly. I should have preferred not to find it vibrating, as there seemed no occasion for such a course; but I put them both into my pocket, and turned to go back to my work. As I turned, I saw on the ground what had occasioned the louder noise I had heard, namely, a skull which had evidently just slipped from its place on the top of one of the walls of bones, and had rolled almost to my feet. There, disclosing a few more inches of the top of an archway behind was the place from which it had been dislodged. I stooped to pick it up, but fearing to displace any more skulls by meddling with the pile, and not liking to gather up its scattered teeth, I let it lie, and went back to my work, in which I was soon so completely absorbed that I was only roused at last by my candles beginning to burn low and go out one after another.

Then, with a sigh of regret, for I had not nearly finished, I turned to go. Poor Brian, who had never quite reconciled himself to the place, was beside himself with delight. As I opened the iron door he pushed past me, and a moment later I heard him whining and scratching, and I had almost added, beating, against the wooden one. I locked the iron door, and hurried down the passage as quickly as I could, and almost before I had got the other one ajar there seemed to be a rush past me into the open air, and Brian was bounding up the steps and out of sight. As I stopped to take out the key, I felt quite deserted and left behind. When I came out once more into the sunlight, there was a vague sensation all about me in the air of exultant freedom.

It was already late in the afternoon, and after I had sauntered back to the parsonage to give up the keys, I persuaded the people of the public-house to let me join in the family meal, which was spread out in the kitchen. The inhabitants of Wet Waste were primitive people, with the frank, unabashed manner that flourishes still in lonely places, especially in the wilds of Yorkshire; but I had no idea that in these days of penny posts and cheap newspapers such entire ignorance of the outer world could have existed in any corner, however remote, of Great Britain.

When I took one of the neighbour’s children on my knee – a pretty little girl with the palest aureole of flaxen hair I had ever seen – and began to draw pictures for her of the birds and beasts of other countries, I was instantly surrounded by a crowd of children, and even grown-up people, while others came to their doorways and looked on from a distance, calling to each other in the strident unknown tongue which I have since discovered goes by the name of “Broad Yorkshire.”

The following morning, as I came out of my room, I perceived that something was amiss in the village. A buzz of voices reached me as I passed the bar, and in the next house I could hear through the open window a high-pitched wail of lamentation.

The woman who brought me my breakfast was in tears, and in answer to my questions, told me that the neighbour’s child, the little girl whom I had taken on my knee the evening before, had died in the night.

I felt sorry for the general grief that the little creature’s death seemed to arouse, and the uncontrolled wailing of the poor mother took my appetite away.

I hurried off early to my work, calling on my way for the keys, and with Brian for my companion descended once more into the crypt, and drew and measured with an absorption that gave me no time that day to listen for sounds real or fancied. Brian, too, on this occasion seemed quite content, and slept peacefully beside me on the stone floor. When I had worked as long as I could, I put away my books with regret that even then I had not quite finished, as I had hoped to do. It would be necessary to come again for a short time on the morrow. When I returned the keys late that afternoon, the old clergyman met me at the door, and asked me to come in and have tea with him.

“And has the work prospered?” he asked, as we sat down in the long, low room, into which I had just been ushered, and where he seemed to live entirely.

I told him it had, and showed it to him.

“You have seen the original, of course?” I said.

“Once,” he replied, gazing fixedly at it. He evidently did not care to be communicative, so I turned the conversation to the age of the church.

“All here is old,” he said. “When I was young, forty years ago, and came here because I had no means of mine own, and was much moved to marry at that time, I felt oppressed that all was so old; and that this place was so far removed from the world, for which I had at times longings grievous to be borne; but I had chosen my lot, and with it I was forced to be content. My son, marry not in youth, for love, which truly in that season is a mighty power, turns away the heart from study, and young children break the back of ambition. Neither marry in middle life, when a woman is seen to be but a woman and her talk a weariness, so you will not be burdened with a wife in your old age.”

I had my own views on the subject of marriage, for I am of opinion that a well-chosen companion of domestic tastes and docile and devoted temperament may be of material assistance to a professional man. But, my opinions once formulated, it is not of moment to me to discuss them with others, so I changed the subject, and asked if the neighbouring villages were as antiquated as Wet Waste.

“Yes, all about here is old,” he repeated. “The paved road leading to Dyke Fens is an ancient pack road, made even in the time of the Romans. Dyke Fens, which is very near here, a matter of but four or five miles, is likewise old, and forgotten by the world. The Reformation never reached it. It stopped here. And at Dyke Fens they still have a priest and a bell, and bow down before the saints. It is a damnable heresy, and weekly I expound it as such to my people, showing them true doctrines; and I have heard that this same priest has so far yielded himself to the Evil One that he has preached against me as withholding gospel truths from my flock; but I take no heed of it, neither of his pamphlet touching the Clementine Homilies, in which he vainly contradicts that which I have plainly set forth and proven beyond doubt, concerning the word Asaph.”

The old man was fairly off on his favourite subject, and it was some time before I could get away. As it was, he followed me to the door, and I only escaped because the old clerk hobbled up at that moment, and claimed his attention.

The following morning I went for the keys for the third and last time. I had decided to leave early the next day. I was tired of Wet Waste, and a certain gloom seemed to my fancy to be gathering over the place. There was a sensation of trouble in the air, as if, although the day was bright and clear, a storm were coming.

This morning, to my astonishment, the keys were refused to me when I asked for them. I did not, however, take the refusal as final – I make it a rule never to take a refusal as final – and after a short delay I was shown into the room where, as usual, the clergyman was sitting, or rather, on this occasion, was walking up and down.

“My son,” he said with vehemence, “I know wherefore you have come, but it is of no avail. I cannot lend the keys again.”

I replied that, on the contrary, I hoped he would give them to me at once.

“It is impossible,” he repeated. “I did wrong, exceeding wrong. I will never part with them again.”

“Why not?”

He hesitated, and then said slowly:

“The old clerk, Abraham Kelly, died last night.” He paused, and then went on: “The doctor has just been here to tell me of that which is a mystery to him. I do not wish the people of the place to know it, and only to me he has mentioned it, but he has discovered plainly on the throat of the old man, and also, but more faintly on the child’s, marks as of strangulation. None but he has observed it, and he is at a loss how to account for it. I, alas! can account for it but in one way, but in one way!”

I did not see what all this had to do with the crypt, but to humour the old man, I asked what that way was.

“It is a long story, and, haply, to a stranger it may appear but foolishness, but I will even tell it; for I perceive that unless I furnish a reason for withholding the keys, you will not cease to entreat me for them.

“I told you at first when you inquired of me concerning the crypt, that it had been closed these thirty years, and so it was. Thirty years ago a certain Sir Roger Despard departed this life, even the Lord of the manor of Wet Waste and Dyke Fens, the last of his family, which is now, thank the Lord, extinct. He was a man of a vile life, neither fearing God nor regarding man, nor having compassion on innocence, and the Lord appeared to have given him over to the tormentors even in this world, for he suffered many things of his vices, more especially from drunkenness, in which seasons, and they were many, he was as one possessed by seven devils, being an abomination to his household and a root of bitterness to all, both high and low.

“And, at last, the cup of his iniquity being full to the brim, he came to die, and I went to exhort him on his deathbed; for I heard that terror had come upon him, and that evil imaginations encompassed him so thick on every side, that few of them that were with him could abide in his presence. But when I saw him I perceived that there was no place of repentance left for him, and he scoffed at me and my superstition, even as he lay dying, and swore there was no God and no angel, and all were damned even as he was. And the next day, towards evening, the pains of death came upon him, and he raved the more exceedingly, inasmuch as he said he was being strangled by the Evil One. Now on his table was his hunting knife, and with his last strength he crept and laid hold upon it, no man withstanding him, and swore a great oath that if he went down to burn in hell, he would leave one of his hands behind on earth, and that it would never rest until it had drawn blood from the throat of another and strangled him, even as he himself was being strangled. And he cut off his own right hand at the wrist, and no man dared go near him to stop him, and the blood went through the floor, even down to the ceiling of the room below, and thereupon he died.

“And they called me in the night, and told me of his oath, and I counselled that no man should speak of it, and I took the dead hand, which none had ventured to touch, and I laid it beside him in his coffin; for I thought it better he should take it with him, so that he might have it, if haply someday after much tribulation he should perchance be moved to stretch forth his hands towards God. But the story got spread about, and the people were affrighted, so, when he came to be buried in the place of his fathers, he being the last of his family, and the crypt likewise full, I had it closed, and kept the keys myself, and suffered no man to enter therein any more; for truly he was a man of an evil life, and the devil is not yet wholly overcome, nor cast chained into the lake of fire. So in time the story died out, for in thirty years much is forgotten. And when you came and asked me for the keys, I was at the first minded to withhold them; but I thought it was a vain superstition, and I perceived that you do but ask a second time for what is first refused; so I let you have them, seeing it was not an idle curiosity, but a desire to improve the talent committed to you, that led you to require them.”

The old man stopped, and I remained silent, wondering what would be the best way to get them just once more.

“Surely, sir,” I said at last, “one so cultivated and deeply read as yourself cannot be biased by an idle superstition.”

“I trust not,” he replied, “and yet – it is a strange thing that since the crypt was opened two people have died, and the mark is plain upon the throat of the old man and visible on the young child. No blood was drawn, but the second time the grip was stronger than the first. The third time, perchance—”

“Superstition such as that,” I said with authority, “is an entire want of faith in God. You once said so yourself.”

I took a high moral tone which is often efficacious with conscientious, humble-minded people.

He agreed, and accused himself of not having faith as a grain of mustard seed; but even when I had got him so far as that, I had a severe struggle for the keys. It was only when I finally explained to him that if any malign influence had been let loose the first day, at any rate, it was out now for good or evil, and no further going or coming of mine could make any difference, that I finally gained my point. I was young, and he was old; and, being much shaken by what had occurred, he gave way at last, and I wrested the keys from him.

I will not deny that I went down the steps that day with a vague, indefinable repugnance, which was only accentuated by the closing of the two doors behind me. I remembered then, for the first time, the faint jangling of the key and other sounds which I had noticed the first day, and how one of the skulls had fallen. I went to the place where it still lay. I have already said these walls of skulls were built up so high as to be within a few inches of the top of the low archways that led into more distant portions of the vault. The displacement of the skull in question had left a small hole just large enough for me to put my hand through. I noticed for the first time, over the archway above it, a carved coat-of-arms, and the name, now almost obliterated, of Despard. This, no doubt, was the Despard vault. I could not resist moving a few more skulls and looking in, holding my candle as near the aperture as I could. The vault was full. Piled high, one upon another, were old coffins, and remnants of coffins, and strewn bones. I attribute my present determination to be cremated to the painful impression produced on me by this spectacle. The coffin nearest the archway alone was intact, save for a large crack across the lid. I could not get a ray from my candle to fall on the brass plates, but I felt no doubt this was the coffin of the wicked Sir Roger. I put back the skulls, including the one which had rolled down, and carefully finished my work. I was not there much more than an hour, but I was glad to get away.

If I could have left Wet Waste at once I should have done so, for I had a totally unreasonable longing to leave the place; but I found that only one train stopped during the day at the station from which I had come, and that it would not be possible to be in time for it that day.

Accordingly I submitted to the inevitable, and wandered about with Brian for the remainder of the afternoon and until late in the evening, sketching and smoking. The day was oppressively hot, and even after the sun had set across the burnt stretches of the wolds, it seemed to grow very little cooler. Not a breath stirred. In the evening, when I was tired of loitering in the lanes, I went up to my own room, and after contemplating afresh my finished study of the fresco, I suddenly set to work to write the part of my paper bearing upon it. As a rule, I write with difficulty, but that evening words came to me with winged speed, and with them a hovering impression that I must make haste, that I was much pressed for time. I wrote and wrote, until my candles guttered out and left me trying to finish by the moonlight, which, until I endeavoured to write by it, seemed as clear as day.

I had to put away my manuscript, and, feeling it was too early to go to bed, for the church clock was just counting out ten, I sat down by the open window and leaned out to try and catch a breath of air. It was a night of exceptional beauty; and as I looked out my nervous haste and hurry of mind were allayed. The moon, a perfect circle, was – if so poetic an expression be permissible – as it were, sailing across a calm sky. Every detail of the little village was as clearly illuminated by its beams as if it were broad day; so, also, was the adjacent church with its primeval yews, while even the wolds beyond were dimly indicated, as if through tracing paper.

I sat a long time leaning against the windowsill. The heat was still intense. I am not, as a rule, easily elated or readily cast down; but as I sat that night in the lonely village on the moors, with Brian’s head against my knee, how, or why, I know not, a great depression gradually came upon me.

My mind went back to the crypt and the countless dead who had been laid there. The sight of the goal to which all human life, and strength, and beauty, travel in the end, had not affected me at the time, but now the very air about me seemed heavy with death.

What was the good, I asked myself, of working and toiling, and grinding down my heart and youth in the mill of long and strenuous effort, seeing that in the grave folly and talent, idleness and labour lie together, and are alike forgotten? Labour seemed to stretch before me till my heart ached to think of it, to stretch before me even to the end of life, and then came, as the recompense of my labour – the grave. Even if I succeeded, if, after wearing my life threadbare with toil, I succeeded, what remained to me in the end? The grave. A little sooner, while the hands and eyes were still strong to labour, or a little later, when all power and vision had been taken from them; sooner or later only –the grave.

I do not apologise for the excessively morbid tenor of these reflections, as I hold that they were caused by the lunar effects which I have endeavoured to transcribe. The moon in its various quarterings has always exerted a marked influence on what I may call the sub-dominant, namely, the poetic side of my nature.

I roused myself at last, when the moon came to look in upon me where I sat, and, leaving the window open, I pulled myself together and went to bed.

I fell asleep almost immediately, but I do not fancy I could have been asleep very long when I was wakened by Brian. He was growling in a low, muffled tone, as he sometimes did in his sleep, when his nose was buried in his rug. I called out to him to shut up; and as he did not do so, turned in bed to find my match box or something to throw at him. The moonlight was still in the room, and as I looked at him I saw him raise his head and evidently wake up. I admonished him, and was just on the point of falling asleep when he began to growl again in a low, savage manner that waked me most effectually. Presently he shook himself and got up, and began prowling about the room. I sat up in bed and called to him, but he paid no attention. Suddenly I saw him stop short in the moonlight; he showed his teeth, and crouched down, his eyes following something in the air. I looked at him in horror. Was he going mad? His eyes were glaring, and his head moved slightly as if he were following the rapid movements of an enemy. Then, with a furious snarl, he suddenly sprang from the ground, and rushed in great leaps across the room towards me, dashing himself against the furniture, his eyes rolling, snatching and tearing wildly in the air with his teeth. I saw he had gone mad. I leaped out of bed, and rushing at him, caught him by the throat. The moon had gone behind a cloud; but in the darkness I felt him turn upon me, felt him rise up, and his teeth close in my throat. I was being strangled. With all the strength of despair, I kept my grip of his neck, and, dragging him across the room, tried to crush in his head against the iron rail of my bedstead. It was my only chance. I felt the blood running down my neck. I was suffocating. After one moment of frightful struggle, I beat his head against the bar and heard his skull give way. I felt him give one strong shudder, a groan, and then I fainted away.

~  ~  ~  ~  ~

When I came to myself I was lying on the floor, surrounded by the people of the house, my reddened hands still clutching Brian’s throat. Someone was holding a candle towards me, and the draught from the window made it flare and waver. I looked at Brian. He was stone dead. The blood from his battered head was trickling slowly over my hands. His great jaw was fixed in something that – in the uncertain light – I could not see.

They turned the light a little.

“Oh, God!” I shrieked. “There! Look! Look!”

“He’s off his head,” said someone, and I fainted again.

~  ~  ~  ~  ~

I was ill for about a fortnight without regaining consciousness, a waste of time of which even now I cannot think without poignant regret. When I did recover consciousness, I found I was being carefully nursed by the old clergyman and the people of the house. I have often heard the unkindness of the world in general inveighed against, but for my part I can honestly say that I have received many more kindnesses than I have time to repay. Country people especially are remarkably attentive to strangers in illness.

I could not rest until I had seen the doctor who attended me, and had received his assurance that I should be equal to reading my paper on the appointed day. This pressing anxiety removed, I told him of what I had seen before I fainted the second time. He listened attentively, and then assured me, in a manner that was intended to be soothing, that I was suffering from an hallucination, due, no doubt, to the shock of my dog’s sudden madness.

“Did you see the dog after it was dead?” I asked.

He said he did. The whole jaw was covered with blood and foam; the teeth certainly seemed convulsively fixed, but the case being evidently one of extraordinarily virulent hydrophobia, owing to the intense heat, he had had the body buried immediately.

My companion stopped speaking as we reached our lodgings, and went upstairs. Then, lighting a candle, he slowly turned down his collar.

“You see I have the marks still,” he said, “but I have no fear of dying of hydrophobia. I am told such peculiar scars could not have been made by the teeth of a dog. If you look closely you see the pressure of the five fingers. That is the reason why I wear high collars.”

“Temple Bar”, Apr. 1890

THE STRIDING PLACE

Gertrude Atherton

1896

Weigall, continental and detached, tired early of grouse-shooting. To stand propped against a sod fence while his host’s workmen routed up the birds with long poles and drove them towards the waiting guns, made him feel himself a parody on the ancestors who had roamed the moors and forests of this West Riding of Yorkshire in hot pursuit of game worth the killing. But when in England in August he always accepted whatever proffered for the season, and invited his host to shoot pheasants on his estates in the South. The amusements of life, he argued, should be accepted with the same philosophy as its ills.

It had been a bad day. A heavy rain had made the moor so spongy that it fairly sprang beneath the feet. Whether or not the grouse had haunts of their own, wherein they were immune from rheumatism, the bag had been small. The women, too, were an unusually dull lot, with the exception of a new-minded débutante who bothered Weigall at dinner by demanding the verbal restoration of the vague paintings on the vaulted roof above them.

But it was no one of these things that sat on Weigall’s mind as, when the other men went up to bed, he let himself out of the castle and sauntered down to the river. His intimate friend, the companion of his boyhood, the chum of his college days, his fellow-traveler in many lands, the man for whom he possessed stronger affection than for all men, had mysteriously disappeared two days ago, and his track might have sprung to the upper air for all trace he had left behind him. He had been a guest on the adjoining estate during the past week, shooting with the fervor of the true sportsman, making love in the intervals to Adeline Cavan, and apparently in the best of spirits. As far as was known there was nothing to lower his mental mercury, for his rent-roll was a large one, Miss Cavan blushed whenever he looked at her, and, being one of the best shots in England, he was never happier than in August. The suicide theory was preposterous, all agreed, and there was as little reason to believe him murdered. Nevertheless, he had walked out of March Abbey two nights ago without hat or overcoat, and had not been seen since.

The country was being patrolled night and day. A hundred keepers and workmen were beating the woods and poking the bogs on the moors, but as yet not so much as a handkerchief had been found.

Weigall did not believe for a moment that Wyatt Gifford was dead, and although it was impossible not to be affected by the general uneasiness, he was disposed to be more angry than frightened. At Cambridge Gifford had been an incorrigible practical joker, and by no means had outgrown the habit; it would be like him to cut across the country in his evening clothes, board a cattle-train, and amuse himself touching up the picture of the sensation in West Riding.

However, Weigall’s affection for his friend was too deep to companion with tranquility in the present state of doubt, and, instead of going to bed early with the other men, he determined to walk until ready for sleep. He went down to the river and followed the path through the woods. There was no moon, but the stars sprinkled their cold light upon the pretty belt of water flowing placidly past wood and ruin, between green masses of overhanging rocks or sloping banks tangled with tree and shrub, leaping occasionally over stones with the harsh notes of an angry scold, to recover its equanimity the moment the way was clear again.

It was very dark in the depths where Weigall trod. He smiled as he recalled a remark of Gifford’s: “An English wood is like a good many other things in life – very promising at a distance, but a hollow mockery when you get within. You see daylight on both sides, and the sun freckles the very bracken. Our woods need the night to make them seem what they ought to be – what they once were, before our ancestors’ descendants demanded so much more money, in these so much more various days.”

Weigall strolled along, smoking, and thinking of his friend, his pranks – many of which had done more credit to his imagination than this – and recalling conversations that had lasted the night through. Just before the end of the London season they had walked the streets one hot night after a party, discussing the various theories of the soul’s destiny. That afternoon they had met at the coffin of a college friend whose mind had been a blank for the past three years. Some months previously they had called at the asylum to see him. His expression had been senile, his face imprinted with the record of debauchery. In death the face was placid, intelligent, without ignoble lineation – the face of the man they had known at college. Weigall and Gifford had had no time to comment there, and the afternoon and evening were full; but, coming forth from the house of festivity together, they had reverted almost at once to the topic.

“I cherish the theory,” Gifford had said, “that the soul sometimes lingers in the body after death. During madness, of course, it is an impotent prisoner, albeit a conscious one. Fancy its agony, and its horror! What more natural than that, when the life-spark goes out, the tortured soul should take possession of the vacant skull and triumph once more for a few hours while old friends look their last? It has had time to repent while compelled to crouch and behold the result of its work, and it has shrived itself into a state of comparative purity. If I had my way, I should stay inside my bones until the coffin had gone into its niche, that I might obviate for my poor old comrade the tragic impersonality of death. And I should like to see justice done to it, as it were – to see it lowered among its ancestors with the ceremony and solemnity that are its due. I am afraid that if I dissevered myself too quickly, I should yield to curiosity and hasten to investigate the mysteries of space.”

“You believe in the soul as an independent entity, then – -that it and the vital principle are not one and the same?”

“Absolutely. The body and soul are twins, life comrades – sometimes friends, sometimes enemies, but always loyal in the last instance. Someday, when I am tired of the world, I shall go to India and become a mahatma, solely for the pleasure of receiving proof during life of this independent relationship.”

“Suppose you were not sealed up properly, and returned after one of your astral flights to find your earthly part unfit for habitation? It is an experiment I don’t think I should care to try, unless even juggling with soul and flesh had palled.”

“That would not be an uninteresting predicament. I should rather enjoy experimenting with broken machinery.”

The high wild roar of water smote suddenly upon Weigall’s ear and checked his memories. He left the wood and walked out on the huge slippery stones which nearly close the River Wharfe at this point, and watched the waters boil down into the narrow pass with their furious untiring energy. The black quiet of the woods rose high on either side. The stars seemed colder and whiter just above. On either hand the perspective of the river might have run into a rayless cavern. There was no lonelier spot in England, nor one which had the right to claim so many ghosts, if ghosts there were.

Weigall was not a coward, but he recalled uncomfortably the tales of those that had been done to death in the Strid. [01]   Wordsworth’s Boy of Egremond had been disposed of by the practical Whitaker; but countless others, more venturesome than wise, had gone down into that narrow boiling course, never to appear in the still pool a few yards beyond. Below the great rocks which form the walls of the Strid was believed to be a natural vault, on to whose shelves the dead were drawn. The spot had an ugly fascination. Weigall stood, envisioning skeletons, uncoffined and green, the home of the eyeless things which had devoured all that had covered and filled that rattling symbol of man’s mortality; then fell to wondering if anyone had attempted to leap the Strid of late. It was covered with slime; he had never seen it look so treacherous.

[01]

“This striding place is called the ‘Strid,’

A name which it took of yore;

A thousand years hath it borne the name,

And it shall a thousand more.”

He shuddered and turned away, impelled, despite his manhood, to flee the spot. As he did so, something tossing in the foam below the fall – something as white, yet independent of it – caught his eye and arrested his step. Then he saw that it was describing a contrary motion to the rushing water – an upward backward motion. Weigall stood rigid, breathless; he fancied he heard the crackling of his hair. Was that a hand? It thrust itself still higher above the boiling foam, turned sidewise, and four frantic fingers were distinctly visible against the black rock beyond.

Weigall’s superstitious terror left him. A man was there, struggling to free himself from the suction beneath the Strid, swept down, doubtless, but a moment before his arrival, perhaps as he stood with his back to the current.

He stepped as close to the edge as he dared. The hand doubled as if in imprecation, shaking savagely in the face of that force which leaves its creatures to immutable law; then spread wide again, clutching, expanding, crying for help as audibly as the human voice.

Weigall dashed to the nearest tree, dragged and twisted off a branch with his strong arms, and returned as swiftly to the Strid. The hand was in the same place, still gesticulating as wildly; the body was undoubtedly caught in the rocks below, perhaps already halfway along one of those hideous shelves. Weigall let himself down upon a lower rock, braced his shoulder against the mass beside him, then, leaning out over the water, thrust the branch into the hand. The fingers clutched it convulsively. Weigall tugged powerfully, his own feet dragged perilously near the edge. For a moment he produced no impression, then an arm shot above the waters.

The blood sprang to Weigall’s head; he was choked with the impression that the Strid had him in her roaring hold, and he saw nothing. Then the mist cleared. The hand and arm were nearer, although the rest of the body was still concealed by the foam. Weigall peered out with distended eyes. The meager light revealed in the cuffs links of a peculiar device. The fingers clutching the branch were as familiar.

Weigall forgot the slippery stones, the terrible death if he stepped too far. He pulled with passionate will and muscle. Memories flung themselves into the hot light of his brain, trooping rapidly upon each other’s heels, as in the thought of the drowning. Most of the pleasures of his life, good and bad, were identified in some way with this friend. Scenes of college days, of travel, where they had deliberately sought adventure and stood between one another and death upon more occasions than one, of hours of delightful companionship among the treasures of art, and others in the pursuit of pleasure, flashed like the changing particles of a kaleidoscope. Weigall had loved several women; but he would have flouted in these moments the thought that he had ever loved any woman as he loved Wyatt Gifford. There were so many charming women in the world, and in the thirty-two years of his life he had never known another man to whom he had cared to give his intimate friendship.

He threw himself on his face. His wrists were cracking, the skin was torn from his hands. The fingers still gripped the stick. There was life in them yet.

Suddenly something gave way. The hand swung about, tearing the branch from Weigall’s grasp. The body had been liberated and flung outward, though still submerged by the foam and spray.

Weigall scrambled to his feet and sprang along the rocks, knowing that the danger from suction was over and that Gifford must be carried straight to the quiet pool. Gifford was a fish in the water and could live under it longer than most men. If he survived this, it would not be the first time that his pluck and science had saved him from drowning.

Weigall reached the pool. A man in his evening clothes floated on it, his face turned towards a projecting rock over which his arm had fallen, upholding the body. The hand that had held the branch hung limply over the rock, its white reflection visible in the black water. Weigall plunged into the shallow pool, lifted Gifford in his arms and returned to the bank. He laid the body down and threw off his coat that he might be the freer to practice the methods of resuscitation. He was glad of the moment’s respite. The valiant life in the man might have been exhausted in that last struggle. He had not dared to look at his face, to put his ear to the heart. The hesitation lasted but a moment. There was no time to lose.

He turned to his prostrate friend. As he did so, something strange and disagreeable smote his senses. For a half-moment he did not appreciate its nature. Then his teeth clacked together, his feet, his outstretched arms pointed towards the woods. But he sprang to the side of the man and bent down and peered into his face. There was no face.

“The Speaker”, 20 Jun. 1896

“The Smart Set”, Jul. 1900

THE ASH-TREE

M. R. James

1904

Everyone who has travelled over Eastern England knows the smaller country-houses with which it is studded – the rather dank little buildings, usually in the Italian style, surrounded with parks of some eighty to a hundred acres. For me they have always had a very strong attraction, with the grey paling of split oak, the noble trees, the meres with their reed-beds, and the line of distant woods. Then, I like the pillared portico – perhaps stuck on to a red-brick Queen Anne house which has been faced with stucco to bring it into line with the “Grecian” taste of the end of the eighteenth century; the hall inside, going up to the roof, which hall ought always to be provided with a gallery and a small organ. I like the library, too, where you may find anything from a Psalter of the thirteenth century to a Shakespeare quarto. I like the pictures, of course; and perhaps most of all I like fancying what life in such a house was when it was first built, and in the piping times of landlords’ prosperity, and not least now, when, if money is not so plentiful, taste is more varied and life quite as interesting. I wish to have one of these houses, and enough money to keep it together and entertain my friends in it modestly.

But this is a digression. I have to tell you of a curious series of events which happened in such a house as I have tried to describe. It is Castringham Hall in Suffolk. I think a good deal has been done to the building since the period of my story, but the essential features I have sketched are still there – Italian portico, square block of white house, older inside than out, park with fringe of woods, and mere. The one feature that marked out the house from a score of others is gone. As you looked at it from the park, you saw on the right a great old ash-tree growing within half a dozen yards of the wall, and almost or quite touching the building with its branches. I suppose it had stood there ever since Castringham ceased to be a fortified place, and since the moat was filled in and the Elizabethan dwelling-house built. At any rate, it had well-nigh attained its full dimensions in the year 1690.

In that year the district in which the Hall is situated was the scene of a number of witch-trials. It will be long, I think, before we arrive at a just estimate of the amount of solid reason – if there was any – which lay at the root of the universal fear of witches in old times. Whether the persons accused of this offence really did imagine that they were possessed of unusual power of any kind; or whether they had the will at least, if not the power, of doing mischief to their neighbours; or whether all the confessions, of which there are so many, were extorted by the cruelty of the witch-finders – these are questions which are not, I fancy, yet solved. And the present narrative gives me pause. I cannot altogether sweep it away as mere invention. The reader must judge for himself.

Castringham contributed a victim to the auto-da-fé. Mrs. Mothersole was her name, and she differed from the ordinary run of village witches only in being rather better off and in a more influential position. Efforts were made to save her by several reputable farmers of the parish. They did their best to testify to her character, and showed considerable anxiety as to the verdict of the jury.

But what seems to have been fatal to the woman was the evidence of the then proprietor of Castringham Hall – Sir Matthew Fell. He deposed to having watched her on three different occasions from his window, at the full of the moon, gathering sprigs “from the ash-tree near my house”. She had climbed into the branches, clad only in her shift, and was cutting off small twigs with a peculiarly curved knife, and as she did so she seemed to be talking to herself. On each occasion Sir Matthew had done his best to capture the woman, but she had always taken alarm at some accidental noise he had made, and all he could see when he got down to the garden was a hare running across the path in the direction of the village.

On the third night he had been at the pains to follow at his best speed, and had gone straight to Mrs. Mothersole’s house; but he had had to wait a quarter of an hour battering at her door, and then she had come out very cross, and apparently very sleepy, as if just out of bed; and he had no good explanation to offer of his visit.

Mainly on this evidence, though there was much more of a less striking and unusual kind from other parishioners, Mrs. Mothersole was found guilty and condemned to die. She was hanged a week after the trial, with five or six more unhappy creatures, at Bury St. Edmunds.

Sir Matthew Fell, then Deputy–Sheriff, was present at the execution. It was a damp, drizzly March morning when the cart made its way up the rough grass hill outside Northgate, where the gallows stood. The other victims were apathetic or broken down with misery; but Mrs. Mothersole was, as in life so in death, of a very different temper. Her “poysonous Rage”, as a reporter of the time puts it, “did so work upon the Bystanders – yea, even upon the Hangman – that it was constantly affirmed of all that saw her that she presented the living Aspect of a mad Divell. Yet she offer’d no Resistance to the Officers of the Law; onely she looked upon those that laid Hands upon her with so direfull and venomous an Aspect that – as one of them afterwards assured me – the meer Thought of it preyed inwardly upon his Mind for six Months after.”

However, all that she is reported to have said were the seemingly meaningless words: “There will be guests at the Hall.” Which she repeated more than once in an undertone.

Sir Matthew Fell was not unimpressed by the bearing of the woman. He had some talk upon the matter with the Vicar of his parish, with whom he travelled home after the assize business was over. His evidence at the trial had not been very willingly given; he was not specially infected with the witch-finding mania, but he declared, then and afterwards, that he could not give any other account of the matter than that he had given, and that he could not possibly have been mistaken as to what he saw. The whole transaction had been repugnant to him, for he was a man who liked to be on pleasant terms with those about him; but he saw a duty to be done in this business, and he had done it. That seems to have been the gist of his sentiments, and the Vicar applauded it, as any reasonable man must have done.

A few weeks after, when the moon of May was at the full, Vicar and Squire met again in the park, and walked to the Hall together. Lady Fell was with her mother, who was dangerously ill, and Sir Matthew was alone at home; so the Vicar, Mr. Crome, was easily persuaded to take a late supper at the Hall.

Sir Matthew was not very good company this evening. The talk ran chiefly on family and parish matters, and, as luck would have it, Sir Matthew made a memorandum in writing of certain wishes or intentions of his regarding his estates, which afterwards proved exceedingly useful.

When Mr. Crome thought of starting for home, about half past nine o’clock, Sir Matthew and he took a preliminary turn on the gravelled walk at the back of the house. The only incident that struck Mr. Crome was this: they were in sight of the ash-tree which I described as growing near the windows of the building, when Sir Matthew stopped and said:

“What is that that runs up and down the stem of the ash? It is never a squirrel? They will all be in their nests by now.”

The Vicar looked and saw the moving creature, but he could make nothing of its colour in the moonlight. The sharp outline, however, seen for an instant, was imprinted on his brain, and he could have sworn, he said, though it sounded foolish, that, squirrel or not, it had more than four legs.

Still, not much was to be made of the momentary vision, and the two men parted. They may have met since then, but it was not for a score of years.

Next day Sir Matthew Fell was not downstairs at six in the morning, as was his custom, nor at seven, nor yet at eight. Hereupon the servants went and knocked at his chamber door. I need not prolong the description of their anxious listenings and renewed batterings on the panels. The door was opened at last from the outside, and they found their master dead and black. So much you have guessed. That there were any marks of violence did not at the moment appear; but the window was open.

One of the men went to fetch the parson, and then by his directions rode on to give notice to the coroner. Mr. Crome himself went as quick as he might to the Hall, and was shown to the room where the dead man lay. He has left some notes among his papers which show how genuine a respect and sorrow was felt for Sir Matthew, and there is also this passage, which I transcribe for the sake of the light it throws upon the course of events, and also upon the common beliefs of the time:

There was not any the least Trace of an Entrance having been forc’d to the Chamber: but the Casement stood open, as my poor Friend would always have it in this Season. He had his Evening Drink of small Ale in a silver vessel of about a pint measure, and tonight had not drunk it out. This Drink was examined by the Physician from Bury, a Mr. Hodgkins, who could not, however, as he afterwards declar’d upon his Oath, before the Coroner’s quest, discover that any matter of a venomous kind was present in it. For, as was natural, in the great Swelling and Blackness of the Corpse, there was talk made among the Neighbours of Poyson. The Body was very much Disorder’d as it laid in the Bed, being twisted after so extream a sort as gave too probable Conjecture that my worthy Friend and Patron had expir’d in great Pain and Agony. And what is as yet unexplain’d, and to myself the Argument of some Horrid and Artfull Designe in the Perpetrators of this Barbarous Murther, was this, that the Women which were entrusted with the laying-out of the Corpse and washing it, being both sad Pearsons and very well Respected in their Mournfull Profession, came to me in a great Pain and Distress both of Mind and Body, saying, what was indeed confirmed upon the first View, that they had no sooner touch’d the Breast of the Corpse with their naked Hands than they were sensible of a more than ordinary violent Smart and Acheing in their Palms, which, with their whole Forearms, in no long time swell’d so immoderately, the Pain still continuing, that, as afterwards proved, during many weeks they were forc’d to lay by the exercise of their Calling; and yet no mark seen on the Skin.

Upon hearing this, I sent for the Physician, who was still in the House, and we made as carefull a Proof as we were able by the Help of a small Magnifying Lens of Crystal of the condition of the Skinn on this Part of the Body: but could not detect with the Instrument we had any Matter of Importance beyond a couple of small Punctures or Pricks, which we then concluded were the Spotts by which the Poyson might be introduced, remembering that Ring of Pope Borgia, with other known Specimens of the Horrid Art of the Italian Poysoners of the last age.

So much is to be said of the Symptoms seen on the Corpse. As to what I am to add, it is meerly my own Experiment, and to be left to Posterity to judge whether there be anything of Value therein. There was on the Table by the Beddside a Bible of the small size, in which my Friend – punctuall as in Matters of less Moment, so in this more weighty one – used nightly, and upon his First Rising, to read a sett Portion. And I taking it up – not without a Tear duly paid to him wich from the Study of this poorer Adumbration was now pass’d to the contemplation of its great Originall – it came into my Thoughts, as at such moments of Helplessness we are prone to catch at any the least Glimmer that makes promise of Light, to make trial of that old and by many accounted Superstitious Practice of drawing the Sortes; of which a Principall Instance, in the case of his late Sacred Majesty the Blessed Martyr King Charles and my Lord Falkland, was now much talked of. I must needs admit that by my Trial not much Assistance was afforded me: yet, as the Cause and Origin of these Dreadfull Events may hereafter be search’d out, I set down the Results, in the case it may be found that they pointed the true Quarter of the Mischief to a quicker Intelligence than my own.

I made, then, three trials, opening the Book and placing my Finger upon certain Words: which gave in the first these words, from Luke xiii. 7, Cut it down; in the second, Isaiah xiii. 20, It shall never be inhabited; and upon the third Experiment, Job xxxix. 30, Her young ones also suck up blood.

This is all that need be quoted from Mr. Crome’s papers. Sir Matthew Fell was duly coffined and laid into the earth, and his funeral sermon, preached by Mr. Crome on the following Sunday, has been printed under the title of “The Unsearchable Way; or, England’s Danger and the Malicious Dealings of Antichrist”, it being the Vicar’s view, as well as that most commonly held in the neighbourhood, that the Squire was the victim of a recrudescence of the Popish Plot.

His son, Sir Matthew the second, succeeded to the title and estates. And so ends the first act of the Castringham tragedy. It is to be mentioned, though the fact is not surprising, that the new Baronet did not occupy the room in which his father had died. Nor, indeed, was it slept in by anyone but an occasional visitor during the whole of his occupation. He died in 1735, and I do not find that anything particular marked his reign, save a curiously constant mortality among his cattle and live-stock in general, which showed a tendency to increase slightly as time went on.

Those who are interested in the details will find a statistical account in a letter to the Gentleman’s Magazine of 1772, which draws the facts from the Baronet’s own papers. He put an end to it at last by a very simple expedient, that of shutting up all his beasts in sheds at night, and keeping no sheep in his park. For he had noticed that nothing was ever attacked that spent the night indoors. After that the disorder confined itself to wild birds, and beasts of chase. But as we have no good account of the symptoms, and as all-night watching was quite unproductive of any clue, I do not dwell on what the Suffolk farmers called the “Castringham sickness”.

The second Sir Matthew died in 1735, as I said, and was duly succeeded by his son, Sir Richard. It was in his time that the great family pew was built out on the north side of the parish church. So large were the Squire’s ideas that several of the graves on that unhallowed side of the building had to be disturbed to satisfy his requirements. Among them was that of Mrs. Mothersole, the position of which was accurately known, thanks to a note on a plan of the church and yard, both made by Mr. Crome.

A certain amount of interest was excited in the village when it was known that the famous witch, who was still remembered by a few, was to be exhumed. And the feeling of surprise, and indeed disquiet, was very strong when it was found that, though her coffin was fairly sound and unbroken, there was no trace whatever inside it of body, bones, or dust. Indeed, it is a curious phenomenon, for at the time of her burying no such things were dreamt of as resurrection-men, and it is difficult to conceive any rational motive for stealing a body otherwise than for the uses of the dissecting-room.

The incident revived for a time all the stories of witch-trials and of the exploits of the witches, dormant for forty years, and Sir Richard’s orders that the coffin should be burnt were thought by a good many to be rather foolhardy, though they were duly carried out.

Sir Richard was a pestilent innovator, it is certain. Before his time the Hall had been a fine block of the mellowest red brick; but Sir Richard had travelled in Italy and become infected with the Italian taste, and, having more money than his predecessors, he determined to leave an Italian palace where he had found an English house. So stucco and ashlar masked the brick; some indifferent Roman marbles were planted about in the entrance-hall and gardens; a reproduction of the Sibyl’s temple at Tivoli was erected on the opposite bank of the mere; and Castringham took on an entirely new, and, I must say, a less engaging, aspect. But it was much admired, and served as a model to a good many of the neighbouring gentry in after-years.

•   •   •

One morning (it was in 1754) Sir Richard woke after a night of discomfort. It had been windy, and his chimney had smoked persistently, and yet it was so cold that he must keep up a fire. Also something had so rattled about the window that no man could get a moment’s peace. Further, there was the prospect of several guests of position arriving in the course of the day, who would expect sport of some kind, and the inroads of the distemper (which continued among his game) had been lately so serious that he was afraid for his reputation as a game-preserver. But what really touched him most nearly was the other matter of his sleepless night. He could certainly not sleep in that room again.

That was the chief subject of his meditations at breakfast, and after it he began a systematic examination of the rooms to see which would suit his notions best. It was long before he found one. This had a window with an eastern aspect and that with a northern; this door the servants would be always passing, and he did not like the bedstead in that. No, he must have a room with a western look-out, so that the sun could not wake him early, and it must be out of the way of the business of the house. The housekeeper was at the end of her resources.

“Well, Sir Richard,” she said, “you know that there is but the one room like that in the house.”

“Which may that be?” said Sir Richard.

“And that is Sir Matthew’s – the West Chamber.”

“Well, put me in there, for there I’ll lie tonight,” said her master. “Which way is it? Here, to be sure”; and he hurried off.

“Oh, Sir Richard, but no one has slept there these forty years. The air has hardly been changed since Sir Matthew died there.”

Thus she spoke, and rustled after him.

“Come, open the door, Mrs. Chiddock. I’ll see the chamber, at least.”

So it was opened, and, indeed, the smell was very close and earthy. Sir Richard crossed to the window, and, impatiently, as was his wont, threw the shutters back, and flung open the casement. For this end of the house was one which the alterations had barely touched, grown up as it was with the great ash-tree, and being otherwise concealed from view.

“Air it, Mrs. Chiddock, all today, and move my bed-furniture in in the afternoon. Put the Bishop of Kilmore in my old room.”

“Pray, Sir Richard,” said a new voice, breaking in on this speech, “might I have the favour of a moment’s interview?”

Sir Richard turned round and saw a man in black in the doorway, who bowed.

“I must ask your indulgence for this intrusion, Sir Richard. You will, perhaps, hardly remember me. My name is William Crome, and my grandfather was Vicar in your grandfather’s time.”

“Well, sir,” said Sir Richard, “the name of Crome is always a passport to Castringham. I am glad to renew a friendship of two generations’ standing. In what can I serve you? for your hour of calling – and, if I do not mistake you, your bearing – shows you to be in some haste.”

“That is no more than the truth, sir. I am riding from Norwich to Bury St. Edmunds with what haste I can make, and I have called in on my way to leave with you some papers which we have but just come upon in looking over what my grandfather left at his death. It is thought you may find some matters of family interest in them.”

“You are mighty obliging, Mr. Crome, and, if you will be so good as to follow me to the parlour, and drink a glass of wine, we will take a first look at these same papers together. And you, Mrs. Chiddock, as I said, be about airing this chamber.... Yes, it is here my grandfather died.... Yes, the tree, perhaps, does make the place a little dampish.... No; I do not wish to listen to any more. Make no difficulties, I beg. You have your orders – go. Will you follow me, sir?”

They went to the study. The packet which young Mr. Crome had brought – he was then just become a Fellow of Clare Hall in Cambridge, I may say, and subsequently brought out a respectable edition of Polyaenus – contained among other things the notes which the old Vicar had made upon the occasion of Sir Matthew Fell’s death. And for the first time Sir Richard was confronted with the enigmatical Sortes Biblicae which you have heard. They amused him a good deal.

“Well,” he said, “my grandfather’s Bible gave one prudent piece of advice – Cut it down. If that stands for the ash-tree, he may rest assured I shall not neglect it. Such a nest of catarrhs and agues was never seen.”

The parlour contained the family books, which, pending the arrival of a collection which Sir Richard had made in Italy, and the building of a proper room to receive them, were not many in number.

Sir Richard looked up from the paper to the bookcase.

“I wonder,” says he, “whether the old prophet is there yet? I fancy I see him.”

Crossing the room, he took out a dumpy Bible, which, sure enough, bore on the flyleaf the inscription: “To Matthew Fell, from his Loving Godmother, Anne Aldous, 2 September 1659.”

“It would be no bad plan to test him again, Mr. Crome. I will wager we get a couple of names in the Chronicles. H’m! what have we here? ‘Thou shalt seek me in the morning, and I shall not be.’ Well, well! Your grandfather would have made a fine omen of that, hey? No more prophets for me! They are all in a tale. And now, Mr. Crome, I am infinitely obliged to you for your packet. You will, I fear, be impatient to get on. Pray allow me – another glass.”

So with offers of hospitality, which were genuinely meant (for Sir Richard thought well of the young man’s address and manner), they parted.

In the afternoon came the guests – the Bishop of Kilmore, Lady Mary Hervey, Sir William Kentfield, etc. Dinner at five, wine, cards, supper, and dispersal to bed.

Next morning Sir Richard is disinclined to take his gun with the rest. He talks with the Bishop of Kilmore. This prelate, unlike a good many of the Irish Bishops of his day, had visited his see, and, indeed, resided there, for some considerable time. This morning, as the two were walking along the terrace and talking over the alterations and improvements in the house, the Bishop said, pointing to the window of the West Room:

“You could never get one of my Irish flock to occupy that room, Sir Richard.”

“Why is that, my lord? It is, in fact, my own.”

“Well, our Irish peasantry will always have it that it brings the worst of luck to sleep near an ash-tree, and you have a fine growth of ash not two yards from your chamber window. Perhaps,” the Bishop went on, with a smile, “it has given you a touch of its quality already, for you do not seem, if I may say it, so much the fresher for your night’s rest as your friends would like to see you.”

“That, or something else, it is true, cost me my sleep from twelve to four, my lord. But the tree is to come down tomorrow, so I shall not hear much more from it.”

“I applaud your determination. It can hardly be wholesome to have the air you breathe strained, as it were, through all that leafage.”

“Your lordship is right there, I think. But I had not my window open last night. It was rather the noise that went on – no doubt from the twigs sweeping the glass – that kept me open-eyed.”

“I think that can hardly be, Sir Richard. Here – you see it from this point. None of these nearest branches even can touch your casement unless there were a gale, and there was none of that last night. They miss the panes by a foot.”

“No, sir, true. What, then, will it be, I wonder, that scratched and rustled so – ay, and covered the dust on my sill with lines and marks?”

At last they agreed that the rats must have come up through the ivy. That was the Bishop’s idea, and Sir Richard jumped at it.

So the day passed quietly, and night came, and the party dispersed to their rooms, and wished Sir Richard a better night.

And now we are in his bedroom, with the light out and the Squire in bed. The room is over the kitchen, and the night outside still and warm, so the window stands open.

There is very little light about the bedstead, but there is a strange movement there; it seems as if Sir Richard were moving his head rapidly to and fro with only the slightest possible sound. And now you would guess, so deceptive is the half-darkness, that he had several heads, round and brownish, which move back and forward, even as low as his chest. It is a horrible illusion. Is it nothing more? There! something drops off the bed with a soft plump, like a kitten, and is out of the window in a flash; another – four – and after that there is quiet again.

Thou shall seek me in the morning, and I shall not be.

As with Sir Matthew, so with Sir Richard – dead and black in his bed!

A pale and silent party of guests and servants gathered under the window when the news was known. Italian poisoners, Popish emissaries, infected air – all these and more guesses were hazarded, and the Bishop of Kilmore looked at the tree, in the fork of whose lower boughs a white tomcat was crouching, looking down the hollow which years had gnawed in the trunk. It was watching something inside the tree with great interest.

Suddenly it got up and craned over the hole. Then a bit of the edge on which it stood gave way, and it went slithering in. Everyone looked up at the noise of the fall.

It is known to most of us that a cat can cry; but few of us have heard, I hope, such a yell as came out of the trunk of the great ash. Two or three screams there were – the witnesses are not sure which – and then a slight and muffled noise of some commotion or struggling was all that came. But Lady Mary Hervey fainted outright, and the housekeeper stopped her ears and fled till she fell on the terrace.

The Bishop of Kilmore and Sir William Kentfield stayed. Yet even they were daunted, though it was only at the cry of a cat; and Sir William swallowed once or twice before he could say:

“There is something more than we know of in that tree, my lord. I am for an instant search.”

And this was agreed upon. A ladder was brought, and one of the gardeners went up, and, looking down the hollow, could detect nothing but a few dim indications of something moving. They got a lantern, and let it down by a rope.

“We must get at the bottom of this. My life upon it, my lord, but the secret of these terrible deaths is there.”

Up went the gardener again with the lantern, and let it down the hole cautiously. They saw the yellow light upon his face as he bent over, and saw his face struck with an incredulous terror and loathing before he cried out in a dreadful voice and fell back from the ladder – where, happily, he was caught by two of the men – letting the lantern fall inside the tree.

He was in a dead faint, and it was some time before any word could be got from him.

By then they had something else to look at. The lantern must have broken at the bottom, and the light in it caught upon dry leaves and rubbish that lay there for in a few minutes a dense smoke began to come up, and then flame; and, to be short, the tree was in a blaze.

The bystanders made a ring at some yards’ distance, and Sir William and the Bishop sent men to get what weapons and tools they could; for, clearly, whatever might be using the tree as its lair would be forced out by the fire.

So it was. First, at the fork, they saw a round body covered with fire – the size of a man’s head – appear very suddenly, then seem to collapse and fall back. This, five or six times; then a similar ball leapt into the air and fell on the grass, where after a moment it lay still. The Bishop went as near as he dared to it, and saw – what but the remains of an enormous spider, venous and seared! And, as the fire burned lower down, more terrible bodies like this began to break out from the trunk, and it was seen that these were covered with greyish hair.

All that day the ash burned, and until it fell to pieces the men stood about it, and from time to time killed the brutes as they darted out. At last there was a long interval when none appeared, and they cautiously closed in and examined the roots of the tree.

“They found,” says the Bishop of Kilmore, “below it a rounded hollow place in the earth, wherein were two or three bodies of these creatures that had plainly been smothered by the smoke; and, what is to me more curious, at the side of this den, against the wall, was crouching the anatomy or skeleton of a human being, with the skin dried upon the bones, having some remains of black hair, which was pronounced by those that examined it to be undoubtedly the body of a woman, and clearly dead for a period of fifty years.”

Ghost Stories of an Antiquary (1904)

THE RING

Sir Thomas Graham Jackson

1919

Two Englishmen were sitting one autumn evening in the garden of the inn at Corneto. The sun had just set over the sea, and the short Italian twilight had begun. The plain down below was already in shadow, but hues of purple and violet still tinged the hills, and invested them with all the ineffable charm of a Tuscan landscape at eventide. The elder of the two men was an Oxford Don, a well-known antiquary and student of ethnology. The younger had been a Fellow of the same College, but had settled in London and taken to literary pursuits, in which he had already made his mark. They had spent the morning in the museum, examining with the help of the courteous curator the rich collection of Etruscan antiquities, and in the afternoon had visited the famous necropolis on the plateau behind the town, and penetrated into a score or more of the painted tombs. They finished the day by crossing the valley to the bare plateau on the opposite hill, where once stood the proud city of Tarquinii, which gave kings to Rome, when Rome itself was but a thing of yesterday, sprung from an upstart settlement of outlaws and robbers. As they sat and sipped their coffee in the gathering dusk, their minds were full of what they had seen; of the mystery of that strange people who came to Italy from nobody knows where, whose written language nobody had ever interpreted, whose gloomy religion coloured the whole ritual of the Romans, and of whom the best record is to be found in their graves.

“I can imagine nothing more delightful,” said the younger man at last, “than to penetrate into an untouched Etruscan tomb, another Regulini-Galassi discovery; where, though the body may have turned to dust – though, for the matter of that, glimpses have been seen of one before it fell to pieces – the ornaments that had fallen off show how the man lay amid the votive offerings to his gods, with his cherished possessions and trinkets all standing around him or hanging on the walls just as they had been left by his relatives three thousand years ago. But I fear there is no chance of such a piece of luck nowadays. The tombs everywhere seem either to have been rifled in bygone ages, or stripped in modern times, to enrich museums and collections.”

“Well, I don’t know,” said Dr. Morton, the elder man; “it may be, as you say, too late for discovery, and yet – But, at all events, I agree with you that nothing could be more interesting.”

“You were here some weeks before I joined you,” said Archie Bryant. “I think you came mainly to study the folk-lore of Tuscan peasantry. How have you been rewarded?”

“Fairly well. It is not easy to get below the surface with the Italian peasant when you try to fathom his beliefs. But it is curious how much has survived of something older than the Catholic faith he shows to his priest.”

“Indeed,” said Bryant. “Do you mean he has not forgotten Tinia, Fafluns, and Teramo, and the other Etruscan deities whom we have been looking at on vases, and in the tombs?”

“So far from having forgotten them,” said Morton, “many of the old peasants, though they are Catholics outwardly, have much more real faith in la vecchia religione, the outworn creed, as you would think it, of Etruscan mythology. There are still many women streghe, witches, who know and practise incantations, but of course all that is under the ban of the Church, and though luckily the Holy Office can no longer burn them, they are very timid and afraid of attracting notice. However, I have managed to get into the confidence of some of them, and have learned a good deal that would surprise you, as it certainly did me. It is even said that it is usual for a family to have one of their number brought up in the old religion, in order that they may have friends in all quarters.”

Bryant laughed, and said it was like the way families in the time of the Wars of the Roses took care to have some of their relatives in each camp, so as to have a friend on either side in case of accidents.

“But to return to what you said just now,” said Morton, “about visiting an untouched Etruscan tomb, do you know that I have great hopes we may really manage it. One of the women into whose confidence I have got, and who has given me a host of spells and incantations which I hope someday to publish, is a strega, or witch, and my belief is that she knows of such a tomb. She says, however, it is dangerous to visit it, no doubt from some superstitious views about the old gods – Tinia, the god of thunder, and the rest. But we shall know more tomorrow, and I have no doubt we shall manage to open the tomb with the aid of a golden key.”

They laughed, and rose from their seats, and, after a turn or two in the alleys of the garden, went to bed.

The next morning was spent partly in the museum, and partly in the communal library.

Bryant’s interest was excited by the subject of Etruscan mythology, which was new to him, and under Morton’s guidance he dipped into the ample stores of literature that bore upon it. As they walked away in the evening Bryant said:

“And you really mean to tell me that Tinia and other members of the old Etruscan Olympus still have their followers among the descendants of the people whose tombs we have visited. I can hardly believe it.”

“I don’t wonder you should be incredulous,” replied Morton. “They do not have it all to themselves, for the saints have their share of popular favour; but, besides the prayers that they offer to the saints, many of the peasants believe in the folletti or spirits of the past; charms and incantations are addressed to them, and legends are preserved of their potent aid. But in a few minutes I will convince you beyond all doubt. We are going to visit an acquaintance I have made – the woman of whom I told you last night; and there she is waiting for me. I doubt, by the way, whether she is actually one of the streghe, the witches, but she knows most of their lore.”

Bryant saw a peasant woman seated at her door, spinning with distaff and spindle as her ancestors had done before her from time immemorial. She rose at their approach, pushed the end of the distaff through her belt, and greeted them with the dignified courtesy that sits naturally on the Italian of the humblest degree, his heritage from an ancient civilisation. She seemed to Bryant a woman of sixty years, or perhaps rather younger, for women age more rapidly in Italy than with us, and she retained much of the classic beauty of her youth.

“Antonietta,” said Morton, “I have brought a compatriot, a lover of your country and people.”

“The Signore is welcome,” said Antonietta, with a smile and a slight inclination, and she invited them to enter her house. A young girl who was sitting there rose as they entered, whom Antonietta presented as her daughter Chiarina. She was a Tuscan beauty, with blue eyes and a rich complexion burned by the sun to a tint like the bloom on an apricot, set off by the bright-coloured handkerchief thrown over her head and fastened with silver pins.

“I have been telling my friend,” said Morton, “what you told me the other day of a tomb which—”

“Ah!” said Antonietta, interrupting him. “Scusi, Signore. These things must not be spoken of lightly,” and she looked furtively round and shut the door carefully. Returning to Morton’s side, she continued in a low voice:

“And is the Signore really bent on what he proposed? Is he not afraid of disturbing those we dare not speak of?”

“We should make no disturbance, Antonietta,” said he. “I only want to see a tomb of one of the old people just as it was finished and left by those who made it. I think you said you knew of one that had never been disturbed.”

“There is such a tomb, Signore, and Chiarina knows it as well as I. No one else does. But it is dangerous for strangers to visit it, as I have warned you, Signore.”

“But you and Chiarina go there safely,” said Morton.

“Yes, but that is different. There are reasons,” and she nodded her head sagely. “We are known. They would not harm us.”

“Is that why you wear a guard against evil spirits?” said Bryant, pointing to the silver cross that hung on her bosom. “They cannot touch a good Catholic, I suppose.”

“Si, si, sicuro; sono buona Cattolica,” replied Antonietta. “I am a good Catholic, though I do not believe all the priests tell me.” And then in a lower voice to Morton, “You know what I believe.”

“La vecchia religione, the old religion?” said Morton. She nodded two or three times, but said nothing.

“But now about this tomb,” said Morton, returning to the object of his visit.

“Signore, be advised. Think no more about it. There are those there who would not welcome you. It would not be wholesome for you to go. I speak for your good.”

“But I will be careful to give no offence,” said Morton. “I am bent on going, and trust to you to help me,” and as he spoke he slipped two gold pieces into her hand. Antonietta looked at them for a minute, and then said:

“Well, if the Signore is resolved, I can certainly guide him, but, no! I will not be paid for it,” and she laid the money down on the table and pushed it towards him. “Neither dare I take you myself. Chiarina knows the way, and she is not bound like me. She shall take you, but it must be by night and secretly, and there must be no more than you two.”

Morton faithfully promised to obey her conditions, and it was arranged that Chiarina should meet them after dark at the town gate which gave on to the necropolis.

They were punctual at the rendezvous, and found Chiarina waiting for them. She was dressed in black, and had a black shawl or hood over her head which concealed her features. She made a sign of recognition, and preceded them without a word.

It was a lovely starlit night, without a moon. Not a breath of air stirred the trees, and the silence was unbroken save by the silver tone of the bell in the Palazzo Comunale, tolling the hour of twenty-three. A few belated wanderers returning to the city passed them on the high road, but as their footsteps died away in the distance, the dead silence settled down again. When they had proceeded about a mile Chiarina turned off by a bypath, that led across the solitary waste. Around them lay the unseen city of the dead; the ground was honeycombed with tombs, where, amid pictured scenes of dancing and revelry, a mockery as it were of mortality, lay the dust of Lucomos and warriors, people of that mysterious race whose history and language are alike forgotten.

“And yet,” said Morton, “one may believe that they are the same people still; mixed, no doubt, with Goths and Lombards, but mainly derived from the old stock that worshipped Tinia here before the days of Romulus.”

“I like the idea,” said Bryant, “and, according to you, they still pay him a divided homage, though he has many rivals in Catholic hagiology. But I like to think that Chiarina’s ancestors followed Lars Porsena of Clusium to the siege of Rome—”

Their guide caught the mention of her name, and looked round with her finger on her lip to enjoin silence. They were traversing a thick wood of undergrowth by a path obscurely marked, which might easily be overlooked by one who was not familiar with the route, but Chiarina never faltered or hesitated on her way. They now descended slightly into a thicker grove; the trees met overhead, and it was with difficulty they saw their guide before them. At last she stopped and turned to her companions. Taking Morton by the hand and signing to Bryant to follow, she drew them through a thicket and then, striking a match, lighted one of the earthen lamps that the peasants still use, exactly like those found in the tombs of their ancestors and placed there three thousand years ago. They found themselves facing a ledge of rocks, about ten feet high, that had evidently been scarped by the band of man to a smooth face.

Here Chiarina turned to them, and in a whisper warned them to be silent.

“The Signori will be so good,” she said, “as not to speak while we are here. There are those whom we must not disturb, or they will be angry. But I will do what is wanted to appease them.”

They promised to do as she bid them, Bryant much interested in her seriousness and her unfeigned alarm, and amused at the idea of two prosaic Englishmen in the twentieth century assisting in a religious function of thirty centuries ago.

Pulling away a bundle of brushwood, Chiarina showed by the feeble light of her lamp a descent of steep steps leading to a doorway at the foot of the rock, and following her they entered an excavation imperfectly visible till their eyes had become more accustomed to the darkness. They then found themselves in a vaulted chamber, cut in the rock, with a square pier left in the middle to support the roof. On this pillar, as Chiarina held her lamp high above her head, they saw a huge figure of Typhon, with twisted serpents for legs, and outstretched wings, grasping a thunderbolt as if to hurl it at an intruder. The walls presented to their delighted eyes a series of paintings as perfect as when the artist had given them his last touches. On one side were rural scenes, harvest and vintage, with jocund peasants and oxen. On another were pictures of banquet and revelry, youths piping and maidens dancing. All spoke of the joy of life, of nature, and contentment. On another wall were scenes more appropriate to the place: there sat Hades black and gloomy, and beside him Persephone with snakes bound in her hair, while Charon, con occhi di bra gia, with his bark stood awaiting his freight of souls. All this, however, was like what the visitors had seen in other tombs during the preceding day, though nowhere so brilliantly preserved as here.

But what was their wonder to see around them the treasury of the dead, untouched by the hand of man since the last inmate of the tomb had been laid to rest. His golden collar and breastplate and other ornaments lay on a bier of bronze, though the body that wore them had melted away from within them into dust. On the wall hung his weapons, and around were arranged painted vases, such as form the priceless treasures of countless museums. Morton and Bryant had indeed their wish satisfied to the full.

As they stood in the death-like silence of the tomb, the mystery of the ages weighed upon their senses; the unknown occupant whose dust undisturbed no doubt lay still on the floor: the things he had used in life, that had hung idly beside his bier for countless centuries; the inscriptions on the walls intended to tell who and what he had been, which could be read but which no one could understand, all combined to make an indescribable impression on the imagination. Pictures of the gods of the outworn creed of ancient Etruria surrounded them – outworn, but no! What was Chiarina doing? At the far end of the cell she had lighted a little flame on a bronze tripod, and while dropping on it pinches of incense, was muttering some charm or incantation of which only a few words reached them. The ancient deities, then, still had their worshippers.

As Bryant looked on in amazement, a strange sense of unreality clouded his mind: he was for the moment as it were transported back to ancient days, the present was confused with the past, and the intervening centuries vanished as a dream. Before he recovered himself something fell on his foot. He stooped to pick it up. It was a ring, and he half-unconsciously put it on his finger. As he rose he met the gaze of the Typhon painted on the central pillar. In the flickering light of the lamp it seemed instinct with life; its expression seemed changed, and it appeared to regard him with malevolence and deadly hate. Its gaze fascinated him, and he could not remove his eyes till the touch of Morton on his elbow recalled him to himself, and he saw that Chiarina had finished her divinations and was anxiously urging them to depart. As they mounted the steps that led to the upper world, a vivid flash of lightning was followed almost instantaneously by the crash of thunder. Chiarina clung to them in terror.

“Go, go, Signori,” cried she. “It is Tinia. He is angry. I must go back to appease him.” and she pushed them through the thicket into the pathway and then disappeared into the darkness. Left without a guide, they scrambled as best they could through the wood and into the open country, and with some trouble found the high road. A few lights of the town twinkled in the distance to direct them, and they hurried onward with a strange sense of insecurity. The heavens were black with clouds, the lightning was incessant, a deluge of rain caught them while they were still in the open, and they arrived at the inn drenched to the skin.

“A strange adventure,” muttered Morton as they parted for the night. “A trifle uncanny, eh? One might almost imagine there was after all something in their creed, were it not too absurd. But what is that on your finger?”

Bryant looked at his hand. He had forgotten the ring he picked up, and he now examined it with curiosity. It was a curious piece of Etruscan goldsmith’s work with some letters inscribed round the rim which he could not decipher.

“Oh! the ring,” said he. “It fell at my feet from somewhere or other. I suppose I brushed against one of the bronze tables and knocked it off, and I picked it up and slipped it on my finger, and then forgot all about it.”

“H’m! well, you know best,” said Morton, “but I think you would have done better to have left it there. However, good-night, I am longing to get dry again.”

•   •   •

Bryant was of an imaginative turn of mind, as befitted his literary vocation, and the adventure of the night made an impression on him that kept him for some time awake. The whole scene presented itself to his memory; the silent walk, the wood, the mysterious tomb with its contents, and above all the countenance of the Typhon with its scowl of concentrated hate. This last pursued him into dreamland, and caused him to pass a troubled night.

Next morning they thought it right to go and see whether their young guide had got safely back, and had not suffered from the storm. Chiarina, however, it appeared had fared better than they, for the storm ceased about the time they reached Corneto. But Antonietta was anxious and troubled. Something she said was wrong, and the storm showed displeasure on the part of the powers on whom they had intruded. As they were leaving Corneto that afternoon, Morton shook her by the hand, and said, “You see, Antonietta, no harm but a wetting has come of our visit, which you thought so dangerous.”

Antonietta said nothing, but when Bryant offered his hand her eye caught sight of the ring. Dropping his hand she made an exclamation of horror.

“Signore,” she cried, “do you know what you have done, you have brought a curse upon you; restore the ring at once, or mischief will befall you.”

“But we are leaving Corneto today,” said Morton, “and have no time for another visit. And what harm can come of the ring?”

“Besides,” said Bryant, “on further looking at it, I think it is a very curious piece of work; and I mean to give it to the Museum when I get home.”

“If you keep it,” said Antonietta in great excitement, “perhaps you will not get home. And you will never give it to the Museum, for it will not leave you till you restore it to the place you took it from. The hand that took must be the hand to restore.”

“But that is impossible,” said they both. There was no time to go back to the tomb. And besides Bryant had taken a fancy to it, and looked forward to presenting the Museum with a genuine antique, of whose authenticity there could be no question. He even declined to give it to Antonietta who said she herself would take it back, and that would suffice. At last she threw up her hands in despair, and retreating into her cottage slammed the door behind her.

Early in the afternoon they parted; Morton for Rome, and Bryant for Viterbo, by way of Toscanella where he meant to stay a day or two to see the two fine churches, and the Etruscan tombs. His conveyance was a primitive car little better than a costermonger’s cart, drawn by a weedy little horse, and driven by a hobbledehoy of a lad, the son of the proprietor. The road at first lay along the high plateau where the tombs were. In the country beyond there were no houses or villages to be seen, though the land was well cultivated, for the farmers and their men go in and out daily in carts from the town. The desolate country had been the scene of brigandage not long before, and the memory of Tiburzi and his nephew was not yet extinct. Giovanni amused Bryant with tales of this sordid hero, and of his escapes, and final capture, till their conversation was suddenly stopped by a lurch of the vehicle which threw them both into the ditch. On getting to their feet they found that beyond a few bruises and scratches, neither of them was hurt, but the cart had one wheel off, and the shaft broken. They were at least seven miles from Corneto, and more from Toscanella; there was no place nearer where help could be had, and they were in a bad case. At last they decided the only thing was to get back to Corneto. The ruined car they pulled into the ditch, and with cords from the harness secured Bryant’s slender luggage on the back of the horse, and set off on foot to retrace their way to Corneto.

Their return caused no little surprise. It was too late to make a fresh start that day, and Bryant returned to his old quarters. As he was undressing his eye caught the ring. Well, thought he, “if Antonietta knew of this accident it would give her a fine argument for her theory that the ring would bring me bad luck.”

The loss of a day made Toscanella and Viterbo out of the question, for Bryant had to hurry back to London to complete a magazine article which was wanted by a certain date. Next day therefore, he took the train to Pisa and Genoa on his way home to England. He was curiously unlucky. His luggage was delayed at the frontier, and he arrived in Paris with nothing but a hand bag. This kept him three days more, till the missing portmanteau arrived, and he reached London nearly a week later than he had intended. Other little accidents of less consequence happened, and combined to cause him some uneasiness. His nights, moreover, were disturbed by dreams. He seemed always to be drawn towards that silent tomb, and to be face to face with the scowling monster on the pillar. A morbid feeling of terror slowly mastered him. He could not shake it off, and gradually the evil countenance began to intrude itself into his thoughts by day. It interrupted his work, and his writing which had been his greatest pleasure became a labour and a burden.

One day it occurred to him that he had not sent that Etruscan ring to the Museum, and he carefully packed it and sent it to the curator with a letter to say he had been fortunate enough to pick up a genuine piece of Etruscan goldsmith’s work in Tuscany, and he would be glad if the Museum authorities would accept it for their collection. He took the packet to the post office himself, and on his return found a parcel on his table from his publisher. On opening it, he found it contained the manuscript of the article he had sent since his return from abroad, the one in fact for the sake of dispatching which, he had been so anxious to get home. A letter from the publisher accompanied it. It ran as follows:

Dear Sir, – I regret to say I am obliged to return your article which in its present shape is quite unsuitable for our pages. The subject on which we invited you to write was one on which we had reason to believe you were an authority, but what you send us seems unequal and largely irrelevant. In particular we fail to understand the allusions in which it abounds to Etruscan mythology.

I am, Sir,

Your obedient servant,

The Editor.

“What on earth does this mean,” said Bryant to himself. “The man must have got hold of another paper, and confused it with mine.”

The paper, however, was his, and on glancing over it he was aghast. “Is it possible I wrote this balderdash?” thought he. “I must be going mad,” and he pressed his hand to his brow. But there was no mistake about it being his writing, full of literary faults and widely incoherent as it was. The colour rushed to his cheeks as he tore the shameful pages up and tossed them into the paper basket. Etruscan mythology, too, what on earth could have made him drag that into an article on the “History of the Colony of New Zealand.” Was he never to get out of his head the memory of that ill-omened visit? And as his mind reverted to the events of the night, the scowling visage of the Typhon presented itself to his mental vision. “Is it possible,” he thought, “that that ring has some potent force for evil? Well, anyhow, I am rid of it now; and no further harm can come of it.”

He slept better that night, and next day decided to go for a long walk in the country in the hope of steadying his shaken nerves. He found an old college friend disposed for an outing, and they took the train to Clandon, and walked over Newlands Corner to St. Martha’s chapel, down to Shamley Green, Wonersh, and Bramley, and so home by rail. They dined together at the Oxford and Cambridge Club, and then parted, Bryant to his chambers in the Temple. On his table, he found a packet by registered post. It contained a letter from the Director of the museum, and a small parcel in cotton wool of which he guessed too well the contents. The letter ran thus:

Dear Sir, – We are much obliged to you for your kind offer of the enclosed ring, which we return with our thanks. It appears to us to be one of the clever copies made in Germany of Etruscan antiquities, by which many collectors have been taken in. We venture to express our hope that you were not too heavily mulcted in the purchase.

Your obedient servant,

– – – , Director.

“Much they know about it,” said Bryant bitterly, as he unfolded the packet, and looked at his fatal possession with dismay. The window was open, and in a sudden rage he flung it far and wide into the court, and went to bed.

He felt better next morning, and after breakfast settled down to some literary work that had come in the day before. But it would not do. His mind was confused, and all power of clear expression seemed to have left him. As he was sitting in despair with his head on his hands there was a knock at the door, and Mrs. Filcher, the laundress, entered with something in her hand.

“Begging your pardon, Mr. Bryant,” she began, “I picked up this ’ere little ring in the court, and seeing as I have noticed it on your finger, I know’d it to be yourn, and so I have brought it up. Thank you, sir, good-morning, sir.”

And the good woman sidled out a shilling the richer, but leaving Bryant in an agony of despair. “Can I never shake off this strange oppression?” thought he, as he gazed on the fatal circlet of gold that lay on the table before him. The words of Antonietta came back to his memory: “it will never leave you till you restore it to the place you took it from.” It seemed as if it were true. Twice he had tried in vain to get rid of it, and twice it had been restored; that night he would make sure of a riddance. He remained in his rooms till evening in a sort of mental torpor. He could neither eat nor drink. A creeping horror took possession of him; as he cast his eyes about in the dusk, innocent bookshelves seemed to resolve themselves into sepulchral forms, and in the midst appeared the scowling visage of the Typhon. At last when night fell he took the ring, descended his staircase, and found his way to the Embankment. The tide was up; with all his might he flung the ring into the river, and then sank down on one of the seats. Famished and exhausted he felt more dead than alive, and half fainting, and half asleep, he lost consciousness.

“Now then, wake up,” said a gruff voice in his ear, some hours later, while a heavy hand on his shoulder gave him a good shake, and he woke to find the morning breaking, and a burly policeman standing over him. He roused himself, and stood up. “Beg pardon, sir,” said the policeman, seeing he was a gentleman, “bit overcome, sir, was you? Hadn’t you better get to your home, sir, ’stead o’ lying here? Let me lend you a hand till you’ve steadied yourself.”

Bryant thanked the man who went off contented with half-a-crown, and then tottered back to his chambers, and threw himself on his bed in a fever. As he sank on the pillow he happened to raise his hand. On his finger was the fatal ring. Was it then only a dream that he had flung it into the river? He could not tell. His brain was in a whirl; one thought only beat upon his mind, “it will never leave you till you restore it to the place you took it from.” He rose from his bed resolved to act on the warning. Every attempt to part with it had failed; the Museum would not have it; and it came back mysteriously twice when he had hurled it away in desperation. Antonietta must be right. He would go to Corneto and find her, and she should guide him again to the fatal place which he now wished to heaven he had never seen.

In half an hour he had put up a small bag of his things, and was on his way to Cook’s to secure a sleeping-berth in the St. Gothard express. The excitement he had gone through, his fasting the day before, and his sleepless night began to tell on him. He scarcely noticed anything on the journey, and lived as in a dream. At the frontiers he roused himself to pass the customs, and then sank again into a sort of stupor. At Chiasso he felt a thrill at the thought he was again in Italy, and nearing his point. At Milan there was a delay of some hours which put him in a fever of impatience. Another night in the train, and then, thank Heaven, in the early morning he alighted at Corneto. He was so weak he could hardly stand, but he managed to reach the omnibus, in which he climbed the hill to the city which is some two miles or so from the station.

He was greeted as an old acquaintance by the padrone of the inn where he and Morton had stayed before, to whom he had telegraphed for a room. Breakfast and a bath restored him a little, and then he set off to find Antonietta. He found his way to her house without difficulty, and saw the familiar figure standing at the door and spinning with distaff and spindle as of old.

“Antonietta,” he cried, “I am here again, and want your help.” The woman turned and faced him. It was not Antonietta. Bryant stood amazed and confounded; the disappointment was too great.

“The Signore asked for Antonietta,” said she. “Perhaps the Signore knew Antonietta.”

“Yes, yes,” stammered he, “I knew her. Where is she? I am come from England expressly to see her.”

“Ah! Signore, you have not heard. La povera Antonietta è morta. She is dead.”

Bryant reeled as if he had been shot. His last hope was struck from under him. He staggered and would have fallen had not the contadina caught him, and put him into her seat.

“Prego! S’accomodi? the Signore seems ill. I will fetch a glass of water.” Bryant recovered himself a little, and said:

“And her daughter, Chiarina, is she dead too?”

“Oh, no! la Chiarina is well, but she is not here. She is with her friends at Montefiascone. I can give you her address if you like.”

Bryant seized on this suggestion with the eagerness of a drowning man grasping at a floating spar, and after resting a little longer at the invitation of the good woman, he rose and managed to regain his hotel. He wrote at once to the address that had been given him, but he could not wait for the answer, and ill as he was he sallied forth to try and find that fatal tomb. All that afternoon he wandered like an unhappy spirit over the ground. He knew they had gone two miles or more from the town, and that they penetrated a wood. He searched every copse and thicket he could see, but in vain, He found nothing like the scene of their midnight adventure, and returned dispirited in the evening to his hotel. The next day he again sallied out and wandered to and fro in his quest, wearying himself in vain, for he could find nothing like the place Ire was looking for. A carabiniere saw him, and watched his devious movements with suspicion.

“The Signore seems to be seeking something,” said he.

“I am looking for a tomb,” said Bryant.

“The Signore should apply to the custode who will guide him. All the tombs are closed, and visits are not permitted without the custode.”

Bryant murmured something in reply, and wandered on while the carabiniere kept the eye of suspicion upon him. In the evening he staggered home. No news had come from Chiarina, and in despair, utterly worn out, and broken down, he threw himself on his bed, and gave himself up for lost.

•   •   •

Dr. Morton was sitting in his rooms at Oxford after breakfast, smoking his morning pipe, and casting an eye occasionally at the notes of a lecture he was to give that morning on folk-lore. In writing it he had made use of his experiences in Tuscany during the late holiday. The thought of this brought Bryant to his recollection, and he drew from his pocket a letter received from him a few days back, which had puzzled him a good deal. It was very short, and consisted of a few broken sentences to which he could not attach much meaning. It said: “I am being bothered and pestered beyond all endurance in a way that drives me mad. I cannot part with that ring. You do not know what I am suffering. One thing is certain, I must obey Antonietta, and go back.”

“But why,” thought Morton, “does he bother himself about his ring? Why should he part with it, if he does not like to do so, and why does he let people pester him about it? Some dealer or other I expect who wants to buy it. But who’s there? Come in,” he said in reply to a knock at the door.

The newcomer was one of the Fellows who was a great friend of Bryant, and Morton after a few words on general matters asked him if he had heard anything of Bryant lately.

“Well, as you ask me,” said Williamson, “I have, and I am uneasy about him. You know he wrote a great deal for the Piccadilly magazine, and in fact was one of their principal contributors. Well, I met Henderson, the editor, at the Athenaeum the other day, and he said to me, ‘What is the matter with your man, Bryant?’ ‘Nothing that I know of,’ said I. ‘Why do you ask?’ ‘I ask,’ said he, ‘because he sent us an article the other day for the Piccadilly that he could only have written if he were drunk or mad. It was rambling and illiterate, and of course, useless to us. But the curious thing was that it dragged in head and shoulders a lot about Etruscan tombs, and a fatal ring, that had nothing whatever to do with the subject.’”

“A ring, you say,” said Morton. “Now that is curious, for I was just reading when you came in, a letter from him that I received a few days ago, about a ring. I remember he did pick up a ring in an old Etruscan tomb we visited together, and one of those half necromantic women of the place prophesied it would bring him no good. He talks also of going back there. I remember the inn where we stayed, and I have a mind to wire out to find out if he is there.”

Morton accordingly telegraphed to the padrone of the Stella d’Oro at Corneto to ask whether Signor Bryant was there, and he prepaid the answer. The answer did not come till the next day. It said:

“THE SIGNORE IS HERE. VERY ILL. PRAYS YOU TO COME.”

Morton was much concerned, for he had a great regard for Bryant. Something was evidently wrong, and the ring seemed to be at the bottom of it. Morton remembered saying to Bryant that he would have done better to leave it behind. His researches in folklore had revealed to him the superstitious belief of the peasantry in the old Etruscan mythology, and it had sometimes occurred to him, though he always dismissed the idea as absurd, that they might have some ground for their faith. And now here was Bryant evidently in some mysterious way or other in trouble about the ring he had picked up. Well, at all events, Morton resolved to go at once in answer to his friend’s appeal.

In due time he arrived at the Stella d’Oro, and the padrone met him with a serious face. “I am glad you are come, Signore,” said he. “Your poor friend has been raving and calling for you. He keeps crying out about a ring and a tomb, and we cannot tell what he means. The doctor shakes his head, and will not say what he thinks.”

Morton was much concerned, and asked for particulars of his illness. The landlord said Signore Bryant had been very strange, very unlike what he was when Morton had been there with him; that he spent his days wandering about the country as if in search of something, so that the police had noticed it, and had been inquiring about him, as if they suspected him of some mischief. But that at last he had completely worn himself out, and had now been lying a week in a raging fever and delirium.

“You had better come and see him, Signore, though I doubt he will not know you.” They mounted the stair silently, and stole quietly into the darkened room.

“He is very still now,” said the padrone, as they approached the bed. “I hope he is sleeping; sleep will do him good.”

But as Morton bent over his friend and called him by his name he realised that poor Bryant’s troubles were over. He was dead.

•   •   •

Morton was excessively shocked, and quite overcome. Bryant had been his most intimate and congenial friend; he had watched with interest his literary career, which promised great things, and he grieved to think a life that had opened so well should be so prematurely cut short. He sat by his poor friend’s bedside in sincere distress.

A message was brought to him a little later that a young woman, a contadina, was below, and asked for the English gentleman. Morton descended, and found himself face to face with Chiarina, who remembered him at once. She explained that she had come in reply to a letter from the English Signore, and would have come sooner had it been possible, but she had been from home for some days.

“And now, Chiarina,” said Morton, “you come too late to see him. The poor Signore is no more.” Chiarina expressed her regret and sympathy, and asked what the poor Signore died of.

“He wore himself out,” said Morton, “looking I imagine, for the tomb you showed us that night.”

“Oh! Dio! Surely he did not venture to go there by himself,” said Chiarina. “Is it that which has brought this illness on him?”

“No, I think not. He seems to have failed to find it. But he has been in trouble about a ring. You remember he picked one up in the tomb, and your mother told him it would bring him bad luck. What can you tell me about it?”

“Ah! Now I understand,” said Chiarina. “Signore, that ring has killed him. Those you know of never forgive. You will remember my mother said ‘the hand that took must be the hand to restore.’ Till he restored it, he would have no peace, and now it has brought him to his death.”

Now, thought Morton to himself, I understand his return to Corneto, his wild rambling about the place, and his anxiety to find Antonietta and Chiarina. He wanted, of course, to get them to guide him to the tomb and return the ring.

He stood a little while in thought, and then asking Chiarina to await his return, he went back to the chamber of death, and stood by the dead man’s bedside. He took the cold hand in his; on the finger was the fatal ring.

“Humph!” said Morton, “There is no knowing what mischief it may do. Perhaps after all the ring had nothing to do with it, and poor Bryant’s sufferings may have been imaginary so far as it was concerned. But anyhow, it seems to have plagued him in life, and I should be sorry to think it plagued him in death. On the whole, I had better draw it off from his finger, and give it to Chiarina to take it back to the place it came from.”

Six Ghost Stories (1919)

THE RETURN OF IMRAY

Rudyard Kipling

1891

The doors were wide, the story saith,

Out of the night came the patient wraith,

He might not speak, and he could not stir

A hair of the Baron’s minniver—

Speechless and strengthless, a shadow thin,

He roved the castle to seek his kin.

And oh,’twas a piteous thing to see

The dumb ghost follow his enemy!

—The Baron

Imray achieved the impossible. Without warning, for no conceivable motive, in his youth, at the threshold of his career he chose to disappear from the world – which is to say, the little Indian station where he lived.

Upon a day he was alive, well, happy, and in great evidence among the billiard-tables at his Club. Upon a morning, he was not, and no manner of search could make sure where he might be. He had stepped out of his place; he had not appeared at his office at the proper time, and his dogcart was not upon the public roads. For these reasons, and because he was hampering, in a microscopical degree, the administration of the Indian Empire, that Empire paused for one microscopical moment to make inquiry into the fate of Imray. Ponds were dragged, wells were plumbed, telegrams were despatched down the lines of railways and to the nearest seaport town – twelve hundred miles away; but Imray was not at the end of the drag-ropes nor the telegraph wires. He was gone, and his place knew him no more.

Then the work of the great Indian Empire swept forward, because it could not be delayed, and Imray from being a man became a mystery – such a thing as men talk over at their tables in the Club for a month, and then forget utterly. His guns, horses, and carts were sold to the highest bidder. His superior officer wrote an altogether absurd letter to his mother, saying that Imray had unaccountably disappeared, and his bungalow stood empty.

After three or four months of the scorching hot weather had gone by, my friend Strickland, of the Police, saw fit to rent the bungalow from the native landlord. This was before he was engaged to Miss Youghal – an affair which has been described in another place – and while he was pursuing his investigations into native life. His own life was sufficiently peculiar, and men complained of his manners and customs. There was always food in his house, but there were no regular times for meals. He ate, standing up and walking about, whatever he might find at the sideboard, and this is not good for human beings. His domestic equipment was limited to six rifles, three shotguns, five saddles, and a collection of stiff-jointed mahseer-rods, bigger and stronger than the largest salmon-rods. These occupied one-half of his bungalow, and the other half was given up to Strickland and his dog Tietjens – an enormous Rampur slut who devoured daily the rations of two men. She spoke to Strickland in a language of her own; and whenever, walking abroad, she saw things calculated to destroy the peace of Her Majesty the Queen-Empress, she returned to her master and laid information. Strickland would take steps at once, and the end of his labours was trouble and fine and imprisonment for other people. The natives believed that Tietjens was a familiar spirit, and treated her with the great reverence that is born of hate and fear. One room in the bungalow was set apart for her special use. She owned a bedstead, a blanket, and a drinking-trough, and if anyone came into Strickland’s room at night her custom was to knock down the invader and give tongue till someone came with a light. Strickland owed his life to her, when he was on the Frontier, in search of a local murderer, who came in the gray dawn to send Strickland much farther than the Andaman Islands. Tietjens caught the man as he was crawling into Strickland’s tent with a dagger between his teeth; and after his record of iniquity was established in the eyes of the law he was hanged. From that date Tietjens wore a collar of rough silver, and employed a monogram on her night-blanket; and the blanket was of double woven Kashmir cloth, for she was a delicate dog.

Under no circumstances would she be separated from Strickland; and once, when he was ill with fever, made great trouble for the doctors, because she did not know how to help her master and would not allow another creature to attempt aid. Macarnaght, of the Indian Medical Service, beat her over her head with a gun-butt before she could understand that she must give room for those who could give quinine.

A short time after Strickland had taken Imray’s bungalow, my business took me through that Station, and naturally, the Club quarters being full, I quartered myself upon Strickland. It was a desirable bungalow, eight-roomed and heavily thatched against any chance of leakage from rain. Under the pitch of the roof ran a ceiling-cloth which looked just as neat as a white-washed ceiling. The landlord had repainted it when Strickland took the bungalow. Unless you knew how Indian bungalows were built you would never have suspected that above the cloth lay the dark three-cornered cavern of the roof, where the beams and the underside of the thatch harboured all manner of rats, bats, ants, and foul things.

Tietjens met me in the verandah with a bay like the boom of the bell of St. Paul’s, putting her paws on my shoulder to show she was glad to see me. Strickland had contrived to claw together a sort of meal which he called lunch, and immediately after it was finished went out about his business. I was left alone with Tietjens and my own affairs. The heat of the summer had broken up and turned to the warm damp of the rains. There was no motion in the heated air, but the rain fell like ramrods on the earth, and flung up a blue mist when it splashed back. The bamboos, and the custard-apples, the poinsettias, and the mango-trees in the garden stood still while the warm water lashed through them, and the frogs began to sing among the aloe hedges. A little before the light failed, and when the rain was at its worst, I sat in the back verandah and heard the water roar from the eaves, and scratched myself because I was covered with the thing called prickly-heat. Tietjens came out with me and put her head in my lap and was very sorrowful; so I gave her biscuits when tea was ready, and I took tea in the back verandah on account of the little coolness found there. The rooms of the house were dark behind me. I could smell Strickland’s saddlery and the oil on his guns, and I had no desire to sit among these things. My own servant came to me in the twilight, the muslin of his clothes clinging tightly to his drenched body, and told me that a gentleman had called and wished to see someone. Very much against my will, but only because of the darkness of the rooms, I went into the naked drawing-room, telling my man to bring the lights. There might or might not have been a caller waiting – it seemed to me that I saw a figure by one of the windows – but when the lights came there was nothing save the spikes of the rain without, and the smell of the drinking earth in my nostrils. I explained to my servant that he was no wiser than he ought to be, and went back to the verandah to talk to Tietjens. She had gone out into the wet, and I could hardly coax her back to me; even with biscuits with sugar tops. Strickland came home, dripping wet, just before dinner, and the first thing he said was.

“Has anyone called?”

I explained, with apologies, that my servant had summoned me into the drawing-room on a false alarm; or that some loafer had tried to call on Strickland, and thinking better of it had fled after giving his name. Strickiand ordered dinner, without comment, and since it was a real dinner with a white tablecloth attached, we sat down.

At nine o’clock Strickland wanted to go to bed, and I was tired too. Tietjens, who had been lying underneath the table, rose up, and swung into the least exposed verandah as soon as her master moved to his own room, which was next to the stately chamber set apart for Tietjens. If a mere wife had wished to sleep out of doors in that pelting rain it would not have mattered; but Tietjens was a dog, and therefore the better animal. I looked at Strickland, expecting to see him flay her with a whip. He smiled queerly, as a man would smile after telling some unpleasant domestic tragedy. “She has done this ever since I moved in here,” said he. “Let her go.”

The dog was Strickland’s dog, so I said nothing, but I felt all that Strickland felt In being thus made light of. Tietjens encamped outside my bedroom window, and storm after storm came up, thundered on the thatch, and died away. The lightning spattered the sky as a thrown egg spatters a barn-door, but the light was pale blue, not yellow; and, looking through my split bamboo blinds, I could see the great dog standing, not sleeping, in the verandah, the hackles alift on her back and her feet anchored as tensely as the drawn wire-rope of a suspension bridge. In the very short pauses of the thunder I tried to sleep, but it seemed that someone wanted me very urgently. He, whoever he was, was trying to call me by name, but his voice was no more than a husky whisper. The thunder ceased, and Tietjens went into the garden and howled at the low moon. Somebody tried to open my door, walked about and about through the house and stood breathing heavily in the verandahs, and just when I was falling asleep I fancied that I heard a wild hammering and clamouring above my head or on the door.

I ran into Strickland’s room and asked him whether he was ill, and had been calling for me. He was lying on his bed half dressed, a pipe in his mouth. “I thought you’d come,” he said. “Have I been walking round the house recently?”

I explained that he had been tramping in the dining-room and the smoking-room and two or three other places, and he laughed and told me to go back to bed. I went back to bed and slept till the morning, but through all my mixed dreams I was sure I was doing someone an injustice in not attending to his wants. What those wants were I could not tell; but a fluttering, whispering, bolt-fumbling, lurking, loitering Someone was reproaching me for my slackness, and, half awake, I heard the howling of Tietjens in the garden and the threshing of the rain.

I lived in that house for two days. Strickland went to his office daily, leaving me alone for eight or ten hours with Tietjens for my only companion. As long as the full light lasted I was comfortable, and so was Tietjens; but in the twilight she and I moved into the back verandah and cuddled each other for company. We were alone in the house, but none the less it was much too fully occupied by a tenant with whom I did not wish to interfere. I never saw him, but I could see the curtains between the rooms quivering where he had just passed through; I could hear the chairs creaking as the bamboos sprung under a weight that had just quitted them; and I could feel when I went to get a book from the dining-room that somebody was waiting in the shadows of the front verandah till I should have gone away. Tietjens made the twilight more interesting by glaring into the darkened rooms with every hair erect, and following the motions of something that I could not see. She never entered the rooms, but her eyes moved interestedly: that was quite sufficient. Only when my servant came to trim the lamps and make all light and habitable she would come in with me and spend her time sitting on her haunches, watching an invisible extra man as he moved about behind my shoulder. Dogs are cheerful companions.

I explained to Strickland, gently as might be, that I would go over to the Club and find for myself quarters there. I admired his hospitality, was pleased with his guns and rods, but I did not much care for his house and its atmosphere. He heard me out to the end, and then smiled very wearily, but without contempt, for he is a man who understands things. “Stay on,” he said, “and see what this thing means. All you have talked about I have known since I took the bungalow. Stay on and wait. Tietjens has left me. Are you going too?”

I had seen him through one little affair, connected with a heathen idol, that had brought me to the doors of a lunatic asylum, and I had no desire to help him through further experiences. He was a man to whom unpleasantnesses arrived as do dinners to ordinary people.

Therefore I explained more clearly than ever that I liked him immensely, and would be happy to see him in the daytime; but that I did not care to sleep under his roof. This was after dinner, when Tietjens had gone out to lie in the verandah.

“’Pon my soul, I don’t wonder,” said Strickland, with his eyes on the ceiling-cloth. “Look at that!”

The tails of two brown snakes were hanging between the cloth and the cornice of the wall. They threw long shadows in the lamplight.

“If you are afraid of snakes of course—” said Strickland.

I hate and fear snakes, because if you look into the eyes of any snake you will see that it knows all and more of the mystery of man’s fall, and that it feels all the contempt that the Devil felt when Adam was evicted from Eden. Besides which its bite is generally fatal, and it twists up trouser legs.

“You ought to get your thatch overhauled,” I said.

“Give me a mahseer-rod, and we’ll poke ’em down.”

“They’ll hide among the roof-beams,” said Strickland. “I can’t stand snakes overhead. I’m going up into the roof. If I shake ’em down, stand by with a cleaning-rod and break their backs.”

I was not anxious to assist Strickland in his work, but I took the cleaning-rod and waited in the dining-room, while Strickland brought a gardener’s ladder from the verandah, and set it against the side of the room.

The snake-tails drew themselves up and disappeared. We could hear the dry rushing scuttle of long bodies running over the baggy ceiling-cloth. Strickland took a lamp with him, while I tried to make clear to him the danger of hunting roof-snakes between a ceiling-cloth and a thatch, apart from the deterioration of property caused by ripping out ceiling- cloths.

“Nonsense!” said Strickland. “They’re sure to hide near the walls by the cloth. The bricks are too cold for ’em, and the heat of the room is just what they like.” He put his hand to the corner of the stuff and ripped it from the cornice. It gave with a great sound of tearing, and Strickland put his head through the opening into the dark of the angle of the roof-beams. I set my teeth and lifted the rod, for I had not the least knowledge of what might descend.

“H’m!” said Strickland, and his voice rolled and rumbled in the roof. “There’s room for another set of rooms up here, and, by Jove, someone is occupying ’em!”

“Snakes?” I said from below.

“No. It’s a buffalo. Hand me up the two last joints of a mahseer-rod, and I’ll prod it. It’s lying on the main roof-beam.”

I handed up the rod.

“What a nest for owls and serpents! No wonder the snakes live here,” said Strickland, climbing farther into the roof. I could see his elbow thrusting with the rod. “Come out of that, whoever you are! Heads below there! It’s falling.”

I saw the ceiling-cloth nearly in the centre of the room bag with a shape that was pressing it downwards and downwards towards the lighted lamp on the table. I snatched the lamp out of danger and stood back. Then the cloth ripped out from the walls, tore, split, swayed, and shot down upon the table something that I dared not look at, till Strickland had slid down the ladder and was standing by my side.

He did not say much, being a man of few words; but he picked up the loose end of the tablecloth and threw it over the remnants on the table.

“It strikes me,” said he, putting down the lamp, “our friend Imray has come back. Oh! you would, would you?”

There was a movement under the cloth, and a little snake wriggled out, to be back-broken by the butt of the mahseer-rod. I was sufficiently sick to make no remarks worth recording.

Strickland meditated, and helped himself to drinks. The arrangement under the cloth made no more signs of life.

“Is it Imray?” I said.

Strickland turned back the cloth for a moment, and looked.

“It is Imray,” he said; “and his throat is cut from ear to ear.”

Then we spoke, both together and to ourselves: “That’s why he whispered about the house.”

Tietjens, in the garden, began to bay furiously. A little later her great nose heaved open the dining-room door.

She sniffed and was still. The tattered ceiling-cloth hung down almost to the level of the table, and there was hardly room to move away from the discovery.

Tietjens came in and sat down; her teeth bared under her lip and her forepaws planted. She looked at Strickland.

“It’s a bad business, old lady,” said he. “Men don’t climb up into the roofs of their bungalows to die, and they don’t fasten up the ceiling cloth behind ’em. Let’s think it out.”

“Let’s think it out somewhere else,” I said.

“Excellent idea! Turn the lamps out. We’ll get into my room.”

I did not turn the lamps out. I went into Strickland’s room first, and allowed him to make the darkness. Then he followed me, and we lit tobacco and thought. Strickland thought. I smoked furiously, because I was afraid.

“Imray is back,” said Strickland. “The question is – who killed Imray? Don’t talk, I’ve a notion of my own. When I took this bungalow I took over most of Imray’s servants. Imray was guileless and inoffensive, wasn’t he?”

I agreed; though the heap under the cloth had looked neither one thing nor the other.

“If I call in all the servants they will stand fast in a crowd and lie like Aryans. What do you suggest?”

“Call ’em in one by one,” I said.

“They’ll run away and give the news to all their fellows,” said Strickland. “We must segregate ’em. Do you suppose your servant knows anything about it?”

“He may, for aught I know; but I don’t think it’s likely. He has only been here two or three days,” I answered. “What’s your notion?”

“I can’t quite tell. How the dickens did the man get the wrong side of the ceiling-cloth?”

There was a heavy coughing outside Strickland’s bedroom door. This showed that Bahadur Khan, his body-servant, had waked from sleep and wished to put Strickland to bed.

“Come in,” said Strickland. “It’s a very warm night, isn’t it?”

Bahadur Khan, a great, green-turbaned, six-foot Mahomedan, said that it was a very warm night; but that there was more rain pending, which, by his Honour’s favour, would bring relief to the country.

“It will be so, if God pleases,” said Strickland, tugging off his boots. “It is in my mind, Bahadur Khan, that I have worked thee remorselessly for many days – ever since that time when thou first earnest into my service. What time was that?”

“Has the Heaven-born forgotten? It was when Imray Sahib went secretly to Europe without warning given; and I – even I – came into the honoured service of the protector of the poor.”

“And Imray Sahib went to Europe?”

“It is so said among those who were his servants.”

“And thou wilt take service with him when he returns?”

“Assuredly, Sahib. He was a good master, and cherished his dependants.”

“That is true. I am very tired, but I go buck-shooting tomorrow. Give me the little sharp rifle that I use for black-buck; it is in the case yonder.”

The man stooped over the case; handed barrels, stock, and fore-end to Strickland, who fitted all together, yawning dolefully. Then he reached down to the gun-case, took a solid-drawn cartridge, and slipped it into the breech of the ’360 Express.

“And Imray Sahib has gone to Europe secretly! That is very strange,
Bahadur Khan, is it not?”

“What do I know of the ways of the white man. Heaven-born?”

“Very little, truly. But thou shalt know more anon. It has reached me that Imray Sahib has returned from his so long journeyings, and that even now he lies in the next room, waiting his servant.”

“Sahib!”

The lamplight slid along the barrels of the rifle as they levelled themselves at Bahadur Khan’s broad breast.

“Go and look!” said Strickland. “Take a lamp. Thy master is tired, and he waits thee. Go!”

The man picked up a lamp, and went into the dining-room, Strickland following, and almost pushing him with the muzzle of the rifle. He looked for a moment at the black depths behind the ceiling-cloth; at the writhing snake under foot; and last, a gray glaze settling on his face, at the thing under the tablecloth.

“Hast thou seen?” said Strickland after a pause.

“I have seen. I am clay in the white man’s hands. What does the Presence do?”

“Hang thee within the month. What else?”

“For killing him? Nay, Sahib, consider. Walking among us, his servants, he cast his eyes upon my child, who was four years old. Him he bewitched, and in ten days he died of the fever – my child!”

“What said Imray Sahib?”

“He said he was a handsome child, and patted him on the head; wherefore my child died. Wherefore I killed Imray Sahib in the twilight, when he had come back from office, and was sleeping. Wherefore I dragged him up into the roof-beams and made all fast behind him. The Heaven-born knows all things. I am the servant of the Heaven-born.”

Strickland looked at me above the rifle, and said, in the vernacular, “Thou art witness to this saying? He has killed.”

Bahadur Khan stood ashen gray in the light of the one lamp. The need for justification came upon him very swiftly. “I am trapped,” he said, “but the offence was that man’s. He cast an evil eye upon my child, and I killed and hid him. Only such as are served by devils,” he glared at Tietjens, couched stolidly before him, “only such could know what I did.”

“It was clever. But thou shouldst have lashed him to the beam with a rope. Now, thou thyself wilt hang by a rope. Orderly!”

A drowsy policeman answered Strickland’s call. He was followed by another, and Tietjens sat wondrous still.

“Take him to the police-station,” said Strickland. “There is a case toward.”

“Do I hang, then?” said Bahadur Khan, making no attempt to escape, and keeping his eyes on the ground.

“If the sun shines or the water runs – yes!” said Strickland.

Bahadur Khan stepped back one long pace, quivered, and stood still. The two policemen waited further orders.

“Go!” said Strickland.

“Nay; but I go very swiftly,” said Bahadur Khan. “Look! I am even now a dead man.”

He lifted his foot, and to the little toe there clung the head of the half-killed snake, firm fixed in the agony of death.

“I come of land-holding stock,” said Bahadur Khan, rocking where he stood. “It were a disgrace to me to go to the public scaffold: therefore I take this way. Be it remembered that the Sahib’s shirts are correctly enumerated, and that there is an extra piece of soap in his washbasin. My child was bewitched, and I slew the wizard. Why should you seek to slay me with the rope? My honour is saved, and – and – I die.”

At the end of an hour he died, as they die who are bitten by the little brown karait, and the policemen bore him and the thing under the tablecloth to their appointed places. All were needed to make clear the disappearance of Imray.

“This,” said Strickland, very calmly, as he climbed into bed, “is called the nineteenth century. Did you hear what that man said?”

“I heard,” I answered. “Imray made a mistake.”

“Simply and solely through not knowing the nature of the Oriental, and the coincidence of a little seasonal fever. Bahadur Khan had been with him for four years.”

I shuddered. My own servant had been with me for exactly that length of time. When I went over to my own room I found my man waiting, impassive as the copper head on a penny, to pull off my boots.

“What has befallen Bahadur Khan?” said I.

“He was bitten by a snake and died. The rest the Sahib knows,” was the answer.

“And how much of this matter hast thou known?”

“As much as might be gathered from one coming in in the twilight to seek satisfaction. Gently, Sahib. Let me pull off those boots.”

I had just settled to the sleep of exhaustion when I heard Strickland shouting from his side of the house—

“Tietjens has come back to her place!”

And so she had. The great deerhound was couched statelily on her own bedstead on her own blanket, while, in the next room, the idle, empty, ceiling-cloth waggled as it trailed on the table.

Life’s Handicap (1891)

HIS BROTHER’S KEEPER

W. W. Jacobs

1922

I

Anthony Keller, white and dazed, came stumbling out into the small hall and closed the door of his study noiselessly behind him. Only half an hour ago he had entered the room with Henry Martle, and now Martle would never leave it again until he was carried out of it.

He took out his watch and put it back again without looking at it. He sank into a chair and, trying to still his quivering legs, strove to think. The clock behind the closed door struck nine. He had ten hours; ten hours before the woman who attended to his small house came to start the next day’s work.

Ten hours! His mind refused to act. There was so much to be done, so much to be thought of. God! If only he could have the last ten minutes over again and live it differently. If only Martle had not happened to say that it was a sudden visit and that nobody knew of it.

He went into the back room and, going to the sideboard, gulped down half a tumbler of raw whisky. It seemed to him inconceivable that the room should look the same. This pleasant room, with etchings on the walls, and his book, face downwards, just as he had left it to answer Martle’s knock. He could hear the knock now, and—

The empty tumbler smashed in his hand, and he caught his breath in a sob. Somebody else was knocking. He stood for a moment quivering, and then, wiping some of the blood from his hand, kicked the pieces of glass aside and stood irresolute. The knocking came again, so loud and insistent that for one horrible moment he fancied it might arouse the thing in the next room. Then he walked to the door and opened it. A short, sturdy man, greeting him noisily, stepped into the hall.

“Thought you were dead,” he said breezily. “Hallo!”

“Cut myself with a broken glass,” said Keller, in a constrained voice.

“Look here, that wants binding up,” said his friend. “Got a clean handkerchief?”

He moved towards the door, and was about to turn the handle when Keller flung himself upon him and dragged him back. “Not there,” he said thickly. “Not there.”

“What the devil’s the matter?” inquired the visitor, staring.

Keller’s mouth worked. “Somebody in there,” he muttered; “somebody in there. Come here.”

He pushed him into the back room and in a dazed fashion motioned him to a chair.

“Thanks, rather not,” said the other stiffly. “I just came in to smoke a pipe. I didn’t know you had visitors. Anyway, I shouldn’t eat them. Good night.”

Keller stood staring at him. His friend stared back, then suddenly his eyes twinkled and he smiled roguishly.

“What have you got in there?” he demanded, jerking his thumb towards the study.

Keller shrank back. “Nothing,” he stammered. “Nothing – no—”

“Ho, ho!” said the other. “All right. Don’t worry. Mum’s the word. You quiet ones are always the worst. Be good.”

He gave him a playful dig in the ribs, and went out chuckling. Keller, hardly breathing, watched him to the gate and, closing the door softly, bolted it and returned to the back room.

He steadied his nerves with some more whisky, and strove to steel himself to the task before him. He had got to conquer his horror and remorse, to overcome his dread of the thing in the next room, and put it where no man should ever see it. He, Anthony Keller, a quiet, ordinary citizen, had got to do this thing.

The little clock in the next room struck ten. Nine hours left. With a soft tread he went out at the back door and, unlocking the bicycle-shed, peered in. Plenty of room.

He left the door open and, returning to the house, went to the door of the study. Twice he turned the handle – and softly closed the door again. Suppose when he looked in at Martle, Martle should turn and look at him? He turned the handle suddenly and threw the door open.

Martle was quiet enough. Quiet and peaceful, and, perhaps, a little pitiful. Keller’s fear passed, but envy took its place. Martle had got the best of it, after all. No horror-haunted life for him; no unavailing despair and fear of the unknown. Keller, looking down at the white face and battered head, thought of the years before himself. Or would it be weeks? With a gasp he came back to the need for action, and taking Martle by the shoulders drew him, with heels dragging and scraping, to the shed.

He locked the door and put the key in his pocket. Then he drew a bucket of water from the scullery-tap and found some towels. His injured hand was still bleeding, but he regarded it with a sort of cunning satisfaction. It would account for much.

It was a long job, but it was finished at last. He sat down and thought, and then searched round and round the room for the overlooked thing which might be his undoing.

It was nearly midnight, and necessary, unless he wanted to attract the attention of any passing constable, to extinguish or lower the companionable lights. He turned them out swiftly, and, with trembling haste, passed upstairs to his room.

The thought of bed was impossible. He lowered the gas and, dropping into a chair, sat down to wait for day. Erect in the chair, his hands gripping the arms, he sat tense and listening. The quiet house was full of faint sounds, odd creakings, and stealthy rustlings. Suppose the suddenly released spirit of Martle was wandering around the house!

He rose and paced up and down the room, pausing every now and then to listen. He could have sworn that there was something fumbling blindly at the other side of the door, and once, turning sharply, thought that he saw the handle move. Sometimes sitting and sometimes walking, the hours passed until in the distance a cock smelt the dawn, and a little later the occasional note of a bird announced the approach of day.

II

In the bright light of day his courage returned, and, dismissing all else from his mind, he thought only of how to escape the consequences of his crime. Inch by inch he examined the room and the hall. Then he went into the garden, and, going round the shed, satisfied himself that no crack or hole existed that might reveal his secret. He walked the length of the garden and looked about him. The nearest house was a hundred yards away, and the bottom of the garden screened by trees. Near the angle of the fence he would dig a shallow trench and over it pile up a rockery of bricks and stones and earth. Once started he could take his time about it, and every day would make him more and more secure. There was an air of solidity and permanency about a rockery that nothing else could give.

He was back in the house when the charwoman arrived, and in a few words told her of his accident of the night before. “I cleaned up the – the mess as well as I could,” he concluded.

Mrs Howe nodded. “I’ll have a go at it while you’re having your breakfast,” she remarked. “Good job for you, sir, that you ain’t one o’ them as faints at the sight of blood.”

She brought coffee and bacon into the little back dining-room, and Keller, as he sat drinking his coffee and trying to eat, heard her at work in the study. He pushed away his plate at last, and, filling a pipe from which all flavour had departed, sat smoking and thinking.

He was interrupted by Mrs Howe. She stood in the doorway with a question which numbed his brain, and for a time arrested speech.

“Eh?” he said at last.

“Key of the bicycle-shed,” repeated the woman, staring at him. “You had a couple o’ my dusters to clean your bicycle with.”

Keller felt in his pockets, thinking, thinking. “H’mm!” he said at last, “I’m afraid I’ve mislaid it. I’ll look for it presently.”

Mrs Howe nodded. “You do look bad,” she said, with an air of concern. “P’r’aps you hurt yourself more than what you think.”

Keller forced a smile and shook his head, sinking back in his chair as she vanished, and trying to control his quivering limbs.

For a long time he sat inert, listening dully to the movements of Mrs Howe as she bustled to and fro. He heard her washing the step at the back door, and, after that, a rasping, grating noise to which at first he paid but little heed. Then there was a faint, musical chinking as of keys knocking together. Keys!

He sprang from his chair like a madman, and dashed to the door. Mrs Howe, with a bunch of odd keys tied on a string, had inserted one in the lock of the bicycle-shed, and was striving to turn it.

“Stop!” cried Keller, in a dreadful voice. “STOP!”

He snatched the keys from her, and, flinging them from him, stood mouthing dumbly at her. The fear in her eyes recalled him to his senses.

“Spoil the lock,” he muttered, “spoil the lock. Sorry. I didn’t mean to shout. No sleep all night. Neuralgia; ’fraid my nerves are wrong.”

The woman’s face relaxed and her eyes softened. “I saw you weren’t yourself as soon as I saw you this morning,” she exclaimed.

She went back into the house, but he thought she eyed him curiously as she passed. She resumed her work, but in a subdued fashion, and, two or three times that morning meeting his eyes, nervously turned away her own. He realized at last, that he was behaving in an unusual fashion altogether. In and out of the house, and, in the garden, never far from the shed.

By lunch-time he had regained control of himself. He opened a bottle of beer, and, congratulating Mrs Howe upon the grilling of the chops, went on to speak of her husband and the search for work which had been his only occupation since his marriage ten years before. Some of the fear went out of the woman’s eyes – but not all, and it was with obvious relief that she left the room.

For some time after lunch Keller stayed in the dining-room, and that in itself was unusual. Two or three times he got up and resolved, for the sake of appearances, to take a short walk, but the shed held him. He dare not leave it unguarded. With a great effort he summoned up sufficient resolution to take him to the bottom of the garden and start his gruesome task.

He dug roughly, avoiding the shape which might have aroused comment from any chance visitor. The ground was soft and, in spite of his injured hand, he made good progress, breaking off at frequent intervals to listen or to move aside and obtain an unobstructed view of the shed.

With a short break for tea he went on with his task until he was called in to his simple meal at seven. The manual labour had done him good and his appearance was almost normal. To Mrs Howe he made a casual reference to his afternoon’s work and questioned where to obtain the best rock-plants.

With her departure after she had cleared away, fear descended upon him again. The house became uncanny, and the shed a place of unspeakable horror. Suppose his nerve failed and he found himself unable to open it! For an hour he paced up and down in the long twilight, waiting for the dark.

It came at last, and, fighting down his fears and nausea, he drew the garden-barrow up to the shed, and took the key from his pocket. He walked to the front gate and looked up and down the silent road. Then he came back and, inserting the key in the lock, opened the door, and, in the light of an electric torch, stood looking down at what he had placed there the night before.

With his ears alert for the slightest sound, he took the inhabitant of the shed by the shoulders, and, dragging it outside, strove to lift it into the barrow. He succeeded at last, and, with the rigid body balanced precariously and the dead face looking up into his, seized the handles and slowly and silently took Martle to the place prepared for him.

He did not leave him for a long time. Not until the earth was piled high above him in a circular mound and a score or two of bricks formed the first beginnings of a rockery. Then he walked slowly up the garden, and, after attending to the shed, locked it up and went indoors.

The disposal of the body gave a certain measure of relief. He would live, with time for repentance and, perhaps, for forgetting. He washed in the scullery, and then, fearing the shadows upstairs, drew the heavy curtains in the dining-room to shut in the light and settled himself in an easy chair. He drank until his senses were deadened; his nerves quietened, his aching limbs relaxed, and he fell into a heavy sleep.

III

He awoke at six, and, staggering to his feet, drew back the curtains and turned out the gas. Then he went upstairs, and after disarranging his bed, went to the bathroom. The cold water and a shave, together with a change of linen, did him good. He opened doors and windows, and let the clean sweet air blow through the house. The house which he must continue to inhabit because he dare not leave it. Other people might not share his taste for rockeries.

To the watchful eye of Mrs Howe he appeared to be almost himself again. The key of the shed had turned up, and he smiled as he presented her with her “precious dusters.” Then he rode off on his bicycle to order slabs of stone and plants from the nearest nurseryman.

He worked more and more leisurely as the days passed, and the rockery grew larger and more solid. Every added stone and plant seemed to increase his security. He ate well, and, to his surprise, slept well; but every morning misery opened his eyes for him.

The garden was no longer a place of quiet recreation; the house, which was part of the legacy that had so delighted him only a year before, was a prison in which he must serve a lifelong sentence. He could neither let it nor sell it; other people might alter the garden – and dig. Since the fatal evening he had not looked at a newspaper for fear of reading of Martle’s disappearance, and in all that time had not spoken to a friend.

Martle was very quiet. There were no shadows in the house, no furtive noises, no dim shape pattering about the garden by night. Memory was the only thing that assailed him; but it sufficed.

Then the dream came. A dream confused and grotesque, as most dreams are. He dreamt that he was standing by the rockery, in the twilight, when he thought he saw one of the stones move. Other stones followed suit. A big slab near the top came slithering down, and it was apparent that the whole pile of earth and stone was being shaken by some internal force. Something was trying to get out. Then he remembered that he was buried there, and had no business to be standing outside. He must get back. Martle had put him there, and for some reason which he was quite unable to remember he was afraid of Martle. He procured his tools and set to work. It was a long and tedious job and made more difficult by the fact that he was not allowed to make a noise. He dug and dug, but the grave had disappeared. Then suddenly something took hold of him and held him down; down. He could neither move nor cry out.

He awoke with a scream and for a minute or two lay trembling and shaking. Thank God, it was only a dream. The room was full of sunlight, and he could hear Mrs Howe moving about downstairs. Life was good and might yet hold something in store for him.

He lay still for ten minutes, and was about to rise when he heard Mrs Howe running upstairs. Even before her sudden and heavy rapping on the door he scented disaster.

“Mr Keller! Mr Keller!”

“Well?” he said heavily.

“Your rockery!” gasped the charwoman. “Your beautiful rockery! All gone!”

“Gone?” shouted Keller, springing out of bed and snatching his dressing-gown from the door.

“Pulled all to pieces,” said Mrs Howe, as he opened the door. “You never see such a mess. All over the place, as if a madman had done it.”

In a mechanical fashion he thrust his feet into slippers and went downstairs. He hurried down the garden, and, waving the woman back, stood looking at the ruin. Stones and earth were indeed all over the place, but the spot that mattered was untouched. He stood gazing and trembling. Who could have done it? Why was it done?

He thought of his dream and the truth burst upon him. No need for his aching back and limbs to remind him. No need to remember the sleep-walking feats of his youth. He knew the culprit now.

“Shall I go for the police?” inquired the voice of Mrs Howe.

Keller turned a stony face upon her. “No,” he said slowly. “I – I’ll speak to them about it myself.”

He took up the spade and began the task of reconstruction. He worked for an hour, and then went in to dress and breakfast. For the rest of the day he worked slowly and steadily, so that by evening most of the damage had been repaired. Then he went indoors to face the long night.

Sleep, man’s best friend, had become his unrelenting enemy. He made himself coffee on the gas-stove and fought his drowsiness cup by cup. He read and smoked and walked about the room. Bits of his dream that he had forgotten came back to him and stayed with him. And ever at the back of his mind was the certainty that he was doomed.

There was only one hope left to him. He would go away for a time. Far enough away to render a visit home in his sleep impossible. And perhaps the change of scene would strengthen him and help his frayed nerves. Afterwards it might be possible to let the house for a time on condition that the garden was not interfered with. It was one risk against another.

He went down the garden as soon as it was light and completed his work. Then he went indoors to breakfast and to announce his plans for sudden departure to Mrs Howe, his white and twitching face amply corroborating his tale of neuralgia and want of sleep.

“Things’ll be all right,” said the woman. “I’ll ask the police to keep an eye on the house of a night. I did speak to one last night about them brutes as destroyed the rockery. If they try it again they may get a surprise.”

Keller quivered but made no sign. He went upstairs and packed his bag, and two hours later was in the train on his way to Exeter, where he proposed to stay the night. After that, Cornwall, perhaps.

He secured a room at an hotel and went for a stroll to pass the time before dinner. How happy the people in the streets seemed to be, even the poorest! All free and all sure of their freedom. They could eat and sleep and enjoy the countless trivial things that make up life. Of battle and murder and sudden death they had no thought.

The light and bustle of the dining-room gave him a little comfort. After his lonely nights it was good to know that there were people all around him, that the house would be full of them whilst he slept. He felt that he was beginning a fresh existence. In future he would live amongst a crowd.

It was late when he went upstairs, but he lay awake for a few minutes. A faint sound or two reached him from downstairs, and the movements of somebody in the next room gave him a comfortable feeling of security. With a sigh of content he fell asleep.

He was awakened by a knocking; a knocking which sounded just above the head of his bed and died away almost before he had brushed the sleep from his eyes. He looked around fearfully, and then, lighting his candle, lay listening. The noise was not repeated. He had been dreaming, but he could not remember the substance of his dream. It had been unpleasant, but vague. More than unpleasant, terrifying. Somebody had been shouting at him. Shouting!

He fell back with a groan. The faint hopes of the night before died within him. He had been shouting and the strange noise came from the occupant of the next room. What had he said? and what had his neighbour heard?

He slept no more. From somewhere below he heard a clock toll the hours, and, tossing in his bed, wondered how many more remained to him.

Day came at last and he descended to breakfast. The hour was early and only two other tables were occupied, from one of which, between mouthfuls, a bluff-looking, elderly man eyed him curiously. He caught Keller’s eye at last and spoke.

“Better?” he inquired.

Keller tried to force his quivering lips to a smile.

“Stood it as long as I could,” said the other; “then I knocked. I thought perhaps you were delirious. Same words over and over again; sounded like ‘Mockery’ and ‘Mortal,’ ‘Mockery’ and ‘Mortal.’ You must have used them a hundred times.”

Keller finished his coffee, and, lighting a cigarette, went and sat in the lounge. He had made his bid for freedom and failed. He looked up the times of the trains to town and rang for his bill.

IV

He was back in the silent house, upon which, in the fading light of the summer evening, a great stillness seemed to have descended. The atmosphere of horror had gone and left only a sense of abiding peace. All fear had left him, and pain and remorse had gone with it. Serene and tranquil he went into the fatal room, and, opening the window, sat by it, watching the succession of shadowy tableaux that had been his life. Some of it good and some of it bad, but most of it neither good nor bad. A very ordinary life until fate had linked it for all time with that of Martle’s. He was a living man bound to a corpse with bonds that could never be severed.

It grew dark and he lit the gas and took a volume of poems from the shelves. Never before had he read with such insight and appreciation. In some odd fashion all his senses seemed to have been sharpened and refined.

He read for an hour, and then, replacing the book, went slowly upstairs. For a long time he lay in bed thinking and trying to analyse the calm and indifference which had overtaken him and, with the problem still unsolved, fell asleep.

For a time he dreamt, but of pleasant, happy things. He seemed to be filled with a greater content than he had ever known before, a content which did not leave him even when these dreams faded and he found himself back in the old one.

This time, however, it was different. He was still digging, but not in a state of frenzy and horror. He dug because something told him it was his duty to dig, and only by digging could he make reparation. And it was a matter of no surprise to him that Martle stood close by looking on. Not the Martle he had known, nor a bloody and decaying Martle, but one of grave and noble aspect. And there was a look of understanding on his face that nearly made Keller weep.

He went on digging with a sense of companionship such as he had never known before. Then suddenly, without warning, the sun blazed out of the darkness and struck him full in the face. The light was unbearable, and with a wild cry he dropped his spade and clapped his hands over his eyes. The light went, and a voice spoke to him out of the darkness.

He opened his eyes on a dim figure standing a yard or two away.

“Hope I didn’t frighten you, sir,” said the voice. “I called to you once or twice and then I guessed you were doing this in your sleep.”

“In my sleep,” repeated Keller. “Yes.”

“And a pretty mess you’ve made of it,” said the constable, with a genial chuckle. “Lord! to think of you working at it every day and then pulling it down every night. Shouted at you I did, but you wouldn’t wake.”

He turned on the flashlight that had dazzled Keller, and surveyed the ruins. Keller stood by, motionless – and waiting.

“Looks like an earthquake,” muttered the constable. He paused, and kept the light directed upon one spot. Then he stooped down and scratched away the earth with his fingers, and tugged. He stood up suddenly and turned the light on Keller, while with the other he fumbled in his pocket. He spoke in a voice cold and official.

“Are you coming quietly?” he asked.

Keller stepped towards him with both hands outstretched.

“I am coming quietly,” he said, in a low voice. “Thank God!”

“The Strand”, Dec. 1922

HIS BEAUTIFUL HANDS

Oscar Cook

1931

I was not grumbling. I had given that up a long while. I was merely contemplating the rain, wondering what a whole dry day would be like. And I came to the conclusion that such a phenomenon was impossible – at least until the forty days of St Swithin were up – that the age of miracles was past. And then, without warning, I shuddered and felt that cold, creepy feeling which premonates a horror spread over me, or rather down me, from my head to my feet.

A presence was drawing near. I realized that immediately, and almost as quickly knew whose that presence must be. It must be Warwick – he being the only living soul capable of awakening such sensibility in me. I turned reluctantly from watching the rain to look at the far end of the club smoking room. Warwick had just entered the door and was approaching.

Before he reached me I had pressed the bell knob in the wall close to my chair. I knew the necessary adjunct to Warwick’s presence was inevitable.

He spread himself over a chair, which he drew close to mine, lighted one of his beastly Philippine cigarettes, blew a mouthful of smoke into my face, and, leaning forward with hands on knees, elbows out at right angles, barked out:

“Well!”

For a moment or so I said nothing. I knew that ambiguous monosyllable, half question, half assertion, and the tone in which it was made. A story was coming – and it would not be a pleasant one.

While I was still silent, the waiter arrived.

“Two whiskies and soda,” I ordered.

“Doubles,” supplemented Warwick.

I nodded and, looking him squarely in the eyes, paid him in his own coin.

“Well?” I asked, and waited for him to make the next move.

“A yarn,” he said, succinctly and succulently. “As good as any I’ve heard for many a day.”

He chuckled. I continued to face him squarely.

“A beastly one,” I slowly asserted, “judging from your tone.”

He nodded, and at that moment the waiter returned.

Warwick took his glass and I took mine. “To ‘His Beautiful Hands’,” he toasted. “They’ve earned me fifty guineas and so saved my bacon for a few days. Would you like the yarn, or—”

I made a gesture, so non-committal as to mean assent; at least, that is how Warwick read it.

“Listen,” he began, looking round to see that we were alone and drawing his chair still closer to mine. “It’s a tale of revenge and passion—”

“With a capital, purple ‘P’,” I interpolated.

Warwick paid no heed.“… about as sweetly gruesome and gruesomely diabolic as I know.”

He put out the half-smoked cigarette, took a long pull at his whisky and soda, and began.

“Did you see that piece in the paper today about the sculptor johnny who lost his right arm?”

I nodded.

“Well, it’s that sort of story, only—”

I put out a hand quickly to interrupt him. If I must hear the story, I’d hear it properly with full names and details, not shorn of its “curtains” and suspense.

Warwick took the hint.

“I’m going too fast,” he muttered, “but even now it rather gets me, and… well, it’s like this. About two years ago I was in the habit of frequenting a lady barber’s – there was a craze for them then; now there are only one or two left – and one of the assistants was head and shoulders – metaphorically speaking – above the other girls for looks and personality. She never had a spare moment. I was one of her regulars, and there was a fellow, a customer, more than twice her age, always hanging around, whom I grew to hate.”

“And he comes into the story?” I asked.

“He is the story,” Warwick answered forcefully. “He and Paulina and his violin.”

“A musician,” I couldn’t help saying contemptuously, for, rightly or wrongly, instrumentalists are my bêtes noires.

Warwick grunted annoyance at my interruption and continued.

“Well, he was dead nuts on Paulina, and she, to my disgust, played up to him, or so it seemed. He was always bringing her presents, giving her tickets for his concerts, taking her out of evenings, and generally going the whole hog.”

Something in his tone and in the choice and emphasis of his last expression seemed to convey a deeper meaning than just the words.

“You mean…?” I asked, and then broke off, for I hate talking lightly of a woman, even an unknown one.

Warwick has no such scruples.

“Exactly,” he replied. “She went to be his ‘keep’, although she stayed on at the shop. But of course this establishment was not set up all at once. It evolved, so to speak, out of what appeared quite natural, though unfortunate circumstances.”

Warwick paused to take another drink.

“And the situation annoyed you?” I asked. “You felt aggrieved, slighted?”

He nodded. “In a way, yes. I’m no saint, and I’m a bachelor, and Paulina was—”

“Was?” I queried quickly.

For a moment he made no answer. Then, indifferent churchman though he is, he crossed himself.

“She’s dead,” he said flatly. “Died in childbirth, ten days ago. I went to the funeral – a double one – hers and the child’s. Thank God it died – and they both died,” he added with a sudden fervour, and then slumped back into the chair and relapsed into a silence as inexplicable as his sudden change from ghoulishly journalistic delight.

I waited. This new mood intrigued me, and I sensed a tragedy more real and personal than Warwick had meant to lay bare. It was obvious that he needed a safety valve.

“Sorry for that display,” he said, when presently he pulled himself up in his chair and smiled. “It shan’t occur again, but I loved her, in spite of the fact that five generations ago a coloured strain got introduced to the family. It was that, of course, which… but I go too fast.”

I offered him a cigarette.

“A story is easier to follow,” I suggested, “if it begins at the beginning and not half way through. So far, all you’ve really told me is that there’s a musician and Paulina and his violin. And you mentioned one more thing, or rather two, ‘His beautiful hands’. How do they come in?”

Warwick laughed, an ungodly sound.

“They don’t,” he said at length, “they don’t. That’s the cream of the story, the point of the—” He started to laugh again, and pulled up short.

“I’m off colour tonight,” he muttered, “but it’s like this. This Mr A. – we’ll call him that – was a celebrated violinist, and apart from realizing the value of his hands he was inordinately vain of them. They were his passion. But I couldn’t stand them. They weren’t a man’s hands, and they weren’t a woman’s. They were… were—”

“Ethereal,” I suggested.

Warwick’s hand suddenly gripped my arm tightly, and his face came close to mine.

“The very word,” he said. “Ethereal. And it was one of Paulina’s jobs to take care of them, tend them, worship them; for that is what he demanded of her – worship of his hands.”

I nodded.

“She was a wonderful manicurist, with a cool, soothing touch that somehow seemed to linger on your fingers long after the treatment was over and urge you back to her, till you were conscious of a semi-physical, semi-spiritual longing. All of us customers experienced that feeling. And the curious thing is that it wasn’t sexual or sensuous but just caressing.”

Warwick paused and looked at me with, for him, a curiously appealing glance, as much as to say: “You do understand, don’t you?”

I nodded. “The touch of the East,” I said gently. “I suppose your Paulina had Javanese blood?”

Warwick smiled his thanks. “You’re right,” he went on. “And it was really on account of that – taint – that the trouble arose. They’re revengeful, the Javanese; they never forget an injury to themselves or to those they love. Though they’re all fire – and Paulina was passionate – they’re capable of slow smouldering, like a station waiting-room fire.”

Again Warwick paused, and I begin to think we never should get to the story. I looked at my watch. The time was 6.30 pm. In a quarter of an hour I should have to go and dress – I was dining out. I leant across to him.

“So far,” I said, “you’ve really told me little – hardly enough to make me even a trifle curious. Of course, if you’d rather not… I’ll respect your wish… on the other hand—”

That was enough. I had touched him on the journalistic raw.

“Wait,” he almost barked at me. “Wait. It’s a short story, but… Well, one day, just a year ago, Mr A. came into the establishment with the little finger of his left hand bound up. O f course, Paulina had to be in attendance. I’d just been finished, and stayed on to have a cup of tea. Naturally, I could not help hearing their conversation – mostly about the finger. The nail had become discoloured, and all round the cuticle was puffy and sore. Mr A. could hardly bear to let Paulina touch it, yet he longed for the caress of her massage.

“She suggested a doctor, but he would not hear of that. She and she only must look after his hands. We could all understand that in general, but not in this case, when medical advice was sorely and obviously needed. He was adamant, infatuated beyond belief.

“A week later he was back. The finger was worse, much worse, and the third finger was beginning to become affected!”

“And he was still adamant?” I could not help putting the question, for I was rapidly beginning to put two and two together and making four.

“Yes, and so it went on till all the fingers of both hands were in varying stages of affectedness. It was horrible – I say – bloody. Day after day he would come in with his filthy, bandaged hands; undo his bandages, expose his rotting fingers, and talk about them till we customers and the other girls were utterly sick.”

“You had your remedy,” I interrupted. “Even if the girls hadn’t.”

Warwick looked at me pityingly. “That’s just what we hadn’t got.” He spoke in a most matter-of-fact way. “Something held us, drew us. O f course, the proprietress was doing a roaring trade, but we didn’t care. We sensed something; what, we did not know, but we meant to be in at the death.”

“And Paulina?”

“Was her usual sweet self, controlled, gentle, amusing, sympathetic, efficient. Without a flinch, at least an outward blench, she attended to the ghastly sights; passed from Mr A., to whom she was all kindness, to other customers. So matters went on till one day, just after Mr A. had gone out, one of the girls was crossing the room and slipped on something on the floor. It rolled under her feet. She thought it was a pencil, and stooped to pick it up. Then an awful scream rang through the room and she fell down in a faint. We rushed to her; by her side, where it had fallen from her grasp, was the middle, rotting finger of a man’s hand.”

“Severed?” I gasped, gripped at last.

Warwick shook his head. For a moment or so he could not speak.

“No,” he managed at last. “No. It had just rotted off – and the stink as one touched it was enough to … to—” He put his hand to his nose and shivered all over.

By a freak of the weather the rain had ceased, and the evening light flooded through the smoking-room window. It brought us back towards normal.

Warwick shook himself.

“Do you want the rest?” he asked.

“I’ve just time,” I said, looking at my watch.

Warwick drained his glass.

“We picked up the girl and carried her out, leaving for the moment only Paulina in the room. I was the first to return. As I entered, she quickly put her hands behind her back, but she had not been quick enough, for I distinctly saw that she was holding the rotting finger.

“I went up to her and put a hand on her shoulder, horror-struck though I was.

“‘Paulina,’ I cried. ‘Tell me truly … in spite of … of … you love him?’

“Her immediate answer was to laugh hysterically. Then she held out her hand on which lay the filthy, rotting finger.

“‘Could you love that?’ she asked.

“I couldn’t answer, but my whole face expressed volumes.

“‘Then why insult me?’ she spoke very bitterly. ‘That’s what I think of him… and all men… fit for the scrap-heap,’ and as she spoke she carelessly flung the horror into the waste-paper basket. It fell with hardly any thud, but the fall sent up a cloud of stenchful vapour. Paulina seemed not to notice it. ‘I only wish…’ she began, then stopped as the others came back.

“That was the beginning of the end. Paulina gave notice – the proprietress would not dissuade her – and consequently Mr A. gave up coming. The last time he came he showed us both hands, devoid of fingers and thumbs… and all the time he raved of Paulina.”

“And you – kept up with her, married her – the dead child was yours?” I put the question very gently.

Warwick spread out his hands.

“You’d think so,” he said, a trifle grimly. “And it should be so, according to the best novels, but you’d be wrong. No. I lost sight of her, too, till just before the end she sent for me and told me all.”

“In confidence?”

He shook his head.

“Not necessarily, but I must get it off my chest, and I’d like you to know. Can’t you guess?”

I did not try, and he went on.

“Mr A. was her father. Eighteen years before he had seduced and left her mother. There’s no need to say more. This was Paulina’s revenge. She’d nursed it for years – remember her Javanese strain.”

“You mean…?” I gasped, in spite of myself.

“Exactly. She used a native poison… a secret from her ancestors on that side – now dead with her. She planned the whole thing. And to help her attract him and others – myself included – she doped our tea and coffee with a filthy, horrible concoction brewed from – no, I can’t even mention that to you.”

The rain was falling again. Gloom once more pervaded the room.

My thoughts jumped to the funeral.

“And the baby?” I asked.

“Was Mr A.’s too,” Warwick answered with a return to his ghoulishly journalistic appreciation of a dramatic point. “Paulina didn’t get up early enough, as the saying is, quite to get top-side of him. Just before she’d decided to apply the poison trick through his nails, he’d got her drunk one night and… well, you can guess the rest. That settled the matter of her living with him. Talk of poetic justice… Ye gods! I’ve never heard of such a case. Him with rotting fingers, dying by inches – there’s no cure – the poison’s in his blood. Paulina, as good as a murderess, dying in child-bed – and her baby stillborn – born with no fingers – nor toes – hardly hands and feet – just red, puffy lumps of flesh, not even webbed.”

He pulled out a cigarette case, lighted a cigarette, and put the case back.

“I’ll have another whisky and soda – double,” he said, “and then I’ll toddle along to the dogs…”

At Dead of Night (1931)

THE LONELY INN

Thomas Burke

1935

The tall man on the lawn outside the cottage gave the cottage a long look and nodded at it. “Seems to be a perfect weekend cottage. Just big enough for us and easy to run. Ought to have some good weekends here.”

The man with him agreed. “Yes. Hasn’t got everything but almost everything. Good view from the lawn. Stream over there. Woods on the left. Even the house-agent must have strained his Arabian vocabulary in listing it.”

“Yes. Village quite interesting, too. People seem a bit surly, though.”

“You must give country people time. We’ve only been here two hours, remember. Maybe the soil’s got something to do with it. Certain soils make cheerful people; others make taciturn people, or hot-tempered people.”

Their wives appeared at the cottage door. “Why don’t you boys go and explore a bit? There’s nothing to do in here. The maid’s left everything. We’ve only got to heat the soup. Dinner’ll be eightish.”

The tall man said, “Right.” And then to the other – “What about it, Mac? Shall we stroll and see if we can find the local?”

Mac, nodded, and they went through the gate into the lane. To the right lay the village, a mile away. They had seen it an hour ago. They turned to the left. The lane here was little more than a grass-track. By its width it appeared to have been at one time a road, but now its surface was rough grass corrugated with wheel-tracks. The grass in the ditches on either side was of somewhat stronger hue.

It was a winding lane, and at no point did it disclose more than a hundred yards of itself. The hedges stood high, and afforded no view of the surrounding country. “Almost like a shrubbery,” the tall man said. “Wonder where it leads to eventually, and whether we’ve got to come back the same way.” They followed its bends for some minutes, and then the tall man said “Ha!” explosively. And then: “The oasis. I see a sign. Let’s hope it isn’t a desert mirage. But I’m sure I saw a sign, just over the hedge-top.” At the next turn he gave his friend a facetious pat. “There we are! Thought I wasn’t mistaken. As we’re in Derbyshire they ought to have some of the real Derbyshire ale. Step out, my lad.”

The inn’s exterior was somewhat weather-beaten; almost uninviting; but it was an inn. It had known no paint for some years, and its doors and windows had a bedraggled aspect. The door and its stone front bore brown and black patches. It showed a faded sign of “The White Cockade”.

The two men paused. The tall and talkative man said, “H’m. Hardly one of the picture-postcard inns. But that’s no fair test. All its good points may be inside. I’ve found several like that. Anyway, it’s the only one, so …”

They went in. They found the inside no compensation of the outside. They entered a dim and silent tap-room. It contained the usual fixtures of a wayside public-house – old wooden benches, old wooden trestle-tables, an old and wide fireplace with the ashes of the last fire of winter, and an old and strong smell. Nothing in the place was grey in colour; yet it offered a general feeling of greyness. The landlord, standing listlessly behind the stained bar, was a man of heavy features and sunless eyes. The very type of man who ought not to keep an inn. His physical appearance accounted for, if it did not explain, the air of lost-heart and letting-things-go which hung over everything. One light, a shaded lamp, lit a small pool about the bar. The rest of the room was a muslin of shadow which gave common objects an uncommon shape.

They ordered their drink, and the landlord served them without “Good evening” or other word. The beer was good. They drank, and looked about them. It was then, when their eyes, fresh from the bright evening, had become adjusted to the half-light, that they noted a slight stir among the shadow. Looking more closely, they saw that the room, which they thought was empty, held company. Some half-dozen dim figures sat along the benches and on chairs. No two sat together. They sat at intervals, each self-enclosed. They were men of ordinary appearance, in soiled or ragged clothes of miscellaneous quality and style; but their silence and their attitudes made them extraordinary.

The horrific figures evoked by the lobster nightmare or the unchaining drug cannot so freeze the human mind as the sight of the ordinary creature in the extraordinary attitude or state. De-Quincey’s picture of the fat man of Keswick sitting alone on his lawn in shirtsleeves on a bitter March midnight brings more of the authentic recoil than any of his laudanum visions.

And so these dumb and solitary figures affected the two visitors more than any scene of ugliness or violence. Something in their peculiar arrangement suggested that they were sitting like that with some reason. It was as though they had placed themselves like actors on a stage, awaiting the rise of the curtain. The silence of the place, which was underlined by the intermittent drip-drip of the beer-tap, also had an effect, and when the talkative visitor wanted to say something he found himself muttering.

He touched his friend. “Queer place, Mac.” The other nodded. “Must be a side-entrance somewhere, I guess.”

“Why?”

“Well, I didn’t see anybody come in, but a minute ago I’d have said there were four people in the far corner.”

“So there were.”

“Well, there’s six now. And there were two just behind us.”

“Yes.”

“There’s three now.”

Mac looked about him, and found that his friend was right. He found, too, that the company, without moving, was exchanging signals. He saw a head nod, and then another head respond to it. He caught his friend’s eye, and together they watched the invisible message pass visibly along the room in nods. It was as though a row of Victorian mantelpiece images had been set in motion. All these people, it seemed, knew each other; yet sat apart holding no communication beyond nods.

He brought his earthenware mug sharply to the counter. He expected it to make in that silence a startling report, and had made the motion deliberately in the hope of bringing a touch of life to the room. But somehow, possibly by the shape of the room, it made only a faint noise, and the company ignored it. His friend turned to him: “Wonder if there’s a deaf-and-dumb institute near here. And if this is Founder’s Day.” He looked at the landlord. “Customers not very talkative,” he said. The landlord continued to stare at nothing. He looked at Mac, and they exchanged a smile.

It was while he was taking a cigarette from the packet held by Mac that he became aware that the silence was being very gently troubled. At first he thought it was the swishing of a curtain. Then he knew that it was a whisper. A whisper was passing along the benches and chairs, and once or twice he caught its burden. That’s him. That’s him. He saw that Mac had heard it, too, and as they turned and looked at the benches they found the dilapidated faces of the company fixed on them. It seemed to him, as he turned, that they were fixed on him, but with the next glance he saw that they were all looking beyond him, at Mac. The moment they saw that they were observed, the faces dropped, and each man resumed his former pose of looking at his knees.

Mac picked up his mug and finished it. “Fit?” His friend nodded. They stepped out of twilight into orange sunset and scented fields and limpid light. They took some six paces from the inn; then the tall one stopped and said, expressively: “Gawd!” He took three deep breaths. Then: “I’d like to show that place to some of those literary blokes who write about the old village inn, and the mellow company, and the rich rustic voices, and Uncle Tom Cobleigh and all.”

Mac agreed.. “Still, we can’t have everything. The cottage is about perfect, so we shall have to put up with the local. But what a hole. And not merely dull and dingy. Something more than that about it. We must investigate again. A place like that in this gorgeous country must have a reason for being what it is. Some story behind it. And why were they so interested in me?”

“Lord knows. Don’t look as though they could be interested in anything – let alone an everyday specimen like you. Perhaps they’d seen you in the village, though, and were thinking of giving you the village greeting – ’arf a brick.”

“Huh … Well, I’ve found some queer pubs in my ups-and-downs of England, but that’s the queerest so far.”

•   •   •

The next day, Saturday, they spent in a motor-run of exploration, and got back to the cottage between six and seven. After a little pottering, Mae said, “Coming down to the lousy local?”

“Not this evening, I think. I’ve got about four or five letters I want to answer, so’s to have tomorrow free. You go.”

“Right. I’d like to have another look at it. Something about it fascinates me. It had the feeling of something going to happen.”

“Don’t be long, though. I’ve got an appetite. Don’t want to have to wait dinner.”

“Needn’t worry. I’ve got one, too. I’ll be on time.”

Mac stepped out of the door as the other settled himself at a table. As he passed the open window he heard his friend call, “What’s the date?” He answered, “April thirty,” and swung down the lane.

And dinner was late. They waited until twenty to nine, and then, as Mac had not returned, they waited no longer. “I suppose he’s managed to get the deaf-and-dumb school talking, and can’t tear himself away. He’ll have to have what’s left, and have it half-cold. Ethel can’t go down and drag him out. Crate a bad impression on our first weekend – wives pulling husbands out of pubs. ‘Father, dear Father, come home with me now.’”

Ethel was dealing with soup. “Oh, he’ll turn up when it suits him. He’s done it before. When he finds an interesting local, as he calls them, he forgets time.”

But he did not turn up. They left the door unlocked until one o’clock; then, as he had not turned up, they went to bed, “If he turns up now he’ll have to throw gravel at the window. Gone off on a binge, perhaps, with one of the deaf-and-dumbs, and staying the night. Probably turn up with a hangover about church-time tomorrow.”

But he did not turn up. He did not tum up at church-time or at any other time. The trio left at the cottage never saw their Mac again.

At about midday his friend went out to look about, and to enquire at the local and in the village. Just outside the gate he met the old man whom they had engaged to keep the garden tidy during the week.

“Morning. D’you happen to have seen anything of my friend?”

The man looked at him dully while the question sank in and wandered through his mind to pick up some association with “my friend”.

“Your friend?”

“Yes; the man who came with me. You saw him yesterday.”

“Ar – ’im. What would he be like?”

“Stocky figure. Red hair. Horn-rimmed glasses.”

“Oh … ’im. No. I ain’ seen ’im. I remember ’im. Scotty, I says to meself.”

“Yes. He is a Scot. Well, he went out yesterday evening – down to the inn here – and was coming back in an hour. But he didn’t come back last night. Nor this morning. I wondered whether you’d seen him or heard anything of him.”

“No-o. I ain’ seed ’im.”

“I was just going down to the inn to ask if he’d been there. Thought perhaps you might have been there last night and seen him.” He went into the lane and turned to the left. The man stopped him.

“This way, sir.”

“No. This way. The inn’s down here. Down the lane.”

“You mean up the lane.”

“I mean down the lane.”

“You mean up the lane. The Green Man, just outside village.”

“I don’t. I mean down the lane.” He pointed to the left.

The man stared at him. “Dinno of no public down there.”

“No? I see you don’t know your own country. Often happens that the stranger finds what the inhabitant misses.” The man looked puzzled. He stroked the stubble of his chin. He seemed about to say something but didn’t say it. He was dealing with a Londoner. Queer things, Londoners. Said what they didn’t mean, and twisted words about, and called it wit. Played silly games called pulling your leg. Sometimes they weren’t quite right in the head. Zanies, some of ’em. This seemed to be one of that sort.

“I dinno of no—”

“Ah, but I do. I’m just going along there to ask if my friend called in last night. If you care to come along I’ll show it to you. And you can sample the brew.”

“I’ll come along with ye, but – ”

They went along. They went down the twisting lane. The gardener held his puzzled expression, but made no remark. They went along until they came to the elm, through whose branches the sign had been visible.

“Just at the next bend,” the tall man said; and they made the next bend. Having made it he looked about him. “Funny. Must have been the next bend.” They went on and followed the next bend, and this bend marked the end of the lane and its junction with a main road. The tall man now did some staring. “Well …” He looked back up the lane. “Can’t have passed it, can we?”

“No, sir, we din pass it.”

“I remember it as just this side of that elm.” He took a few strides up the lane. “Yes. This side of the elm. Just opposite that gap in the hedge. I could have sworn that – And I’m certain we never left the lane. But if so, what the devil—”

The gardener watched him with blank expression. He appeared to have no interest in the proceedings. He was humouring a Londoner. The tall man turned to him. “Well, if it wasn’t in the lane where was it? How did we lose ourselves? You—” Then something in the man’s blank face arrested him.

“There bent no public in this lane. Nor anywheres ’bout ’ere. Nothing ’bout ’ere for four miles. Not till ye come to the Golden Lion. And that be along the road – four mile.”

The tall man stared at him and then at the lane, and then shouted, “But man, we did come to a pub here. We did have drinks in it. In the lane. A dismal place.”

The gardener looked sad and shook his head. With rustic civility, or polite contempt, he refrained from comment. He repeated only, “Bent no public in this lane.”

“But, man, I tell you—” He broke off. He realized that he could not insist on the fact of his pub, because nowhere in the lane was there any pub. There had been a pub, and now there wasn’t a pub. He strode backwards and forwards. “What’s happened here? What funny work’s going on here? We can’t both have been insane. We did come to a pub here, and we did have drinks. What do you make of it?”

The old man stared at the horizon. “If there’d been a public ’ere I’d ’a known it. I come down ’ere twice a week. Never no public ’ere in my time. Nor in me father’s time. But I do remember me granfer telling me that ’is granfer told ’im there were a public down ’ere.”

“What!”

“There were a public down ’ere. I do remember me granfer telling me that ’is granfer told ’im it were burnt down. It were mixed up in sommin’ in ’istry. Nigh on two ’unnerd year ago. I dinno the rights of it, but ’e did say sommin’ ’bout some kind of war. And a lot o’ Scotties come ’ere. And one of ’em sold the others. And the people set fire to the place, and they was all burnt. ’Cept the one that sold ’em. And ’im they cursed with their dying breaths.”

“Esquire”, Jul.1935

Night-Pieces: Eighteen Tales (1945)

THE RED ROOM

AKA
THE GHOST OF FEAR

H. G. Wells

1896

“I can assure you,” said I, “that it will take a very tangible ghost to frighten me.” And I stood up before the fire with my glass in my hand.

“It is your own choosing,” said the man with the withered arm, and glanced at me askance.

“Eight-and-twenty years,” said I, “I have lived, and never a ghost have I seen as yet.”

The old woman sat staring hard into the fire, her pale eyes wide open. “Ah,” she broke in: “and eight-and-twenty years you have lived and never seen the likes of this house, I reckon. There’s a many things to see, when one’s still but eight-and-twenty.” She swayed her head slowly from side to side. “A many things to see and sorrow for.”

I half suspected the old people were trying to enhance the spiritual terrors of their house by their droning insistence. I put down my empty glass on the table and looked about the room, and caught a glimpse of myself, abbreviated and broadened to an impossible sturdiness, in the queer old mirror at the end of the room. “Well,” I said, “if I see anything tonight, I shall be so much the wiser. For I come to the business with an open mind.”

“It’s your own choosing,” said the man with the withered arm once more.

I heard the sound of a stick and a shambling step on the flags in the passage outside, and the door creaked on its hinges as a second old man entered, more bent, more wrinkled, more aged even than the first. He supported himself by a single crutch, his eyes were covered by a shade, and his lower lip, half averted, hung pale and pink from his decaying yellow teeth. He made straight for an armchair on the opposite side of the table, sat down clumsily, and began to cough. The man with the withered arm gave this newcomer a short glance of positive dislike; the old woman took no notice of his arrival, but remained with her eyes fixed steadily on the fire.

“I said – it’s your own choosing,” said the man with the withered arm, when the coughing had ceased for a while.

“It’s my own choosing,” I answered.

The man with the shade became aware of my presence for the first time, and threw his head back for a moment and sideways, to see me. I caught a momentary glimpse of his eyes, small and bright and inflamed. Then he began to cough and splutter again.

“Why don’t you drink?” said the man with the withered arm, pushing the beer towards him. The man with the shade poured out a glassful with a shaky arm that splashed half as much again on the deal table. A monstrous shadow of him crouched upon the wall and mocked his action as he poured and drank. I must confess I had scarce expected these grotesque custodians. There is to my mind something inhuman in senility, something crouching and atavistic; the human qualities seem to drop from old people insensibly day by day. The three of them made me feel uncomfortable, with their gaunt silences, their bent carriage, their evident unfriendliness to me and to one another.

“If,” said I, “you will show me to this haunted room of yours, I will make myself comfortable there.”

The old man with the cough jerked his head back so suddenly that it startled me, and shot another glance of his red eyes at me from under the shade; but no one answered me. I waited a minute, glancing from one to the other.

“If,” I said a little louder, “if you will show me to this haunted room of yours, I will relieve you from the task of entertaining me.”

“There’s a candle on the slab outside the door,” said the man with the withered arm, looking at my feet as he addressed me. “But if you go to the red room tonight—”

(“This night of all nights!” said the old woman.)

“You go alone.”

“Very well,” I answered. “And which way do I go?”

“You go along the passage for a bit,” said he, “until you come to a door, and through that is a spiral staircase, and half-way up that is a landing and another door covered with baize. Go through that and down the long corridor to the end, and the red room is on your left up the steps.”

“Have I got that right?” I said, and repeated his directions. He corrected me in one particular.

“And are you really going?” said the man with the shade, looking at me again for the third time, with that queer, unnatural tilting of the face.

(“This night of all nights!” said the old woman.)

“It is what I came for,” I said, and moved towards the door. As I did so, the old man with the shade rose and staggered round the table, so as to be closer to the others and to the fire. At the door I turned and looked at them, and saw they were all close together, dark against the firelight, staring at me over their shoulders, with an intent expression on their ancient faces.

“Good night,” I said, setting the door open.

“It’s your own choosing,” said the man with the withered arm.

I left the door wide open until the candle was well alight, and then I shut them in and walked down the chilly, echoing passage.

I must confess that the oddness of these three old pensioners in whose charge her ladyship had left the castle, and the deep-toned, old-fashioned furniture of the housekeeper’s room in which they forgathered, affected me in spite of my efforts to keep myself at a matter of fact phase. They seemed to belong to another age, an older age, an age when things spiritual were different from this of ours, less certain; an age when omens and witches were credible, and ghosts beyond denying. Their very existence was spectral; the cut of their clothing, fashions born in dead brains. The ornaments and conveniences of the room about them were ghostly – the thoughts of vanished men, which still haunted rather than participated in the world of today. But with an effort I sent such thoughts to the right-about. The long, draughty subterranean passage was chilly and dusty, and my candle flared and made the shadows cower and quiver. The echoes rang up and down the spiral staircase, and a shadow came sweeping up after me, and one fled before me into the darkness overhead. I came to the landing and stopped there for a moment, listening to a rustling that I fancied I heard; then, satisfied of the absolute silence, I pushed open the baize-covered door and stood in the corridor.

The effect was scarcely what I expected, for the moonlight coming in by the great window on the grand staircase picked out everything in vivid black shadow or silvery illumination. Everything was in its place; the house might have been deserted on the yesterday instead of eighteen months ago. There were candles in the sockets of the sconces, and whatever dust had gathered on the carpets or upon the polished flooring was distributed so evenly as to be invisible in the moonlight. I was about to advance, and stopped abruptly. A bronze group stood upon the landing, hidden from me by the corner of the wall, but its shadow fell with marvellous distinctness upon the white panelling and gave me the impression of someone crouching to waylay me. I stood rigid for half a minute perhaps. Then, with my hand in the pocket that held my revolver, I advanced, only to discover a Ganymede and Eagle glistening in the moonlight. That incident for a time restored my nerve, and a porcelain Chinaman on a buhl table, whose head rocked silently as I passed him, scarcely startled me.

The door to the red room and the steps up to it were in a shadowy corner. I moved my candle from side to side, in order to see clearly the nature of the recess in which I stood before opening the door. Here it was, thought I, that my predecessor was found, and the memory of that story gave me a sudden twinge of apprehension. I glanced over my shoulder at the Ganymede in the moonlight, and opened the door of the red room rather hastily, with my face half-turned to the pallid silence of the landing.

I entered, closed the door behind me at once, turned the key I found in the lock within, and stood with the candle held aloft, surveying the scene of my vigil, the great red room of Lorraine Castle, in which the young duke had died. Or, rather, in which he had begun his dying, for he had opened the door and fallen headlong down the steps I had just ascended. That had been the end of his vigil, of his gallant attempt to conquer the ghostly tradition of the place, and never, I thought, had apoplexy better served the ends of superstition. And there were other and older stories that clung to the room, back to the half-credible beginning of it all, the tale of a timid wife and the tragic end that came to her husband’s jest of frightening her. And looking around that large sombre room, with its shadowy window bays, its recesses and alcoves, one could well understand the legends that had sprouted in its black corners, its germinating darkness. My candle was a little tongue of light in its vastness, that failed to pierce the opposite end of the room, and left an ocean of mystery and suggestion beyond its island of light.

I resolved to make a systematic examination of the place at once, and dispel the fanciful suggestions of its obscurity before they obtained a hold upon me. After satisfying myself of the fastening of the door, I began to walk about the room, peering round each article of furniture, tucking up the valances of the bed, and opening its curtains wide. I pulled up the blinds and examined the fastenings of the several windows before closing the shutters, leant forward and looked up the blackness of the wide chimney, and tapped the dark oak panelling for any secret opening. There were two big mirrors in the room, each with a pair of sconces bearing candles, and on the mantelshelf, too, were more candles in china candlesticks. All these I lit one after the other. The fire was laid, an unexpected consideration from the old housekeeper – and I lit it, to keep down any disposition to shiver, and when it was burning well, I stood round with my back to it and regarded the room again. I had pulled up a chintz-covered armchair and a table, to form a kind of barricade before me, and on this lay my revolver ready to hand. My precise examination had done me good, but I still found the remoter darkness of the place, and its perfect stillness, too stimulating for the imagination. The echoing of the stir and crackling of the fire was no sort of comfort to me. The shadow in the alcove at the end in particular had that undefinable quality of a presence, that odd suggestion of a lurking, living thing, that comes so easily in silence and solitude. At last, to reassure myself, I walked with a candle into it, and satisfied myself that there was nothing tangible there. I stood that candle upon the floor of the alcove, and left it in that position.

By this time I was in a state of considerable nervous tension, although to my reason there was no adequate cause for the condition. My mind, however, was perfectly clear. I postulated quite unreservedly that nothing supernatural could happen, and to pass the time I began to string some rhymes together, Ingoldsby fashion, of the original legend of the place. A few I spoke aloud, but the echoes were not pleasant. For the same reason I also abandoned, after a time, a conversation with myself upon the impossibility of ghosts and haunting. My mind reverted to the three old and distorted people downstairs, and I tried to keep it upon that topic. The sombre reds and blacks of the room troubled me; even with seven candles the place was merely dim. The one in the alcove flared in a draught, and the fire’s flickering kept the shadows and penumbra perpetually shifting and stirring. Casting about for a remedy, I recalled the candles I had seen in the passage, and, with a slight effort, walked out into the moonlight, carrying a candle and leaving the door open, and presently returned with as many as ten. These I put in various knick-knacks of china with which the room was sparsely adorned, lit and placed where the shadows had lain deepest, some on the floor, some in the window recesses, until at last my seventeen candles were so arranged that not an inch of the room but had the direct light of at least one of them. It occurred to me that when the ghost came, I could warn him not to trip over them. The room was now quite brightly illuminated. There was something very cheery and reassuring in these little streaming flames, and snuffing them gave me an occupation, and afforded a helpful sense of the passage of time.

Even with that, however, the brooding expectation of the vigil weighed heavily upon me. It was after midnight that the candle in the alcove suddenly went out, and the black shadow sprang back to its place there. I did not see the candle go out; I simply turned and saw that the darkness was there, as one might start and see the unexpected presence of a stranger. “By Jove!” said I aloud; “that draught’s a strong one!” and taking the matches from the table, I walked across the room in a leisurely manner to relight the comer again. My first match would not strike, and as I succeeded with the second, something seemed to blink on the wall before me. I moved my head involuntarily, and saw that the two candles on the little table by the fireplace were extinguished. I rose at once to my feet.

“Odd!” I said. “Did I do that myself in a flash of absent-mindedness?”

I walked back, relit one, and as I did so, I saw the candle in the right sconce of one of the mirrors wink and go right out, and almost immediately its companion followed it. There was no mistake about it. The flame vanished, as if the wicks had been suddenly nipped between a finger and thumb, leaving the wick neither glowing nor smoking, but black. While I stood gaping, the candle at the foot of the bed went out, and the shadows seemed to take another step towards me.

“This won’t do!” said I, and first one and then another candle on the mantelshelf followed.

“What’s up?” I cried, with a queer high note getting into my voice somehow. At that the candle on the wardrobe went out, and the one I had relit in the alcove followed.

“Steady on!” I said. “These candles are wanted,” speaking with a half-hysterical facetiousness, and scratching away at a match the while for the mantel candlesticks. My hands trembled so much that twice I missed the rough paper of the matchbox. As the mantel emerged from darkness again, two candles in the remoter end of the window were eclipsed. But with the same match I also relit the larger mirror candles, and those on the floor near the doorway, so that for the moment I seemed to gain on the extinctions. But then in a volley there vanished four lights at once in different corners of the room, and I struck another match in quivering haste, and stood hesitating whither to take it.

As I stood undecided, an invisible hand seemed to sweep out the two candles on the table. With a cry of terror, I dashed at the alcove, then into the comer, and then into the window, relighting three, as two more vanished by the fireplace; then, perceiving a better way, I dropped the matches on the iron-bound deedbox in the comer, and caught up the bedroom candlestick. With this I avoided the delay of striking matches; but for all that the steady process of extinction went on, and the shadows I feared and fought against returned, and crept in upon me, first a step gained on this side of me and then on that. It was like a ragged storm-cloud sweeping out the stars. Now and then one returned for a minute, and was lost again. I was now almost frantic with the horror of the coming darkness, and my self-possession deserted me. I leaped panting and dishevelled from candle to candle in a vain struggle against that remorseless advance.

I bruised myself on the thigh against the table, I sent a chair headlong, I stumbled and fell and whisked the cloth from the table in my fall. My candle rolled away from me, and I snatched another as I rose. Abruptly this was blown out, as I swung it off the table, by the wind of my sudden movement, and immediately the two remaining candles followed. But there was light still in the room, a red light that staved off the shadows from me. The fire! Of course I could still thrust my candle between the bars and relight it!

I turned to where the flames were still dancing between the glowing coals, and splashing red reflections upon the furniture, made two steps towards the grate, and incontinently the flames dwindled and vanished, the glow vanished, the reflections rushed together and vanished, and as I thrust the candle between the bars darkness closed upon me like the shutting of an eye, wrapped about me in a stifling embrace, sealed my vision, and crushed the last vestiges of reason from my brain. The candle fell from my hand. I flung out my arms in a vain effort to thrust that ponderous blackness away from me, and, lifting up my voice, screamed with all my might – once, twice, thrice. Then I think I must have staggered to my feet. I know I thought suddenly of the moonlit corridor, and, with my head bowed and my arms over my face, made a run for the door.

But I had forgotten the exact position of the door, and struck myself heavily against the corner of the bed. I staggered back, turned, and was either struck or struck myself against some other bulky furniture. I have a vague memory of battering myself thus, to and fro in the darkness, of a cramped struggle, and of my own wild crying as I darted to and fro, of a heavy blow at last upon my forehead, a horrible sensation of falling that lasted an age, of my last frantic effort to keep my footing, and then I remember no more.

I opened my eyes in daylight. My head was roughly bandaged, and the man with the withered arm was watching my face. I looked about me, trying to remember what had happened, and for a space I could not recollect. I rolled my eyes into the corner, and saw the old woman, no longer abstracted, pouring out some drops of medicine from a little blue phial into a glass. “Where am I?” I asked; “I seem to remember you, and yet I cannot remember who you are.”

They told me then, and I heard of the haunted red room as one who hears a tale. “We found you at dawn,” said he, “and there was blood on your forehead and lips.”

It was very slowly I recovered my memory of my experience. “You believe now,” said the old man, “that the room is haunted?” He spoke no longer as one who greets an intruder, but as one who grieves for a broken friend.

“Yes,” said I; “the room is haunted.”

“And you have seen it. And we, who have lived here all our lives, have never set eyes upon it. Because we have never dared …. Tell us, is it truly the old earl who—”

“No,” said I; “it is not.”

“I told you so,” said the old lady, with the glass in her hand. “It is his poor young countess who was frightened—”

“It is not,” I said. “There is neither ghost of earl nor ghost of countess in that room, there is no ghost there at all; but worse, far worse.”

“Well?” they said.

“The worst of all the things that haunt poor mortal man,” said I; “and that is, in all its nakedness – Fear! Fear that will not have light nor sound, that will not bear with reason, that deafens and darkens and overwhelms. It followed me through the corridor, it fought against me in the room—”

I stopped abruptly. There was an interval of silence. My hand went up to my bandages.

Then the man with the shade sighed and spoke. “That is it,” said he. “I knew that was it. A power of darkness. To put such a curse upon a woman! It lurks there always. You can feel it even in the daytime, even of a bright summer’s day, in the hangings, in the curtains, keeping behind you however you face about. In the dusk it creeps along the corridor and follows you, so that you dare not turn. There is Fear in that room of hers – black Fear, and there will be – so long as this house of sin endures.”

“The Idler”, 1896

Thirty Strange Stories (1897)

The Plattner Story and Others (1897)

THE COAT

A. E. D. Smith

1934

I am quite aware that the other fellows in the office regard me as something of an oddity – as being rather a “queer bird”, in fact. Well, of course, a man who happens to be of a studious disposition, who dislikes noise and prefers his own company to that of empty-headed companions, and who, moreover, is compelled by defective vision to wear thick glasses, is always liable to be thus misjudged by inferior minds; and ordinarily, I treat the opinion of my colleagues with the contempt it deserves. But at this particular moment I was beginning to think that perhaps, after all, there might be something to be said for their view. For, though I might still repudiate the “queer bird” part of the business, undoubtedly I was an ass – a first-class chump; otherwise I should have been spending my holidays in a nice comfortable way with the rest of the normal world, listening to the Pierrots or winking at the girls on the promenade of some seaside resort at home, instead of having elected to set out alone on this idiotic push-bike tour of a little-known part of France. Drenched, hungry and lost; a stranger in a strange land; dispiritedly pushing before me a heavily-laden bicycle with a gashed tyre – such was the present result of my asinine choice.

The storm had overtaken me miles from anywhere, on a wild road over a spur of the Vosges, and for nearly two hours I had trudged through the pelting rain without encountering a living soul or the least sign of human habitation.

And then, at long last, rounding a bend, I glimpsed just ahead of me the chimney-pots and gables of a fair-sized house. It was a lonely, desolate-looking place standing amid a clump of trees a little way back from the road, and somehow, even at a distance, did not convey a very inviting impression. Nevertheless, in that wilderness, it was a welcome enough sight, and in the hope of finding temporary shelter and possibly a little badly-needed refreshment, I quickened my pace towards it. Two hundred yards brought me to the entrance gates, and here I suffered a grievous disappointment; for the roofless porter’s lodge, the dilapidated old gates hanging askew on their hinges, and the overgrown drive beyond, plainly indicated that the place was no longer inhabited.

I speedily comforted myself, however, with the reflection that in the circumstances even a deserted house was not to be despised as a refuge. Once under cover of some kind, I might make shift to wring out my drenched clothing and repair my damaged mount; and without further ado I pushed my bicycle up the long-neglected drive and reached the terrace in front of the house itself. It proved to be an old château, half smothered in creepers and vines that had long gone wild, and, judging by the carved stone coat-of-arms over the main entrance, had once been occupied by a person of some quality. Mounted on a pedestal on either side of the iron-studded front door stood a rusty carronade – trophies, probably, of some long-forgotten war in which the former occupier had played a part. Most of the windows had been boarded up, and it was evident that the place had stood empty for many years.

I tried the front door. To my surprise it was unfastened, and a thrust of my shoulder sent it creaking grudgingly back on its hinges. My nostrils, as I stepped into the dim, wide hall, were at once assailed by the stale, disagreeable odour of rotting woodwork and mouldy hangings and carpets. For a moment or two I stood peering uncertainly about me, with the slight feeling of eeriness that one usually experiences when entering an old, empty house. Facing me was a broad staircase, with a long, stained-glass window, almost opaque with dirt and cobwebs, at its head. I mounted the stairs, and throwing open the first door at hand, found myself looking into a spacious, handsomely furnished room that had evidently once been the chief apartment of the house, though long neglect and disuse had now reduced it to a sorry state. The ornate cornice hung here and there in strips, and in one corner the plaster of the ceiling had come down altogether. Green mould covered the eighteenth-century furniture; curtains and draperies hung in tatters; and one half of the beautiful old Persian carpet, from a point near the door right across to the fireplace, was overspread by an evil-smelling, bright orange fungus.

The fireplace gave me an idea. Could I but find fuel I might light a fire, make myself a hot drink, and get my clothes properly dried.

A little searching in the outbuildings discovered a sufficient quantity of old sticks to serve my purpose, and with a bundle of them under my coat I re-entered the house and briskly made my way upstairs again. But on the threshold of the big room, without quite knowing why, I suddenly checked. It was as though my legs, of their own volition, had all at once become reluctant to carry me farther into the apartment – as if something quite outside of me were urging me to turn about and retreat. I laid the sticks down at my feet, and for a moment or two stood there uncertainly in the doorway. I was beginning to sense some subtle suggestion of danger in the atmosphere of the place. Everything was apparently just as I had left it; yet I had an uneasy sort of feeling that during my brief absence something evil had entered that room and left it again.

I am neither a nervous nor a superstitious person; yet I found myself, a moment later, rather shamefacedly picking up my sticks and moving back towards the head of the stairs. Actually, it was not so much fear as a vague, precautionary sense of uneasiness that prompted me. It had occurred to me that perhaps I might feel more comfortable if I remained nearer to the front door, and made my fire in one of the rooms on the ground floor. If – it was an idiotic fancy, I know – but . . . well, if anything – er – queer DID happen, and I had to make a sudden bolt for it, I could get out quicker that way.

It was on this second descent of the stairs, as I faced the light from the open front door, that I suddenly noticed something that pulled me up with a decided start. Running up the centre of the staircase, and quite fresh in the thick dust, was a broad, broken sort of track, exactly as though someone had recently trailed up an empty sack or something of that nature.

From the foot of the staircase I traced this track across the hall to a spot immediately below an old, moth-eaten coat that hung from one of a row of coat-pegs on the opposite wall. And then I saw that similar tracks traversed the hall in various directions, some terminating before the doors on either side, others leading past the foot of the stairs to the rear regions of the house, but all seeming to radiate from the same point below the coat-pegs. And the queerest thing about it all was that of footprints, other than my own, there was not a sign.

Uneasiness once more assailed me. The house appeared to be uninhabited, and yet, plainly someone, or something, had recently been in the place. Who, or what, was the restless, questing creature that had made those strange tracks to and from the old coat? Was it some half-witted vagrant – a woman possibly – whose trailing draperies obliterated her own footprints?

I had a closer look at the old garment. It was a military greatcoat of ancient pattern with one or two tarnished silver buttons still attached to it, and had evidently seen much service. Turning it round on its peg with a gingerly finger and thumb, I discovered that just below the left shoulder there was a round hole as big as a penny, surrounded by an arm of scorched and stained cloth, as though a heavy pistol had been fired into it at point-blank range. If a pistol bullet had indeed made that hole, then obviously, the old coat at one period of its existence had clothed a dead man.

A sudden repugnance for the thing overcame me, and with a slight shudder I let go of it. It may have been fancy or not, but all at once it seemed to me that there was more than an odour of mould and rotting cloth emanating from the thing – that there was a taint of putrefying flesh and bone. . . .

A taint of animal corruption – faint but unmistakable – I could sniff it in the air; and with it, something less definable but no less real – a sort of sixth-sense feeling that the whole atmosphere of the place was slowly becoming charged with evil emanations from a black and shameful past.

With an effort I pulled myself together. After all, what was there to be scared about? I had no need to fear human marauders, for in my hip pocket I carried a small but serviceable automatic; and as for ghosts, well, if such existed, they didn’t usually “walk” in the daytime. The place certainly felt creepy, and I shouldn’t have cared to spend the night there; but it would be ridiculous to allow mere idle fancies to drive me out again into that beastly rain before I’d made myself that badly needed hot drink and mended my bicycle.

I therefore opened the door nearest to me, and entered a smallish room that apparently had once been used as a study. The fireplace was on the side opposite to the door, and the wide, ancient grate was still choked with the ashes of the last log consumed there. I picked up the poker – a cumbersome old thing with a knob as big as an orange – raked out the ashes, and laid my sticks in approved Boy Scout fashion. But the wood was damp, and after I had used up half my matches, refused to do more than smoulder, whilst a back-draught from the chimney filled the room with smoke. In desperation I went down on my hands and knees and tried to rouse the embers into flame by blowing on them. And in the middle of this irksome operation I was startled by a sound of movement in the hall – a single soft “flop”, as though someone had flung down a garment.

I was on my feet in a flash, listening with every nerve taut. No further sound came, and, automatic in hand, I tiptoed to the door. There was nothing in the hall; nothing to be heard at all save the steady swish of the rain outside. But from a spot on the floor directly below the old coat the dust was rising in a little eddying cloud, as though it had just been disturbed.

“Pah! A rat,” I told myself, and went back to my task. More vigorous blowing on the embers, more raking and poking, more striking of matches – and, in the midst of it, again came that curious noise – not very loud, but plain and unmistakable.

Once more I went into the hall, and once more, except for another little cloud of dust rising from precisely the same spot as before, there was _nothing to be seen. But that sixth-sense warning of imminent danger was becoming more insistent. I had the feeling now that I was no longer alone in the old, empty hall – that some unclean, invisible presence was lurking there, tainting the very air with its foulness. “It’s no use,” I said to myself. “I may be a nervous fool, but I can’t stand any more of this. I’ll collect my traps and clear out whilst the going’s good.”

With this, I went back into the room, and keeping a nervous eye cocked on the door, began with rather panicky haste to re-pack my haversack. And just as I was in the act of tightening the last strap there came from the hall a low, evil chuckle, followed by the sound of stealthy movement. I whipped out my weapon and stood where I was in the middle of the floor, facing the door, with my blood turning to ice. Through the chink between the door hinges I saw a shadow pass; then the door creaked a little, slowly began to open, and round it there came – the coat.

It stood there upright in the doorway, as God is above me - swaying a little as though uncertain of its balance – collar and shoulders extended as though by an invisible wearer – the old, musty coat I had seen hanging in the hall.

For a space that seemed an eternity I stood like a man of stone, facing the Thing as it seemed to pause on the threshold. A dreadful sort of hypnotism held me rooted to the spot on which I stood – a hypnotism that completely paralysed my body, and caused the pistol to slip from my nerveless fingers, and yet left my brain clear. Mingled with my frozen terror was a feeling of deadly nausea. I knew that I was in the presence of ultimate Evil – that the very aura of the Hell-engendered Thing reared there in the doorway was contamination – that its actual touch would mean not only the instant destruction of my body, but the everlasting damnation of my soul.

And now It was coming into the room – with an indescribable bobbing sort of motion, the empty sleeves jerking grotesquely at its sides, the skirts flopping and trailing in the dust, was slowly coming towards me; and step by step, with my bulging eyes riveted in awful fascination on the Thing, I was recoiling before it. Step by step, with the rigid, unconscious movement of an automaton, I drew back until I was brought up with my back pressed into the fireplace and could retreat no farther. And still, with deadly malevolent purpose, the Thing crept towards me. The empty sleeves were rising and shakily reaching out towards my throat. In another moment they would touch me, and then I knew with the most dreadful certainty that my reason would snap. A coherent thought somehow came into my burning brain – something that I had read or heard of long ago . . . the power . . . of the . . . holy sign . . . against . . . the forces of evil. With a last desperate effort of will I stretched out a palsied finger and made the sign of the Cross. . . . And in that instant, my other hand, scrabbling frenziedly at the wall behind me, came into contact with something cold and hard and round. It was the knob of the old, heavy poker.

The touch of the cold iron seemed to give me instant re-possession of my faculties. With lightning swiftness I swung up the heavy poker and struck with all my force at the nightmare Horror before me. And lo! on the instant, the Thing collapsed, and became an old coat – nothing more – lying there in a heap at my feet. Yet, on my oath, as I cleared the hellish thing in a flying leap, and fled from the room, I saw it, out of the tail of my eye, gathering itself together and making shape, as it were, to scramble after me.

•   •   •

Once outside that accursed house I ran as never man ran before, and I remember nothing more until I found myself, half fainting, before the door of a little inn.

“Bring wine, in the name of God !” I cried, staggering inside. Wine was brought, and a little wondering group stood round me while I drank.

I tried to explain to them in my bad French. They continued to regard me with puzzled looks. At length a look of understanding came into the landlord’s face. “Mon dieu!” he gasped. “Is it possible that Monsieur has been in that place! Quick, Juliette! Monsieur will need another bottle of wine.”

•   •   •

Later, I got something of the story from the landlord, though he was by no means eager to tell it. The deserted house had once been occupied by a retired officer of the first Napoleon’s army – a semi-madman with a strain of African blood in him. Judging from the landlord’s story, he must have been one of the worst men that God ever allowed to walk the earth. “Most certainly, monsieur, he was a bad man – that one,” concluded my host. “He killed his wife and tortured every living thing he could lay hands on – even, it is said, his own daughters. In the end, one of them shot him in the back. The old château has an evil name. If you offered a million francs, you would not get one of our country-folks to go near the place.”

•   •   •

As I said at the beginning, I know that the other fellows in the office are inclined, as it is, to regard me as being a bit queer; so I haven’t told any of them this story. Nevertheless, it’s perfectly true.

My brand-new bicycle and touring traps are probably still lying where I left them in the hall of that devil-ridden château. Anybody who cares to collect them may keep them.

Powers of Darkness (1934)

FEAR

P. C. Wren

1944

From the first moment I disliked the bungalow intensely. Nor had this feeling anything to do with the fact that it was dirty, derelict and tumbledown; nor, again, that it was lonely, isolated and obviously long-uninhabited.

It was the atmosphere, aura, the spirit of the house that was antipathetic, inimical. Even outside it, one had this feeling of an emanated antagonism. Inside the feeling deepened, and one seemed conscious almost of warning; and then of danger; and, finally, of threat.

I was reminded of that remarkable and haunting line which, once he has read it, occasionally returns to the mind of the traveller in little-visited and out-of-the-way corners of the earth:

“The place was silent and – aware.”

Certainly this place was silent, and undoubtedly one had an uneasy feeling of its awareness, of being watched, of being expected – and unwelcome. Not watched by human eyes, but by the place itself.

It was an old – and old-fashioned-rest-house, built on teangs, strong square pillars, some twelve feet in height, of meribau wood, that hard red wood which is proof against the attack of insects, including even the white ant. Mounting the flight of steps that led up to the platform on which the house was built, and entering the big central room, the thought immediately entered my mind that “rest-house” was a misnomer. I felt quite certain that whatever else I got here, I should get little rest.

One had frequently been in places which gave the impression that the genius loci was inimical. One had been conscious of the feeling, both in buildings made by hands and in places but rarely trodden by human foot; in certain swamps, canyons, dark forests, caves, and sun-blasted or wind-harried desert places.

I have had this feeling strongly when spending a dark and lonely night in Angkor Wat: and again in the brilliant sunlight of a beautiful morning on top of the hill called Doi Wieng Lek, a hill situated near Lampoun, some thirty miles from Chiengmai in the direction of Lampang, in Siam. “Doi Wieng Lek” means “the hill which is the place of evil spirits”, a fact of which I was unaware, or at any rate, did not realize, until I had left it.

But standing on top of the hill, which I had climbed in order to admire a view of the Lampang plain and the distant hills, I was suddenly conscious of an uneasiness, which was but little removed from fear. What caused the uneasiness, and of what I should be afraid, when mental discomfort and apprehensiveness deepened into fear, I had not the slightest idea. It had nothing to do with the fact that practically every tree looked as though it had been struck by lightning, which certainly was not the case. It was not that I heard any of those sounds which, in certain places, are perturbing, if not startling; it was not because the trees seemed to have been deserted by both birds and gibbons, in spite of the fact that all the surrounding jungle was alive with the gibbons, little spidery long-armed long-legged monkeys whose bewhiskered faces are so friendly and amusing, and whose call is musical, yet so mournful …

But the house.

I am not psychic. I am not a nervous person nor sensitive. I am not fanciful, superstitious nor suggestible; but, like everybody else, who is not an absolute clod, I have a sense of atmosphere, whether it be social or local. And never in my life have I been so quickly or so strongly aware of an eerie and minatory atmosphere as in this abandoned rest-house. Had it been possible, I would have marched on, and left it to its loneliness and gloom. For I felt it was haunted, tragic and evil. However, I had no choice. Here I was, and here, for a period, I must remain. For, however unpleasant the place might be, to flee from it and return, the object of my journey unaccomplished, would have been more so. I should have felt ashamed of myself. Also ridiculous. For how could I possibly explain that I had found the place, according to directions given me by kindly hosts in Mualongse, had not entered into possession, but had simply fled, frightened away? It seemed to me that my coolies disliked the place almost as much as I did, for with unwonted rapidity they unpacked the hahps, the big baskets made of woven bamboo, which hang at either end of a pole balanced over the shoulder, and in which one’s food, clothes and other chattels are transported in that part of the world.

Nor did my jungle “boy” appear disposed to linger, when once he had set up my camp-bed and served my dinner, a remarkably well cooked and satisfying meal, consisting principally of a stew of tinned meat, rice, alleged mushrooms, bamboo shoots, dough-dumplings, chillies and unidentifiable odds and ends.

In view of the fact that my cook had, so far as I knew, neither materials nor apparatus for cooking, the effort was beyond praise.

Having dined, I carried my collapsible chair out on to the veranda, lit a cigarette and – told myself not to be a fool. For I felt more uncomfortable, more lonely, more apprehensive than ever before in all my life.

From where I sat, the moonlit jungle looked beautiful – but unfriendly, threatening; and the danger implicit in the threat was not from the leopard or the tiger.

Generally speaking, this was one of the best hours of the day, the march completed, dinner eaten, and a pleasant tiredness enhancing the flavour of tobacco and the enjoyment of a book. A good hour for the review of the events of the day, the making of plans for the morrow, and appreciation of one’s good fortune in being far from the madding crowd and the din of an increasingly clamorous civilization.

The ocean, the desert and the jungle are the last strongholds and resorts of peace.

But here there was no peace. Silence, so far as the jungle is ever silent; utter stillness; but no peace – of mind.

Decidedly this was a bad place, or else I was going to be ill. It must be that … Fever … Liver … And yet, until I came within sight of this derelict house, I had been in perfect health. l had better go to bed.

Re-entering the big central room, on either side of which were two bedrooms, I turned up the wick of the lamp that hung from a roof-beam, and took stock of the place. What immediately caught my attention and gave me a slight shock of surprise, was the fact that, across one corner of the room, was a piano.

Now,.l have had a perhaps unusually wide experience of rest-houses, dak bungalows, pahngs and such buildings, provided for the shelter of the casual traveller in India, Ceylon, Burma, Siam, Malaya, Annam, Cambodia, and certain pars of Africa and China; but never yet have I discovered one provided with a piano. I have known them to be well-fitted, well-kept houses, with one or more resident servants; and I have known them to be dirty derelict huts, with one or more resident reptiles, poisonous, domiciled and waiting – but never a piano.

And as my eye roamed round the ill-lit room, I discovered that it differed, in other respects, from the usual central hall common to the use of travellers occupying the different bedrooms – should more than one traveller be occupying the rest-house at the same time.

Such a room generally contains a dining-table and four chairs.

This room was furnished: and old, neglected, tattered, dust-covered and derelict as the furniture might be, it had once been drawing-room furniture. There was what had been a handsome screen at each door; there were a sofa and armchairs; pictures had once adorned the walls, and the cracked, dirty and insect-riddled remains still hung in their places. In a teak-wood bookcase were the remains of books, now the home of the silverfish insect, the ant, the cockroach and the rat. In a corner was a standard lamp, about whose glass chimney and globe still hung the tattered remnants of a silk shade. And beneath my feet was a matting of a very different quality from that of the usual plaited palm-leaf to be found in the ordinary travellers’ rest-house. This was of fine Chinese reed-work and had cost money.

And incongruous, in this ghost of a long-dead drawing-room, stood a bed. Beside it, my jungle “boy” had set up my own folding camp-bed, which looked neat, clean and positively attractive beside the much bigger one, once comparatively sumptuous, now a dubious-looking mass of discoloured, dust-covered silk and grimy linen.

Here and there a gleam of colour showed -through dust which lay so thickly as to amount almost to a covering of earth or ash. Part of this, of course, would be the settling dust of years, part a precipitate of fine bamboo and other wood “sawdust” that had rained down upon it from the roof and rafters above, as the boring insects proceeded with their uninterrupted labours of destruction.

A truly dreadful room, suggesting to my mind an aged crone dressed in finery that she had worn for fifty years; a hag, evil and malignant, foul and filthy, yet not only alive, but retaining, Beneath the dirt of ages, faint rare glimpses of a former finery.

But why sleep in this drawing-room of a nightmare, when there were apparently four bedrooms opening from this central room?

On a bedside table – who last had used that bedside table, and had it been a man or a woman? – l saw that my boy had placed my Hitchcock lamp, one of those invaluable pieces of camp-furniture which, needing neither chimney nor globe, gives an excellent if fierce light, and whose loud and insistent ticking is something that soothes or maddens the nerves of the lonely listener, according to the state of his mind, or more probably of his liver.

Picking it up, I lit it, and opened the nearest door. In this room were two beds, a leg-rest chair, and a dressing-table with mirror. The room was in some disorder, and was evidently exactly as it had been left by its last occupants when, hurriedly, they departed. Returning to the drawing-room and closing the door behind me, I entered the other room on the same side, and discovered similar conditions. This also was a double bedroom, or at any rate a room last occupied by two people, the almost mouldering remains of tumbled bedding, and suggestions of hurried departure, if not sudden flight.

And similarly in the case of the two other bedrooms.

Eight guests – and a ninth person, the host, who had slept in the drawing-room that fatal night – had fled in haste, leaving everything as it stood.

Having made my tour of inspection I sat down in a spacious armchair – and almost went through it to the floor. For one hideous moment of imprisonment I struggled in a position of great indignity and extreme discomfort, until I contrived to extricate myself from what was really a very neat trap.

“Good heavens!” thought I, as at length, breathless, I got to my feet and surveyed the now bottomless chair, “I might have stuck there till I died,” the idiotic thought being in keeping with my frame of mind and my environment. For I should hardly have died before morning, when my boy and the coolies would have come. On the other hand, in that horrible position, with my knees firmly pressed against my chest, I might very well have died of suffocation, heart failure, or of a broken blood-vessel.

And once again, what rubbish, when my heart was as strong as that of a horse, and my arteries as soft as india-rubber. And yet, far, horror and despair are not ridiculous; and, for a few seconds, while firmly wedged into that malevolent-seeming chair, endowed with devilish intention, I had been frightened, horrified, and despairing of ever escaping from the trap.

However, fear had its usual reaction, anger, and I felt thoroughly and savagely annoyed – a much healthier mental state.

I would undress and go to bed; and the devil and all his imps could play any game they fancied, in, around, above, and below the bungalow; and I would not so much as open an eye and cast a glance at them.

So I thought, or at any rate, so I told myself, and raising the mosquito curtain, got into bed, tucked the edge of the curtain in, turned the light down very low, closed my eyes and composed myself for sleep.

Suddenly something creaked very loudly. I opened my eyes and sat up; and sleep fled farther from me than ever.

This wouldn’t do. If I were going to jump up like that every time there was a creak, I should spend a restless night. But this had been no ordinary creak; and, lest it should seem strange and unreasonable that one should differentiate between one creak and another, I will mention that the sound was precisely that which I myself had made in walking across the wooden floor.

As I have said, the bungalow was supported upon teangs, great posts which raised it some twelve feet above the ground; and the floor was of boards, one or two of which, probably owing to shrinkage in dry weather after being swollen during the rains, creaked quite audibly when trodden on, somewhat as do the stairs in all old houses.

I was perfectly certain that someone, probably a bare-footed native, had crossed the room.

Hastily pulling out the linen border of the mosquito-curtain from under the thin mattress of the camp-bed, I turned up the lamp.

The room was empty, of course, and as I perfectly well knew.

Neither my jungle “boy” nor any coolie would come into the room before dawn, and no dacoit would wander about in that fashion, within a minute of my getting into bed. What a dacoit would do would be to creep up the steps, glide like a ghost – damn that word ghost! – across the veranda and with a rush and a leap, drive his kris through my throat.

Or so I argued.

Anyway, there was nobody in the room. Nobody visible, that is to say.

And again I turned down the lamp, tucked in the mosquito curtain, turned on to my right side, firmly closed my eyes, and prayed the old English prayer:

From bogles and bugaboos, Warlocks and wurricoes,

Ghaisties and ghoulies, long-leggity beasties,

And things that go wump in the night,

Good Lord, deliver us.

I closed my eyes but unfortunately I could not close my ears, and the loud creak which was obviously made by someone stepping upon one of those loose boards again sounded through the room, sudden and sharp as the crack of a pistol. That was a gross exaggeration, of course. It was more like the snapping of a twig beneath the unpractised foot in the dry jungle, the tiny resounding snap that warns the stalked prey of the approach of heavy-footed clumsy death – of murder most foul but self-defeated.

For some reason, or for no reason, I suddenly remembered my Irish batman and his favourite formula for use on all occasions.

“Ah, to Hell wit’ it then!”

That was the proper attitude of mind and the suitable incantation.

Again the sound of stealthy footsteps …

Bosh! That was an absolute boys’-magazine cliché. There was no sound of footsteps, stealthy or otherwise – only the noise of someone treading on loose boards.

But surely a ghost, a spirit, a bhut, afrit, peh, was imponderable, without substance, and quite incapable of depressing a warped board.

It wasn’t incapable of depressing me, though, and my possibly warped mind.

A loud creak, as someone or something – or nothing – trod on another place where a board under the matting responded beneath the pressure.

“Ah, to Hell wit’ it!”

And then, almost with a shriek, I again sprang bolt upright, for a pair of giant hands, with fingers spread from end to end of the keyboard, crashed down upon the keys of the piano, bringing forth a terrific and hideous cacophony, a horrible jangling discord, discernible through which were the sounds of breaking wires.

Good God! Angels and ministers of grace defend us!

I admit that it was with a hand decidedly inclined to tremble that I again turned up the light, and saw that there was no one at the piano, or in the room.

But really, this would not do. This was not only beyond a joke, it was beyond all reason. Clearly and definitely it was beyond reason that invisible hands should strike a crashing chord upon a piano.

I’m sure there are brave men who would have said “Tut! tut!”- Possibly have walked to the piano, played a hymn-tune – Eternal Father, strong to save, perhaps – and returned to bed the better for the performance.

Personally, I was much more inclined to get well down under the clothes, pull them over my head, and stay there till a cold or bony hand removed them.

What I did do was to sit and stare, wide-eyed and open-mouthed, while I burst into a cold sweat and tried to find rational explanation for this astonishing – and indeed in that place, at that hour, appalling – phenomenon.

The creaking of the loose boards I could explain away, more or less – in point of fact, very much less – satisfactorily, by remembering how furniture creaks, and indeed bangs, occasionally, in old houses, in the middle of the night. (Though why the devil it should always choose the middle of the night for that exercise is something of a mystery.)

The boards might creak and groan without having been trodden upon by human or non-human foot; it might be their playful habit and old-established custom to wait till midnight and then make precisely the noise they made when a heavy man stepped on them.

But what about the piano? I could not remember ever previously having slept in the same room as a piano, but I was prepared to wager a very large sum that though the woodwork of an aged and neglected piano might conceivably utter a creak or, through the sudden breaking of a wire, emit a doleful jangling ping, it could not possibly produce a hellish uproar in which a score of keys and strings were concerned. I was prepared to admit that in the lonely stillness of the most ordinary drawing-room in the most commonplace bungalow, a piano, through the slipping of a wire, might make one unmusical sound; but it was inconceivable that it should make a hundred hideous jangling noises.

Cursing my cowardice, I turned the light right out. Staring into the darkness, I could see nothing; and this is not so much a statement of the obvious as it sounds, for the darkness was not complete, not that darkness as of black velvet. The night without was lit by a gibbous moon and the brilliant tropic stars.

No, I could see nothing. But again someone at the piano played a rough and violent discord.

Raising my mosquito-curtain, I struck a match and lit the table-lamp. As I did so, I heard a heavy thud, followed by minor movements.

Lifting the lamp above my head with a hand undoubtedly beginning to tremble, I looked round the room. There was nothing whatsoever to be seen, save the decrepit furniture.

“Another little smoke wouldn’t do us any harm,” said I aloud, to show myself how bold a fellow of yet-unshaken nerve was I.

Something rustled in reply.

“Rats!” said I. “Rats. And this can be taken as a reference to rodents or as a derisive ejaculation.” Which statement, made solemnly and aloud, showed me that, whatever I might pretend, I was nervous. I would get up, light the hanging lamp, turn the small one up, and read until daylight.

No – damned if I would. For the rest of my life I should be ashamed to look myself in the face.

I finished my cigarette, turned out my lamp again, and, as a concession to human frailty and cowardice, took the matches into bed with me, tucked in the mosquito-curtain, and composed myself to slumber.

Never yet have I found any of the devices advocated for sleep-inducement of the slightest effect or value. Speaking for myself, the only thing is to relax, mind and body, beginning with the muscles of the toes and working up to those of the scalp, consciously relaxing and letting go all holds, one after the other, and finally making the mind a blank – or blanker than usual.

I had worked my way up to the arms, and had just made my hands and forearms utterly inert, when there was what might be called – and indeed must be called, for there is no other description-“a ghastly cry”. And the ghastly cry was uttered within the room.

It was something between a moan, a wail, and a scream. I struck a match. It broke, fell on to the bedclothes, and went out. And in the brief half-second of light, I saw what again might be called-indeed must be called, for there is no other description – “something white”, a ghostly figure that crossed the room.

I struck another match, pulled up the mosquito-curtain with a great air of resolution and determination to look into the matter and do something, only to discover that there was no matter into which to look, and nothing to be done. There was no sound in the room, and certainly there was no “something White”.

“And this is where another little drink wouldn’t do us any harm,” said I.

In point of fact, it had no opportunity to do any harm or any good, for I had nothing to drink save a little soda-water in the bottle left by my jungle “boy”. There was not even the nam tohn of porous clay with a tin cup inverted over its neck, usually to be found in dak bungalows; and, had there been one, I should have hesitated to drink from it. Why, it is difficult to say. What is the difference between germ-infested water brought straight from the nearest huey or pond to the bungalow, and water of the native-owned soda-water shop? Of the two, perhaps the soda-water is the more dangerous, as its inhabitant microbes must be in a higher state of stimulation and activity – not to mention the mud and other filth encrusted in the neck of the soda-water bottle.

Having decided, I drank the soda-water and lay down, after noting that, according to my watch, the night was still young, the hour being but two o’clock. Well, plenty of time for plenty of doings …

Soon I fell asleep – even as do men who await the dawn firing-party or the gaol officials who come to lead them to the scaffold. In that cheery frame of mind.

Anyhow, I must have slept, because undoubtedly I was awakened. How much of what I experienced in the act of awakening was dream, how much imagination, and how much an utterly unreal reality, I don’t know, but I do know that from a dream or from dreamless sleep I awoke to the knowledge that there was a party in progress in the room. I must have been in the act of opening my eyes as I saw lights, the forms of men, heard speech and laughter; and what is more, noticed that it was slurred speech and over-noisy laughter.

So certain was I of this, that, in the moment of sitting up and going to raise my mosquito-curtain once more, the feeling uppermost in my mind was one of indignation. What right had these fellows to come carousing and binging in my room at three or four o’clock in the morning? A most disgusting exhibition of caddish ill-manners, and I threw up the curtain, prepared to speak my mind to that effect.

Of course there were no bright lights; there was no sound of revelry by night.

But there was …

They were trooping down the steps from the veranda to the garden. And as for a second I listened, now terrified rather than indignant, I knew that the merry party, instead of spreading itself over the garden with joyous whoops, drunken shouts and alcoholic song, turned in under the bungalow among the teangs, the great pillars of meribau wood that supported the house.

Distinctly I heard them. Distinctly I heard a crash, as of something heavy overturned. Distinctly I heard shouts and cries which were not merry nor amusing; and, finally, a sound such as I hope never to hear again. Those who have heard the scream of a wounded horse will have some idea of the blood-curdling horror of that dreadful cry, a clear-cut shocking shriek that seemed to freeze the marrow in my bones and cause the hair of my head to stand on end.

I had had enough.

Getting out of bed and pulling on my boots, I lit the Hitchcock lamp, turned it up until is flame was as high as it would go, and was thankful for its steady brilliance, and the fact that it needed neither globe nor chimney which might have blackened and broken and obscured the light.

And holding high my lamp, I crossed the veranda, descended the steps and boldly – yes, boldly! – plunged into the midst of whatever might be happening in the pillared gloom of the dreadful place beneath the bungalow.

For it was dreadful.

Not because of anything that was there, but because there was nothing there. No sign or sound of human being, animal, ghost or spirit briefly incarnate.

Save for the fact that it had no outer walls, the place was like a crypt, the big baulks of timber that supported the house suggesting Norman pillars of stone. Several feet above my head were the boards of the floor of the room from which I had just come. Beneath my feet was what had been hard-beaten earth, now in parts thinly covered by sickly weeds. No sign whatsoever of human visitation or occupation was there, save the collapsed timbers of what had been a big packing-case.

I was defeated: and promptly and willingly admitting defeat, fled from the place, mounted the steps and re-entered my bed-drawing-room.

Compared with the cellar-like place beneath the house, this horrible and haunted room seemed almost attractive; for inimical as was its atmosphere, it was not as fear-compelling as the other.

Here above, I felt fear. There below, I felt a horror and a terror fearful beyond fear.

A return to bed, somnolence, and an attitude of defenceless acquiescence were out of the question, and I began to dress, involuntarily glancing over my shoulder, swiftly turning about to see what was behind me, as I did so.

And on this occasion, as not infrequently before, I was glad that I was an extremely temperate person, and that for me, alcohol had no attraction. (Incidentally I really do not make this idiosyncrasy a cause for any self-approval. If I liked alcohol I should drink it.) I was glad because all that I had heard and the little I had seen, really had been heard and seen. There was no question of it. It was no alcohol-induced or drug-begotten fantasy. I had heard sounds when wide awake, as widely awake as I was now, doing up my buttons.

True, I had awakened suddenly to see lights and hear sounds that might have been part of a dream; but I felt absolutely convinced that they had also been part of waking experience. Well, “There are more things in Heaven and earth …”

And whether I had been imagining things, dreaming dreams and seeing visions, or not, one thing was certain: nothing on earth, absolutely nothing, would induce me to spend another night in this place; nay, nor another hour more than was necessary for my getting away from it.

II

Next night I camped in the jungle, a most unpleasant night of wind and rain and conditions that defeated even my accomplished Lao cook and jungle “boy”. A night that should have been memorable for its acute and complicated discomfort, but which, in point of fact, is memorable for its sweet peacefulness, a sweetness unsoured by cold driving rain and devilish plucking wind, a pace unbroken by the heaviest crashes of violent thunder-storms. Sweetness and peace, because this was the jungle, and not that fear-stricken, horror-infested bungalow.

What were tigers, leopards, king cobras, scorpions, leeches – and the greatest of these is leeches – compared with one sound, one sight, in that house of dread?

The following night I slept in a Wat.

We reached it at sundown, and it had an air of solid comfort very reassuring to me after what I had been through. It was but a small Wat situated at the end of a green path which led to it from the road, a distance of about two hundred yards. Its outer court or hall of stone was clean and had a well-cared-for air about it. This outer hall had no walls and its stone roof was supported on four heavy stone pillars. Near the entrance was an ancient sacred Boh-tree whose branches were so heavy that each one had to be supported by a pole resting on the earth.

The Wat was empty save for one poogni in a yellow robe, who was chanting before the stone image of Buddha, and he took no notice of me, until, presently departing, he gave me the usual greeting of “Sabai-ga,” [“are you well?”] to which I answered the usual “Sabai!” [“Quite well.”]

In front of the enormous effigy of the Buddha were arranged the heterogeneous collection of offerings which are usually to be found in these Wats and which never cease to astonish one, by reason of their strange variety.

There were stone jam-jars containing dead flowers, cheap alarm-clocks, such as are found in the village-shops in England, bunches of dried flowers, brightly coloured feathers, celluloid or glass balls, bits of coloured china, tin and enamel mugs. There were also numerous candles stuck in the melted wax of others long-since burnt-out. These candles are only lit at festival times, when the villagers come to make their offerings.

Here in this place was Peace, for over it brooded the spirit of the Buddha, beneficent, well-wishing; and the pious founder of the temple had been one who fain would acquire merit. In it I slept peacefully.

On the next day my “boy”, leading our little party, suddenly turned aside and took a path even narrower and fainter than that on which we were. Some little distance down this path was a bamboo pahng or sala, built in a clearing in the jungle. It is not unusual to find these shelters in various parts of the dense forests. They are quite unfurnished and empty, and may be used by any passing traveller who happens to know where they are situated. The walls and floor are made of split bamboo. While perfectly strong and adequate, the bamboo floor is apt to be rather disconcerting when one walks on one of them for the first time, for it springs up and down with every movement, and it is difficult to keep one’s balance until one becomes accustomed to the feeling of walking on springs.

This particular pahng was very charmingly situated. Behind it rose a steep hillside covered with small teak-trees which were in flower. There were also many shrubs, with leaves of various shades of red and gold. In front of the pahng was the clearing, beyond which were the tall trees of the forest, and growing up one side of the shelter itself was a thick bush of the pale pink Honolulu creeper which someone had, at some time or other, planted there …

Here again I slept in peace, and on the following night reached the house of an American medical missionary.

•   •   •

The Reverend Dr Gates proved to be a most interesting man, the soul of hospitality, as unlike the missionary of nitwit fiction as a man could be; and most definitely a doctor, an ethnologist, botanist, zoologist and general scientist long before he was a parson. When, purely for the sake of making conversation, a thing that at first has to be made when one meets a man who has not spoken his own language for months or years, I somewhat fatuously asked him if he had made many converts, he somewhat disconcertingly replied:

“Converts to what?” and later admitted modestly that he had possibly converted a few Wild Was to tameness, a few Karens and possibly one or two arboreal Mois, to elementary ideas of hygiene and handicraft.

Anyhow, shy jungle-folk came to him with their wives and other troubles, realizing that his methods of accouchement were better than those of their own witch-doctors, who did not invariably get the best results from their method of roasting the expectant mother before a large fire in the jungle …

After an excellent dinner that night, we settled down to talk, and, having lived long enough to know when the most successful conversationalist is he who uses his ears far more than his mouth, I got the doctor to tell me of his life work. And when the good doctor at length fell silent, after apologizing for having talked so much, and I had told him it was the best talk I had had for years, I introduced the subject that, even so, was uppermost in my mind.

“Do you believe in ghosts, Doctor?” I asked as he stuffed his pipe.

“Ghosts?” he laughed. “Depends entirely on what you mean by ghosts. I haven’t an unshakable belief in the chain-rattling figure of the wicked Sir Giles who crosses the moonlit hall at midnight; nor much in the Grey Lady who is discovered sitting in costume in the music room at sunset on St John’s Eve. Why? Do you believe in ghosts?”

“Depends entirely on what you mean by ghosts,” I smiled. “I didn’t believe in any sort or kind of ghost until last Monday night. Now I have to do so.”

“Last Monday night. Let’s see. Four marches back. Ah! That means the abandoned bungalow just over the Border, the one they tried to tum into a rest-house. Stayed a night there, did you? What happened?”

“Oh, a lot of funny things. First of all, a ghost walked up and down the room in the silence and the darkness – breaking the stillness of the night by causing the boards to creak beneath his weight.”

“The weight of a ghost!” smiled the doctor.

“Weight of something,” I said.

“Well, deal with that first. Suppose a leopard came in and padded to the end of the room and back, looking for your dog, as they do.”

“I should have smelt it.”

“Probably.” “I should have heard its claws on the boards.”

“One doesn’t, in point of fact,” said the doctor. And from the way in which he spoke, he had evidently been in the same room with a leopard and darkness by night

“Anyway, we needn’t go as far as that. The boards creaked and groaned as the temperature fell. Or, more likely still, as they imperceptibly moved back into place after your weight had rested on them.”

I nodded. “Pass up.”

“Next thing?”

“Something – probably not a leopard – came and played the piano.”

“Recognize the tune?”

“No. There was no tune. In point of fact, it was a God Almighty (excuse me!) crash, as though some giant had suddenly struck every key in three octaves simultaneously. And so hard that some of the wires broke.”

“Yes. Very disturbing in the middle of the night, and admittedly not a leopard. I’ll tell you what happened.”

“Thank you,” said I, perhaps a shade sceptically.

“An iguana fell from a horizontal roof-beam. Full length onto, and as it happened, exactly parallel to, the keyboard.” “Yes …” I admitted. “That would serve. Do iguanas get up in the roof?” I asked.

“Not that I know of,” admitted Dr Gates frankly. “But there’s a mighty big lizard – they call it the goh – up here …”

“What, the Siamese toctaw?” I asked.

“A bit bigger,” said Gates. “Though I don’t know that I’ve ever seen one that would cover three octaves on the piano.”

“A snake could, of course,” he added.

“Yes,” I mused. “But it would be funny if a snake fell rigid in a straight line, like that, wouldn’t it?”

“Extremely funny, except for the person who was there listening to it,” admitted Gates. “But if a big snake fell ten or fifteen feet on to a keyboard of a piano, there would be some noise.”

“Or I’ll tell you what it might have been,” he continued. “Not an iguana, but an ichneumon.”

“Civet-cat,” said I, proud of my worldly knowledge.

“Yes, same sort of thing. Now, they do inhabit roofs, and they are apt to drop most suddenly and somewhat alarmingly from the roof to the floor. It might have been an ichneumon. I had a nice little chap here, tame as a cat. Used to worry my dog frightfully, although I had taught him to accept the hitherto-wild jungle beast as a house companion. ‘Tricks’ was a big Airedale. Stood about a foot and a half high, and the civet-cat, Jo, used to stalk him. As Tricks walked past its hiding-place Jo would run out, climb on to Tricks’s hind leg, run up and along the dog’s back and perch on his head just above his nose. I’m afraid it was the bane of poor Tricks’s life, but he put up with it very patiently.”

“Well, iguana, goh, toctaw, or ichneumon for the piano playing. Pass up. But by the way, the piano was played twice!”

“Yes, that was the iguana or goh scrambling off the piano, after resting, a bit winded from his fall, of course.”

“H’m. Well, the next thing was an eerie shudder-making cry in the room, and an indisputable glimpse of the ‘something white’ of ghostly fiction. This was fact.”

“Let’s see,” pondered the doctor. “Yes, I think we can dispose of that. There’s a very large white owl in these parts, whose nocturnal habits are not blameless. He’s quite equal to a sudden swoop right through your bungalow, in at the back and out at the front, uttering a shriek to curdle your blood as he does so.”

“Is he intentionally offensive?”

“No – it’s a – you know – ‘This is the house that Jack BuiIt’ sort of sequence. Tiny insects such as mosquitoes and moths fly about; bats come in and catch the flying insects, and the huge white owl comes in to catch the bats. That was your ghost.”

I nodded. “Pass up.”

“He’s rather an interesting chap, that bird. Biggest owl in the world, and the natives always attribute its cry to a peh, and compare the owl to the peh-nawk. When they hear it, they hurry inside their huts and, if possible, shut themselves in. And curiously enough, the cicadas seem to share their fear or dislike, for they always cease their shrilling, and the jungle becomes comparatively silent for some time after the cry has been heard. Some people think the cicadas shut up because they know that the owl eats them, and they realize that their natural enemy is near at hand. Anything else?”

“Anything!” I smiled. “These were only hors d’oeuvres variés. Yes, there was something else … I fell asleep, a fact that I frankly admit, and I awoke from a dream, another fact that I frankly admit, and the dream continued for a few seconds, so to speak, as I awoke – and a rowdy party that was in my dream was continued in my room … I am sure that, for a few seconds, or perhaps for part of one second, I was literally wide awake to the fact that this party was going on.”

“And then?” inquired Gates.

“I found that the room was in darkness, and that the party was trooping down the steps and going in under the bungalow.”

Dr Gates eyed me steadily.

“Explanations please?” I smiled.

“Ah! Now you’re asking for something,” was the quiet reply. “But haven’t you … Haven’t you … something else to tell me?”

“Well, only that I lit my lamp, got up, pulled on my boots, and went down to investigate.”

“Good for you,” said Gates. “I know exactly how you felt, but what I meant was, haven’t you something else to tell me about the – er – party?”

“No … No … Oh, yes. Of course! Above the laughter and voices, I distinctly heard a crash.”

“Sort of noise made by an almirah [big cupboard or wardrobe] falling down on its face?”

“Exactly.”

“Yes…Yes…?”

“And then a most appalling scream. The most utterly dreadful sound I had ever heard in my life.”

“Yes,” agreed Dr Gates. And I say “agreed” advisedly. For obviously he had been expecting me to say just what I had said.

“I might of course produce the peh-nawkto account for the scream, but I won’t.”

“What is it? And why not?” I asked.

“What is it? The peh-nawk is probably the bird I mentioned just now. It must be a bird. Nobody has seen it, but all jungle-dwellers have heard it. I rank myself as a jungle-dweller, and I have heard it. Like the natives themselves, I would pay down quite a perceptible little sum in hard cash rather than hear it again. And I’d travel a mighty long way round a place where it was likely to be heard. And the reason why I won’t blame the noise you heard on to the peh-nawk is because it wasn’t made by one.”

“By what was it made then?”

“Now, my friend, you are asking another question. I will reply with a story. A story that I think will answer that question. Also answer the first one of the series, and that was, ‘Do you believe in ghosts?’”

•   •   •

“Geoffrey Walsh-Kumock built that bungalow and laid out that plantation in that particular spot because, amongst other considerations – climate, soil, water, labour and so on – it was in what he considered the Unadministered Territory. This Mission is, of course, undeniably in Unadministered Territory, and at the moment you are neither in China nor Burma; neither in Siam nor Cambodia. You are nowhere, in fact. Not on any map, at least.

“And Geoffrey had the idea that if he made his plantation and built his bungalow where he did, he’d be free. No one would have any right to interfere with him.

“He was a curious chap and that was one of his idiosyncrasies – freedom … As if anyone is free – anywhere.

“However, I was glad enough when he came up this way, for it made my nearest neighbour only sixty miles away. What one might call quite near. One could have a monthly chat with a fellow white man. We got along famously, with our dozen talks a year; and, though we didn’t see eye to eye on many things, we had a mutual respect and the bond of total dissimilarity.

“He did me a lot of good, broadened my outlook, and made me more tolerant; and I tried to do him a bit of good so far as that was possible without being offensive – though I must admit it ended in my insisting on his coming and seeing me here instead of my going there, for I really am an awfully poor hand at orgy-making. I don’t play cards, I don’t drink and – I don’t like being a wet blanket. And whenever Geoffrey sent a messenger over, inviting me to his place for the first Saturday in the month, I knew what it meant. It meant, among other things, a wild party. For his monthly feasts became famous; and forest-officers and young teak men; wandering prospectors who had an idea that anybody who went off the beaten track was likely to stumble over large rubies, ingots of silver or lumps of jade; elephant hunters; and occasionally some of those wonderful people who catch large free wild beasts alive, and put them in little iron cages; were apt to be among his guests.

“Anyhow, a party, large or small, there always was, on the first Saturday in the month, at Walsh-Kumock’s place. Of course, it was famous, apart from its hospitality, by reason of its being unique, positively the only plantation in this part of the world, the only place for hundreds of miles where a white man, or any other man, tried to grow kapok, tea and rubber. Naturally it has all gone back to jungle now, and I doubt whether any of it would have done much good, unless, possibly, it was the kapok, though I have an idea that there was more in, and behind, Walsh-Kumock than met the eye.” The doctor fell silent as he eased the tobacco in his pipe and looked extremely thoughtful.

“In what way?” I asked.

“I don’t know. It was no more than wild theory on my own part, but it was such an unlikely place for such an unlikely man, that there must have been more to it than met the eye. I don’t know. Oil … rubies … jade … silver … a Consular official watching Chinese encroachment from the North? And then again, it might have been just agoraphobia, just his idiosyncratic love of solitude, his yearning to escape from his fellow-man. And yet there were the wild parties … I don’t know.

“Well, one Friday afternoon, the day before one of the monthly gatherings of half a score of people who came from all over half a score thousand square miles, Geoffrey Walsh-Kumock was sitting on the veranda of that bungalow having tea, when there came along the track leading to the bungalow a party of Kamoo jungle-men, personally conducting a gigantic python. They do, you know, in the most extraordinary manner, something like a couple of agricultural labourers leading a bull, at Home. When he thinks he’ll charge to the right, the man on the left pulls him back, and when he thinks he’ll charge to the left, the man on the right pulls him back, and if he thinks he’ll bolt straight ahead, they both pull him back.

“Same with a python. These folk tie a rattan rope round his neck, and a band of them gets at each end of it, and they lead him along. If he won’t go straight ahead, they drag him. If he goes too fast, they put the brake on. If he wants to go left or right, they do exactly as the bull-leaders do.

“Perhaps you are wondering why they took the trouble to bring this great brute – over twenty-five feet long and as thick as a man’s thigh – to call on Walsh-Kumock. It was because he was assembling specimens of the fauna of this part of the world, to give, or possibly to sell, to a man who was making a collection for the New York Museum of Natural History. “So he extended a cordial welcome to what was the very finest specimen of a snake he had ever seen.

“The next problem was how to house it worthily and safely until Brooke came for it. Suddenly he remembered a packing-case in which his piano had arrived. Incidentally, just fancy a man going to the expense and trouble of getting a piano up here.”

“How on earth did he do it?” I asked.

“Well, I should imagine every form of known transport was used between the warehouse in Bangkok and that bungalow; train, sampan, elephant, bullock-cart, and mostly human beast-of-burden. That piano must have come on men’s heads through swamp and jungle, over hill-track and forest-path, like a stag-beetle carried by ants.

“Well, into the piano packing-case, without apology or ceremony, went the huge python, a big stone was placed on the lid, the Kamoo coolies then being handsomely rewarded with a five-satang piece – about a penny – each.

“Geoffrey returned to his tea. Nor, we may imagine, did he give the snake another thought until, at the height of the party next night, when, the champagne dinner finished – it was always champagne for the guests at Geoffrey’s monthly party – and the brandy-and-soda flowing; the Devil put it into somebody’s mouth to say:

“‘If you drink much more, Geoff, you’ll be seeing snakes.’

“They had been amusing themselves by trying to snuff a burning candle standing on the veranda rail, at twenty paces, with revolvers fired from the back of the room, when Walsh-Kumock, who had been very successful, asked if anyone would let him shoot the candle off the top of his head – like William Tell and the apple.

“There was an Austrian there, a queer chap with a highly polished bald head – he was a man who was trying to grow cotton a hundred miles east of Walsh-Kumock’s place – and Geoffrey particularly wanted to drop some hot wax on his bald cranium, stick the candle in it, light it, and snuff the flame at twenty paces.

“But the Austrian, though otherwise a sensible man, objected.

“‘No, you’re drunk, Geoff,’ said he. ‘If you drink much more, you’ll be seeing snakes in a minute.’

“And that was what reminded him.

“‘Snakes!’ he cried. ‘Adam and Eve! I’ll show you a snake! I’ve got the very one that escaped from the Garden of Eden, downstairs. Come and have a look.’

“And picking up the candle and telling someone else to bring the lamp, he led the way down those steps and they all trooped in under the bungalow.

“‘Here, catch hold of this,’ he said to somebody, gave him the candle, went to pull the big stone off the top of the packing-case, and overturned the whole thing.

“There was a crash, as it went over and the stone and lid fell away, releasing the enormous python. Before that lot of drunken and half-drunken and wine-excited young men knew it, that twenty-five feet of immeasurable deadly strength was among them. The man holding the lamp, backing away, fell over the stone, dropping the lamp as he did so. The lamp went out. The man who held the candle fled for his life, and as the rest turned, shouting, scrambling, stumbling in the pitch darkness, bumping into the teangs, they heard a scream that curdled their blood.

“It was one of them who told me all this, and I shall never forget the phrase he used:

“‘It was a shrieking scream of agony and fear that seemed to rend the very fabric of the night with a gigantic tearing sound that pierced one’s eardrums.’

“He wasn’t an Englishman, as you may imagine.

“The first man who returned with a light held above his head saw Geoffrey Walsh-Kumock bound to one of the twelve-foot teangs by a gigantic rope, a living rope, the python – whose open mouth and coldly glaring eyes hovered a few inches from those of its victim, is crushed and mangled victim, in whose body every single bone was broken a dozen times.”

•   •   •

“Yes, I heard every detail of the whole affair from an eyewitness, the man who saw him in the serpent’s coils. He came straight here, just as quickly as he could travel, and I had to nurse him for quite a while, before he was fit to take up life again.”

We sat a while in silence.

“Before I leave this place, if I ever do,” said Dr Gates, “I shall come to believe that I too was an eyewitness – instead of only an ear-witness – of what happened that night.”

“A what?”

“An ear-witness. Like yourself. The night I slept there, I heard – exactly what you did. I don’t mean the creakings of the dry floorboards nor the falling of the lizard on to the piano and the hooting of the owl; but the laughter, the descent to the place beneath, the brief hubbub, and then the cry.”

“Do we believe in ghosts, you and I, Doctor?” I asked.

“No, no, of course not. Aren’t we rational, sensible men? We each dreamed a dream, a nightmare, rather; and were wakened by the scream of the peh-nawk.”

“Quite so,” I agreed. “Obviously … But, tell me. What was your chief essential fundamental sensation, your real mental reaction, to that bungalow?”

“Fear. Soul-shaking, mind-enfeebling, body-devitalizing fear,” he replied.

“Mine too,” I admitted. “There I really knew fear.”

Rough Shooting:
True Tales & Strange Stories (1944)

THE SUNDIAL

R. H. Malden

1943

The following story came into my hands by pure chance. I had wandered into a second-hand bookshop in the neighbourhood of the Charing Cross Road and was about to leave it empty-handed. On a shelf near the door my eye fell upon a copy of Hacket’s Scrinia Reserata solidly bound in leather, which I thought well worth the few shillings which the proprietor was willing to accept for it. It is not an easy book to come by, and is of real value to anyone who wants to understand certain aspects of English Church History during the first half of the seventeenth century.

When I opened the book at home a thickish wad of paper fell out. It proved to consist of several sheets of foolscap covered with writing. I have reproduced the contents word for word.

From the look of the paper I judged that it had been there for at least thirty years. The author had not signed it, and there was nothing to indicate to whom the book had belonged. I think I could make a guess at the neighbourhood to which the story relates, and if I am right it should not be difficult to identify the house and discover the name of the tenant. But as he seems to have wished to remain anonymous he shall do so, as far as I am concerned.

The form of the story suggests that he intended to publish it; probably in some magazine. As far as I know it has not been printed before.

I belong to one of the numerous middle-class English families which for several generations have followed various professions, with credit, but without ever attaining any very special distinction. In our own case India could almost claim us as hereditary bondsmen. For more than a century most of our men had made their way there, and had served John Company or the Crown in various capacities. One of my uncles had risen to be Legal Member of the Viceroy’s Council. So when my own time came, to India I went – in the Civil Service – and there I lived for five and twenty years.

My career was neither more nor less adventurous than the average. The routine of my work was occasionally broken by experiences which would sound incredible to an English reader, and therefore need not be set down here. Just before the time came for my retirement a legacy made me a good deal better off than I had had any reason to expect to be. So upon my return to England I found that it would be possible for me to adopt the life of a country gentleman, upon a modest scale, but with the prospect of finding sufficient occupation and amusement.

I was never married, and had been too long out of England to have any very strong ties remaining. I was free to establish myself where I pleased, and the advertisements in the Field and Country Life offered houses of every description in every part of the kingdom. After much correspondence, and some fruitless journeys, I came upon one which seemed to satisfy my requirements. It lay about sixty miles north of London upon a main line of railway. That was an important point, as I was a Fellow of both the Asiatic and Historical Societies, and had long looked forward to attending their meetings regularly. As a boy I had known the neighbourhood slightly and had liked it, though it is not generally considered beautiful. There were two packs of hounds within reach, which could be followed with such a stable as I should be able to afford.

The house was an old one. It had been a good deal larger, but part had been battered down during the Civil War, when it was besieged by the Parliamentary troops, and never rebuilt. It belonged to one of the largest landowners in the county, whom I will call Lord Rye. It generally served as the dower-house of the family, but as there was at that moment no dowager Countess, and as Lord Rye himself was a young man, and both his sisters were married, it was not likely to be wanted for some time to come. It had been unoccupied for nearly two years. The last tenant, a retired doctor, had been found dead on the lawn at the bottom of the steps leading up to the garden door. His heart had been in a bad condition for some time past, so that his sudden death was not surprising; but the neighbouring village viewed the incident with some suspicion. One or two of the older people professed to remember traditions of “trouble” there in former years.

This had made it difficult to get a caretaker, and as Lord Rye was anxious to let again he was willing to take an almost nominal rent. In fact his whole attitude suggested that I was doing him a favour by becoming his tenant. About five hundred acres of shooting generally went with the house, and I was glad to find that I could have them very cheaply.

I moved in at midsummer, and each day made me more and more pleased with my new surroundings.

After my years in India the garden was a particular source of delight to me; but I will not describe it more minutely than is necessary to make what follows intelligible. Behind the house was a good-sized lawn, flanked by shrubbery. On the far side, parallel with the house, ran a splendid yew hedge, nearly fifteen feet high and very thick. It came up to the shrubbery at either end, but was pierced by two archways about thirty yards apart, giving access to the flower-garden beyond. Almost in the middle of the lawn was an old tree stump, or what looked like one, some three feet high. Though covered with ivy it was not picturesque, and I told Lord Rye that I should like to take it up. “Do by all means,” he said, “I certainly should if I lived here. I believe poor Riley (the last tenant) intended to put a sundial there. I think it would look rather nice, don’t you?”

This struck me as a good idea. I ordered a sundial from a well-known firm of heliological experts in Cockspur Street, and ordered the stump to be grubbed up as soon as it arrived.

One morning towards the end of September I woke unrefreshed after a night of troubled dreams. I could not recall them very distinctly, but I had seemed to be trying to lift a very heavy weight of some kind from the ground. But, before I could raise it, an overwhelming terror had taken hold of me – though I could not remember why – and I woke to find my forehead wet with perspiration. Each time I fell asleep again the dream repeated itself with mechanical regularity, though the details did not become any more distinct. So I was heartily glad it had become late enough to get up. The day was wet and chilly. I felt tired and unwell, and was, moreover, depressed by a vague sense of impending disaster. This was accentuated by a feeling that it lay within my power to avert the catastrophe, if only I could discover what it was.

In the afternoon the weather cleared, and I thought that a ride would do me good. I rode fairly hard for some distance, and it was past five o’clock before I had reached my own bounds’-ditch on my way home. At that particular place a small wood ran along the edge of my property for about a quarter of a mile. I was riding slowly down the outside, and was perhaps a hundred yards from the angle where I meant to turn it, when I noticed a man standing at the corner. The light was beginning to fail, and he was so close to the edge of the wood that at first I could not be sure whether it was a human figure, or only an oddly shaped tree-stump which I had never noticed before. But when I got a little nearer I saw that my first impression had been correct, and that it was a man. He seemed to be dressed like an ordinary agricultural labourer. He was standing absolutely still and seemed to be looking very intently in my direction. But he was shading his eyes with his hand, so that I could not make out his face. Before I had got close enough to make him out more definitely he turned suddenly and vanished round the corner of the wood. His movements were rapid: but he somehow gave the impression of being deformed, though in what precise respect I could not tell. Naturally my suspicions were stirred, so I put my horse to a canter. But when we had reached the corner he shied violently, and I had some difficulty in getting him to pass it. When we had got round, the mysterious man was nowhere to be seen. In front and on the left hand lay a very large stubble field, without a vestige of cover of any kind. I could see that he was not crossing it, and unless he had flown he could not have reached the other side.

On the right hand lay the ditch bounding the wood. As is usual in that country it was both wide and deep, and had some two or three feet of mud and water at the bottom. If the man had gone that way he had some very pressing reason for wishing to avoid me: and I could detect no trace of his passage at any point.

So there was nothing to be done but go home, and tell the policeman next day to keep his eyes open for any suspicious strangers. However, no attempts were made upon any of my belongings, and when October came my pheasants did not seem to have been unlawfully diminished.

October that year was stormy, and one Saturday night about the middle of the month it blew a regular gale. I lay awake long listening to the wind, and to all the confused sounds which fill an old house in stormy weather. Twice I seemed to hear footsteps in the passage. Once I could have almost sworn my door was cautiously opened and closed again. When at last I dropped off I was disturbed by a repetition of my former dream. But this time the details were rather more distinct. Again I was trying to lift a heavy weight from the ground: but now I knew that there was something hidden under it. What the concealed object might be I could not tell, but as I worked to bring it to light a feeling began to creep over me that I did not want to see it. This soon deepened into horror at the bare idea of seeing it: though I had still no notion what manner of thing it might be. Yet I could not abandon my task. So presently I found myself in the position of working hard to accomplish what I would have given the world to have left undone. At this point I woke, to find myself shaking with fright, and repeating aloud the apparently meaningless sentence – “If you’ll pull, I’ll push.”

I did not sleep for the rest of that night. Beside the noise of the storm, the prospect of a repetition of that dream was quite enough to keep me awake. To add to my discomfort a verse from Ecclesiastes ran in my head with dismal persistence – “But if a man live many years and rejoice in them all, yet let him remember the days of darkness, for they shall be many.” Days of darkness seemed to be coming upon me now, and my mind was filled with vague alarm.

The next day was fine, and after Church I thought I would see how my fruit trees had fared during the night. The kitchen-garden was enclosed by a high brick wall. On the side nearest the house there were two doors, which were always kept locked on Sunday. In the wall opposite was a trapdoor, about three feet square, giving on to a rather untidy piece of ground, partly orchard and partly waste. When I had unlocked the door I saw standing by the opposite wall the figure which I had seen at the corner of the wood. His neck was abnormally long, and so malformed that his head lolled sideways on to his right shoulder in a disgusting and almost inhuman fashion. He was bent almost double; and I think he was misshapen in some other respect as well. But of that I could not be certain. He raised his hand with what seemed to be a threatening gesture, then turned, and slipped through the trapdoor with remarkable quickness. I was after him immediately, but on reaching the opposite wall received a shock which stopped me like a physical blow. The trapdoor was shut and bolted on the inside. I tried to persuade myself that a violent slam might make the bolts shoot, but I knew that that was really impossible. I had to choose between two explanations. Either my visitor was a complete hallucination, or else he possessed the unusual power of being able to bolt a door upon the side on which he himself was not. The latter was upon the whole the more comforting, and – in view of some of my Indian experiences – the more probable, supposition.

After a little hesitation I opened the trap and, as there was nothing to be seen, got through it and went up to the top of the orchard, where the kennels lay. But neither of my dogs would follow the scent. When brought to the spot where his feet must have touched the ground they whined and showed every symptom of alarm. When I let go of their collars they hurried home in a way which showed plainly what they thought of the matter.

This seemed to dispose of the idea of hallucination, and, as before, there was nothing else to be done but await developments as patiently as I could. For the next fortnight nothing remarkable took place. I had my usual health and as near an approach to my usual spirits as could reasonably be expected. I had visitors for part of the time, but no one to whom I should have cared to confide the story at this stage. I was not molested further by day, and my dreams, though varied, were not alarming.

On the morning of the 31st I received a letter announcing that my sundial had been dispatched, and it duly arrived in the course of the afternoon. It was heavy, so by the time we had got it out of the railway van and on to the lawn it was too late to place it in position that day. The men departed to drink my health, and I turned towards the house. Just as I reached the door I paused. A sensation – familiar to all men who are much alone – had come over me, and I felt as if I were being watched from behind. Usually the feeling can be dispelled by turning round. I did so, but on this occasion the sense that I was not alone merely increased. Of course the lawn was deserted, but I stood looking across it for a few moments, telling myself that I must not let my nerves play me tricks. Then I saw a face detach itself slowly from the darkness of the hedge at one side of the left-hand arch. For a few seconds it hung, horribly poised, in the middle of the opening like a mask suspended by an invisible thread. Then the body to which it belonged slid into the clear space, and I saw my acquaintance of the wood and kitchen-garden, this time sharply outlined against a saffron sky. There could be no mistaking his bowed form and distorted neck, but now his appearance was made additionally abominable by his expression. The yellow sunset light seemed to stream all round him, and showed me features convulsed with fury. He gnashed his teeth and clawed the air with both hands. I have never seen such a picture of impotent rage.

It was more by instinct than by any deliberate courage that I ran straight across the lawn towards him. He was gone in a flash, and when I came through the archway where he had stood he was hurrying down the side of the hedge towards the other. He moved with an odd shuffling gait, and I made sure that I should soon overtake him. But to my surprise I found that I did not gain much. His limping shuffle took him over the ground as fast as I could cover it. In fact, when I reached the point from which I had started I thought I had actually lost a little. When we came round for the second time there was no doubt about it. This was humiliating, but I persevered, relying now on superior stamina. But during the third circuit it suddenly flashed upon me that our positions had become reversed. I was no longer the pursuer. He – it – – whatever the creature was, was now chasing me, and the distance between us was diminishing rapidly.

I am not ashamed to admit that my nerve failed completely. I believe I screamed aloud. I ran on stumblingly, helplessly, as one runs in a dream, knowing now that the creature behind was gaining at every stride. How long the chase lasted I do not know, but presently I could hear his irregular footstep close behind me, and a horrible dank breath played about the back of my neck. We were on the side towards the house when I looked up and saw my butler standing at the garden door, with a note in his hand. The sight of his prosaic form seemed to break the spell which had kept me running blindly round and round the hedge. I was almost exhausted, but I tore across the lawn, and fell in a heap at the bottom of the steps.

Parker was an ex-sergeant of Marines, which amounts to saying that he was incapable of surprise and qualified to cope with any practical emergency which could arise. He picked me up, helped me into the house, gave me a tumbler of brandy diluted with soda-water, and fortified himself with another, without saying a word. How much he saw, or what he thought of it, I could never learn, for all subsequent approaches to the question were parried with the evasive skill which seems to be the birthright of all them that go down to the sea in ships. But his general view of the situation is indicated by the fact that he sent for the Rector, not the doctor, and – as I learned afterwards – had a private conference with him before he left the house. Soon afterwards he joined the choir – or in his own phrase “assisted with the singing in the chancel” – and for many months the village church had no more regular or vocal attendant.

The Rector heard my story gravely, and was by no means disposed to make light of it. Something similar had come his way once before, when he had had the charge of a parish on the Northumbrian Border. He was confident, he said, that no harm could come to me that night, if I remained indoors, and departed to look up some of his authorities on such subjects.

That night was noisy with wind, so the insistent knocking which I seemed to hear during the small hours at the garden-door and ground-floor windows, which were secured with outside shutters, may have had no existence outside my imagination. I had asked Parker to occupy a dressing-room opening out of my bedroom for the night. He seemed very ready to do so, but I do not think that he slept very much either. Early next morning the Rector reappeared, saying that he thought he had got a clue, though it was impossible to say yet how much it might be worth. He had brought with him the first volume of the parish register, and showed me the following note on the inside of the cover:

“October 31st, 1578. On this day Jn. Croxton a Poore Man hanged himself from a Beame within his House. He was a very stubborn Popish Recusant and ye manner of his Death was in accord with his whole Life. He was buried that evening at ye Cross Roades.”

“It is unfortunate,” continued the Rector, “that we have no sixteenth-century map of the parish. But there is a map of 1759 which marks a hamlet at the crossroads just outside your gate. The hamlet doesn’t exist now – you know that the population hereabouts is much less than it used to be – but it used to be called New Cross. I think that must mean that these particular crossroads are comparatively recent. Now this house is known to have been built between 1596 and 1602. The straight way from Farley to Abbotsholme would lie nearly across its site. I think, therefore, that the Elizabethan Lord Rye diverted the old road when he laid out his grounds. That would also account for the loop which the present road makes” – here he traced its course with his finger on the map which he had brought.

“Now I strongly suspect that your visitor was Mr. Croxton, and that he is buried somewhere in your grounds. If we could find the place I think we could keep him quiet for the future. But I am afraid that there is nothing to guide us.”

At this point Parker came in. “Beg your pardon, Sir, but Hardman is wishful to speak to you. About that there bollard on the quarter-deck, Sir – stump on the lawn, I should have said, Sir – what you told him to put over the side.”

We went out, and found Hardman and the boy looking at a large hole in the lawn. By the side of it lay what we had taken for a tree stump. But it had never struck root there. It was a very solid wooden stake, some nine feet in length over all, with a sharp point. It had been driven some six feet into the ground, passing through a layer of rubble about three feet from the surface. At the bottom the hole widened, forming a large, and plainly artificial, cavity. The earth here looked as if it had been recently disturbed, but the condition of the stake showed that that was impossible. It was obvious to both of us that we had come upon Mr. Croxton’s grave, at the original crossroads, and that what had appeared to be a natural stump was really the stake which had been driven through it to keep him there. We did not, of course, take the gardeners into our confidence, but told them to leave the place for the present as it might contain some interesting antiques – presumably Roman – which we would get out carefully with our own hands.

We soon enlarged the shaft sufficiently to explore the cavity at the bottom. We had naturally expected to find a skeleton, or something of the sort, there, but we were disappointed. We could not discover the slightest vestige of bones or body, or of any dust except that of natural soil. Once while we were working we were startled by a harsh sound like the cry of a night-jar, apparently very close at hand. But whatever it was passed away very quickly, as if the creature which had made it was on the wing, and it was not repeated.

By the Rector’s advice we went to the churchyard and brought away sufficient consecrated earth to fill up the cavity. The shaft was filled up, and the sundial securely planted on top of it. The pious mottoes with which it was adorned, according to custom, assumed for the first time a practical significance.

“It not infrequently happens,” said the Rector, “that those who for any reason have not received full Christian Burial are unable, or unwilling, to remain quiet in their graves, particularly if the interment has been at all carelessly carried out in the first instance. They seem to be particularly active on or about the anniversary of their death in any year. The range of their activities is varied, and it would be difficult to define the nature of the power which animates them, or the source from which it is derived. But I incline to think that it is less their own personality than some force inherent in the earth itself, of which they become the vehicle. With the exception of Vampires (who are altogether sui generis and virtually unknown in this country), they can seldom do much direct physical harm. They operate indirectly by terrifying, but are commonly compelled to stop there. But it is always necessary for them to have free access to their graves. If that is obstructed in any way their power seems to lapse. That is why I think that their vitality is in some way bred of the earth: and I am sure that you won’t be troubled with any more visits now.

“Our friend was afraid that your sundial would interfere with his convenience, and I think he was trying to frighten you into leaving the house. Of course, if your heart had been weak he might have disposed of you as he did of your unfortunate predecessor. His projection of himself into your dreams was part of his general plan: I incline to think, however, that it was an error of judgement, as it might have put you on your guard. But I very much doubt whether he could have inflicted any physical injury on you if he had caught you yesterday afternoon.”

“H’m,” said I, “you might be right there. But I am very glad that I shall never know.”

Next day Parker asked for leave to go to London. He returned with a large picture representing King Solomon issuing directions to a corvée of demons of repellent aspect whom he had (according to a well-known Jewish legend) compelled to labour at the building of the Temple. This he proceeded to affix with drawing-pins to the inside of the pantry door. He called my attention to it particularly, and said that he had got it from a Jew whom he had known in Malta, who had recently opened a branch establishment in the Whitechapel Road. I ventured to make some comment on the singularity of the subject, but Parker was, as usual, impenetrable. “Beggin’ your pardon, Sir,” he said, “there’s some things what a civilian don’t never ’ave no chance of learnin’, not even if ’e ’ad the brains for it. I done my twenty-one years in the Service – in puris naturalibus all the time as the saying is – and” (pointing to the figure of the King) “you may lay to it that that there man knew ’is business.”

Nine Ghosts (1943)