A Book of Ghosts: 41
Author: Various authors
Date: 1828-12-31T15:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Ghost Stories; Supernatural Fiction; Weird Fiction; Horror; Murder
Description: Thirteen unnerving collisions with the other world.. _________ By various authors. ~ ~ ~ ~ Compiled by ECM.
Publisher: MobileRead.com
Rights: Public domain where copyright is “Life+80” or less.

A BOOK OF GHOSTS
– 41 –

THINGS THAT GO BUMP
IN THE NIGHT

MobileRead Edition
2023

Thirteen unnerving collisions with the other world.

By various authors.
Compiled by ECM.

Contents were originally published 1829 ~ 1936. This book is in the public domain where copyright is “Life+80” or less.

CONTENTS:

- The Tapestried Chamber
– 1829
by Sir Walter Scott
(1771 –1832)

- A Strange Story from the Coast
– 1879
by Rebecca Harding Davis
(1831–1910)

- The Open Door
– 1882
by Charlotte Riddell
(1832–1906)

- Nissa
– 1884
by Albert Delpit
(1849–1893)

- The Real and the Counterfeit
– 1894
by Louisa Baldwin
(1845–1925)

- The Little Room
– 1895
by Madeline Yale Wynne
(1847–1918)

- Old Applejoy’s Ghost
– 1900
by Frank R. Stockton
(1834–1902)

- The First Comer
– 1896
by B. M. Croker
(1849–1920)

- How Fear Departed
from the Long Gallery
– 1911
by E. F. Benson
(1867–1940)

- The Eternity of Forms
– 1916
by Jack London
(1876–1916)

- The Jade Bracelet
– 1918
by Mary E. Wilkins-Freeman
(1852–1930)

- The Voice in the Night
– 1921
by W. J. Wintle
(1861–1934)

- The White Cat
– 1936
by Sir Hugh Walpole
(1884–1941)

A BOOK OF GHOSTS:
– 41 –

THE TAPESTRIED CHAMBER;

OR

THE LADY IN THE SACQUE.

Sir Walter Scott

1829

The following narrative is given from the pen, so far as memory permits, in the same character in which it was presented to the author’s ear; nor has he claim to further praise, or to be more deeply censured, than in proportion to the good or bad judgement which he has employed in selecting his materials, as he has studiously avoided any attempt at ornament which might interfere with the simplicity of the tale.

At the same time, it must be admitted that the particular class of stories which turns on the marvellous possesses a stronger influence when told than when committed to print. The volume taken up at noonday, though rehearsing the same incidents, conveys a much more feeble impression than is achieved by the voice of the speaker on a circle of fireside auditors, who hang upon the narrative as the narrator details the minute incidents which serve to give it authenticity, and lowers his voice with an affectation of mystery while he approaches the fearful and wonderful part. It was with such advantages that the present writer heard the following events related, more than twenty years since, by the celebrated Miss Seward of Litchfield, who, to her numerous accomplishments, added, in a remarkable degree, the power of narrative in private conversation. In its present form the tale must necessarily lose all the interest which was attached to it by the flexible voice and intelligent features of the gifted narrator. Yet still, read aloud to an undoubting audience by the doubtful light of the closing evening, or in silence by a decaying taper, and amidst the solitude of a half-lighted apartment, it may redeem its character as a good ghost story. Miss Seward always affirmed that she had derived her information from an authentic source, although she suppressed the names of the two persons chiefly concerned. I will not avail myself of any particulars I may have since received concerning the localities of the detail, but suffer them to rest under the same general description in which they were first related to me; and for the same reason I will not add to or diminish the narrative by any circumstance, whether more or less material, but simply rehearse, as I heard it, a story of supernatural terror.

About the end of the American war, when the officers of Lord Cornwallis’s army, which surrendered at Yorktown, and others, who had been made prisoners during the impolitic and ill-fated controversy, were returning to their own country, to relate their adventures, and repose themselves after their fatigues, there was amongst them a general officer, to whom Miss S. gave the name of Browne, but merely, as I understood, to save the inconvenience of introducing a nameless agent in the narrative. He was an officer of merit, as well as a gentleman of high consideration for family and attainments.

Some business had carried General Browne upon a tour through the western counties, when, in the conclusion of a morning stage, he found himself in the vicinity of a small country town, which presented a scene of uncommon beauty, and of a character peculiarly English.

The little town, with its stately old church, whose tower bore testimony to the devotion of ages long past, lay amidst pastures and cornfields of small extent, but bounded and divided with hedgerow timber of great age and size. There were few marks of modern improvement. The environs of the place intimated neither the solitude of decay nor the bustle of novelty; the houses were old, but in good repair; and the beautiful little river murmured freely on its way to the left of the town, neither restrained by a dam nor bordered by a towing-path.

Upon a gentle eminence, nearly a mile to the southward of the town, were seen, amongst many venerable oaks and tangled thickets, the turrets of a castle as old as the walls of York and Lancaster, but which seemed to have received important alterations during the age of Elizabeth and her successor, It had not been a place of great size; but whatever accommodation it formerly afforded was, it must be supposed, still to be obtained within its walls. At least, such was the inference which General Browne drew from observing the smoke arise merrily from several of the ancient wreathed and carved chimney-stalks. The wall of the park ran alongside of the highway for two or three hundred yards; and through the different points by which the eye found glimpses into the woodland scenery, it seemed to be well stocked. Other points of view opened in succession – now a full one of the front of the old castle, and now a side glimpse at its particular towers, the former rich in all the bizarrerie of the Elizabethan school, while the simple and solid strength of other parts of the building seemed to show that they had been raised more for defence than ostentation.

Delighted with the partial glimpses which he obtained of the castle through the woods and glades by which this ancient feudal fortress was surrounded, our military traveller was determined to inquire whether it might not deserve a nearer view, and whether it contained family pictures or other objects of curiosity worthy of a stranger’s visit, when, leaving the vicinity of the park, he rolled through a clean and well-paved street, and stopped at the door of a well-frequented inn.

Before ordering horses, to proceed on his journey, General Browne made inquiries concerning the proprietor of the château which had so attracted his admiration, and was equally surprised and pleased at hearing in reply a nobleman named, whom we shall call Lord Woodville. How fortunate! Much of Browne’s early recollections, both at school and at college, had been connected with young Woodville, whom, by a few questions, he now ascertained to be the same with the owner of this fair domain. He had been raised to the peerage by the decease of his father a few months before, and, as the General learned from the landlord, the term of mourning being ended, was now taking possession of his paternal estate in the jovial season of merry, autumn, accompanied by a select party of friends, to enjoy the sports of a country famous for game.

This was delightful news to our traveller. Frank Woodville had been Richard Browne’s fag at Eton, and his chosen intimate at Christ Church; their pleasures and their tasks had been the same; and the honest soldier’s heart warmed to find his early friend in possession of so delightful a residence, and of an estate, as the landlord assured him with a nod and a wink, fully adequate to maintain and add to his dignity. Nothing was more natural than that the traveller should suspend a journey, which there was nothing to render hurried, to pay a visit to an old friend under such agreeable circumstances.

The fresh horses, therefore, had only the brief task of conveying the General’s travelling carriage to Woodville Castle. A porter admitted them at a modern Gothic lodge, built in that style to correspond with the castle itself, and at the same time rang a bell to give warning of the approach of visitors. Apparently the sound of the bell had suspended the separation of the company, bent on the various amusements of the morning; for, on entering the court of the château, several young men were lounging about in their sporting dresses, looking at and criticizing the dogs which the keepers held in readiness to attend their pastime. As General Browne alighted, the young lord came to the gate of the hall, and for an instant gazed, as at a stranger, upon the countenance of his friend, on which war, with its fatigues and its wounds, had made a great alteration. But the uncertainty lasted no longer than till the visitor had spoken, and the hearty greeting which followed was such as can only be exchanged betwixt those who have passed together the merry days of careless boyhood or early youth.

“If I could have formed a wish, my dear Browne,” said Lord Woodville, “it would have been to have you here, of all men, upon this occasion, which my friends are good enough to hold as a sort of holiday. Do not think you have been unwatched during the years you have been absent from us. I have traced you through your dangers, your triumphs, your misfortunes, and was delighted to see that, whether in victory or defeat, the name of my old friend was always distinguished with applause.”

The General made a suitable reply, and congratulated his friend on his new dignities, and the possession of a place and domain so beautiful.

“Nay, you have seen nothing of it as yet,” said Lord Woodville, “and I trust you do not mean to leave us till you are better acquainted with it. It is true, I confess, that my present party is pretty large, and the old house, like other places of the kind, does not possess so much accommodation as the extent of the outward walls appears to promise. But we can give you a comfortable old-fashioned room, and I venture to suppose that your campaigns have taught you to be glad of worse quarters.”

The General shrugged his shoulders, and laughed. “I presume,” he said, “the worst apartment in your château is considerably superior to the old tobacco-cask in which I was fain to take up my night’s lodging when I was in the Bush, as the Virginians call it, with the light corps. There I lay, like Diogenes himself, so delighted with my covering from the elements, that I made a vain attempt to have it rolled on to my next quarters; but my commander for the time would give way to no such luxurious provision, and I took farewell of my beloved cask with tears in my eyes.”

“Well, then, since you do not fear your quarters,” said Lord Woodville, “you will stay with me a week at least. Of guns, dogs, fishing-rods, flies, and means of sport by sea and land, we have enough and to spare – you cannot pitch on an amusement but we will find the means of pursuing it. But if you prefer the gun and pointers, I will go with you myself, and see whether you have mended your shooting since you have been amongst the Indians of the back settlements.”

The General gladly accepted his friendly host’s proposal in all its points. After a morning of manly exercise, the company met at dinner, where it was the delight of Lord Woodville to conduce to the display of the high properties of his recovered friend, so as to recommend him to his guests, most of whom were persons of distinction. He led General Browne to speak of the scenes he had witnessed; and as every word marked alike the brave officer and the sensible man, who retained possession of his cool judgement under the most imminent dangers, the company looked upon the soldier with general respect, as on one who had proved himself possessed of an uncommon portion of personal courage – that attribute of all others of which everybody desires to be thought possessed.

The day at Woodville Castle ended as usual in such mansions. The hospitality stopped within the limits of good order. Music, in which the young lord was a proficient, succeeded to the circulation of the bottle; cards and billiards, for those who preferred such amusements, were in readiness; but the exercise of the morning required early hours, and not long after eleven o’clock the guests began to retire to their several apartments.

The young lord himself conducted his friend, General Browne, to the chamber destined for him, which answered the description he had given of it, being comfortable, but old-fashioned, The bed was of the massive form used in the end of the seventeenth century, and the curtains of faded silk, heavily trimmed with tarnished gold. But then the sheets, pillows, and blankets looked delightful to the campaigner, when he thought of his “mansion, the cask.” There was an air of gloom in the tapestry hangings, which, with their worn-out graces, curtained the walls of the little chamber, and gently undulated as the autumnal breeze found its way through the ancient lattice window, which pattered and whistled as the air gained entrance. The toilet, too, with its mirror, turbaned after the manner of the beginning of the century, with a coiffure of murrey-coloured silk, and its hundred strange-shaped boxes, providing for arrangements which had been obsolete for more than fifty years, had an antique, and in so far a melancholy, aspect. But nothing could blaze more brightly and cheerfully than the two large wax candles; or if aught could rival them, it was the flaming, bickering faggots in the chimney, that sent at once their gleam and their warmth through the snug apartment, which, notwithstanding the general antiquity of its appearance, was not wanting in the least convenience that modern habits rendered either necessary or desirable.

“This is an old-fashioned sleeping apartment, General,” said the young lord; “but I hope you find nothing that makes you envy your old tobacco-cask.”

“I am not particular respecting my lodgings,” replied the General; “yet were I to make any choice, I would prefer this chamber by many degrees to the gayer and more modern rooms of your family mansion. Believe me that, when I unite its modern air of comfort with its venerable antiquity, and recollect that it is your lordship’s property, I shall feel in better quarters here than if I were in the best hotel London could afford.”

“I trust – I have no doubt – that you will find yourself as comfortable as I wish you, my dear General,” said the young nobleman; and once more bidding his guest good-night, he shook him by the hand, and withdrew.

The General once more looked round him, and internally congratulating himself on his return to peaceful life, the comforts of which were endeared by the recollection of the hardships and dangers he had lately sustained, undressed himself, and prepared for a luxurious night’s rest.

Here, contrary to the custom of this species of tale, we leave the General in possession of his apartment until the next morning.

The company assembled for breakfast at an early hour, but without the appearance of General Browne, who seemed the guest that Lord Woodville was desirous of honouring above all whom his hospitality had assembled around him. He more than once expressed surprise at the General’s absence, and at length sent a servant to make inquiry after him. The man brought back information that General Browne had been walking abroad since an early hour of the morning, in defiance of the weather, which was misty and ungenial.

“The custom of a soldier,” said the young nobleman to his friends. “Many of them acquire habitual vigilance, and cannot sleep after the early hour at which their duty usually commands them to be alert.”

Yet the explanation which Lord Woodville thus offered to the company seemed hardly satisfactory to his own mind, and it was in a fit of silence and abstraction that he waited the return of the General. It took place near an hour after the breakfast bell had rung. He looked fatigued and feverish. His hair, the powdering and arrangement of which was at this time one of the most important occupations of a man’s whole day, and marked his fashion as much as in the present time the tying of a cravat, or the want of one, was dishevelled, uncurled, void of powder, and dank with dew. His clothes were huddled on with a careless negligence, remarkable in a military man, whose real or supposed duties are usually held to include some attention to the toilet; and his looks were haggard and ghastly in a peculiar degree.

“So you have stolen a march upon us this morning, my dear General,” said Lord Woodville; “or you have not found your bed so much to your mind as I had hoped and you seemed to expect. How did you rest last night?”

“Oh, excellently well! remarkably well! never better in my life,” said General Browne rapidly, and yet with an air of embarrassment which was obvious to his friend. He then hastily swallowed a cup of tea, and neglecting or refusing whatever else was offered, seemed to fall into a fit of abstraction.

“You will take the gun today, General?” said his friend and host, but had to repeat the question twice ere he received the abrupt answer, “No, my lord; I am sorry I cannot have the opportunity of spending another day with your lordship; my post horses are ordered, and will be here directly.”

All who were present showed surprise, and Lord Woodville immediately replied “Post horses, my good friend! What can you possibly want with them when you promised to stay with me quietly for at least a week?”

“I believe,” said the General, obviously much embarrassed, “that I might, in the pleasure of my first meeting with your lordship, have said something about stopping here a few days; but I have since found it altogether impossible.”

“That is very extraordinary,” answered the young nobleman. “You seemed quite disengaged yesterday, and you cannot have had a summons today, for our post has not come up from the town, and therefore you cannot have received any letters.”

General Browne, without giving any further explanation, muttered something about indispensable business, and insisted on the absolute necessity of his departure in a manner which silenced all opposition on the part of his host, who saw that his resolution was taken, and forbore all further importunity.

“At least, however,” he said, “permit me, my dear Browne, since go you will or must, to show you the view from the terrace, which the mist, that is now rising, will soon display.”

He threw open a sash-window, and stepped down upon the terrace as he spoke. The General followed him mechanically, but seemed little to attend to what his host was saying, as, looking across an extended and rich prospect, he pointed out the different objects worthy of observation. Thus they moved on till Lord Woodville had attained his purpose of drawing his guest entirely apart from the rest of the company, when, turning round upon him with an air of great solemnity, he addressed him thus:

“Richard Browne, my old and very dear friend, we are now alone. Let me conjure you to answer me upon the word of a friend, and the honour of a soldier. How did you in reality rest during last night?”

“Most wretchedly indeed, my lord,” answered the General, in the same tone of solemnity – “so miserably, that I would not run the risk of such a second night, not only for all the lands belonging to this castle, but for all the country which I see from this elevated point of view.”

“This is most extraordinary,” said the young lord, as if speaking to himself; “then there must be something in the reports concerning that apartment.” Again turning to the General, he said, “For God’s sake, my dear friend, be candid with me, and let me know the disagreeable particulars which have befallen you under a roof, where, with consent of the owner, you should have met nothing save comfort.”

The General seemed distressed by this appeal, and paused a moment before he replied. “My dear lord,” he at length said, “what happened to me last night is of a nature so peculiar and so unpleasant, that I could hardly bring myself to detail it even to your lordship, were it not that, independent of my wish to gratify any request of yours, I think that sincerity on my part may lead to some explanation about a circumstance equally painful and mysterious. To others, the communication I am about to make, might place me in the light of a weak-minded, superstitious fool, who suffered his own imagination to delude and bewilder him; but you have known me in childhood and youth, and will not suspect me of having adopted in manhood the feelings and frailties from which my early years were free.” Here he paused, and his friend replied,

“Do not doubt my perfect confidence in the truth of your communication, however strange it may be,” replied Lord Woodville. “I know your firmness of disposition too well, to suspect you could be made the object of imposition, and am aware that your honour and your friendship will equally deter you from exaggerating whatever you may have witnessed.”

“Well, then,” said the General, “I will proceed with my story as well as I can, relying upon your candour, and yet distinctly feeling that I would rather face a battery than recall to my mind the odious recollections of last night.”

He paused a second time, and then perceiving that Lord Woodville remained silent and in an attitude of attention, he commenced, though not without obvious reluctance, the history of his night’s adventures in the Tapestried Chamber.

######

“I undressed and went to bed so soon as your lordship left me yesterday evening; but the wood in the chimney, which nearly fronted my bed, blazed brightly and cheerfully, and, aided by a hundred exciting recollections of my childhood and youth, which had been recalled by the unexpected pleasure of meeting your lordship, prevented me from falling immediately asleep. I ought, however, to say that these reflections were all of a pleasant and agreeable kind, grounded on a sense of having for a time exchanged the labour, fatigues, and dangers of my profession for the enjoyments of a peaceful life, and the reunion of those friendly and affectionate ties which I had torn asunder at the rude summons of war.

“While such pleasing reflections were stealing over my mind, and gradually lulling me to slumber, I was suddenly aroused by a sound like that of the rustling of a silken gown, and the tapping of a pair of high-heeled shoes, as if a woman were walking in the apartment. Ere I could draw the curtain to see what the matter was, the figure of a little woman passed between the bed and the fire. The back of this form was turned to me, and I could observe, from the shoulders and neck, it was that of an old woman, whose dress was an old-fashioned gown, which I think ladies call a sacque – that is, a sort of robe completely loose in the body, but gathered into broad plaits upon the neck and shoulders, which fall down to the ground, and terminate in a species of train.

“I thought the intrusion singular enough, but never harboured for a moment the idea that what I saw was anything more than the mortal form of some old woman about the establishment, who had a fancy to dress like her grandmother, and who, having perhaps (as your lordship mentioned that you were rather straitened for room) been dislodged from her chamber for my accommodation, had forgotten the circumstance, and returned by twelve to her old haunt. Under this persuasion I moved myself in bed and coughed a little, to make the intruder sensible of my being in possession of the premises. She turned slowly round, but, gracious Heaven! my lord, what a countenance did she display to me! There was no longer any question what she was, or any thought of her being a living being. Upon a face which wore the fixed features of a corpse were imprinted the traces of the vilest and most hideous passions which had animated her while she lived. The body of some atrocious criminal seemed to have been given up from the grave, and the soul restored from the penal fire, in order to form for a space a union with the ancient accomplice of its guilt. I started up in bed, and sat upright, supporting myself on my palms, as I gazed on this horrible spectre. The hag made, as it seemed, a single and swift stride to the bed where I lay, and squatted herself down upon it, in precisely the same attitude which I had assumed in the extremity of horror, advancing her diabolical countenance within half a yard of mine, with a grin which seemed to intimate the malice and the derision of an incarnate fiend.”

Here General Browne stopped, and wiped from his brow the cold perspiration with which the recollection of his horrible vision had covered it.

“My lord,” he said, “I am no coward, I have been in all the mortal dangers incidental to my profession, and I may truly boast that no man ever knew Richard Browne dishonour the sword he wears; but in these horrible circumstances, under the eyes, and, as it seemed, almost in the grasp of an incarnation of an evil spirit, all firmness forsook me, all manhood melted from me like wax in the furnace, and I felt my hair individually bristle. The current of my life-blood ceased to flow, and I sank back in a swoon, as very a victim to panic terror as ever was a village girl, or a child of ten years old. How long I lay in this condition I cannot pretend to guess.

“But I was roused by the castle clock striking one, so loud that it seemed as if it were in the very room. It was some time before I dared open my eyes, lest they should again encounter the horrible spectacle. When, however, I summoned courage to look up, she was no longer visible. My first idea was to pull my bell, wake the servants, and remove to a garret or a hayloft, to be ensured against a second visitation. Nay, I will confess the truth that my resolution was altered, not by the shame of exposing myself, but by the fear that, as the bell-cord hung by the chimney, I might, in making my way to it, be again crossed by the fiendish hag, who, I figured to myself, might be still lurking about some corner of the apartment.

“I will not pretend to describe what hot and cold fever-fits tormented me for the rest of the night, through broken sleep, weary vigils, and that dubious state which forms the neutral ground between them. A hundred terrible objects appeared to haunt me; but there was the great difference betwixt the vision which I have described, and those which followed, that I knew the last to be deceptions of my own fancy and over-excited nerves.

“Day at last appeared, and I rose from my bed ill in health and humiliated in mind. I was ashamed of myself as a man and a soldier, and still more so at feeling my own extreme desire to escape from the haunted apartment, which, however, conquered all other considerations; so that, huddling on my clothes with the most careless haste, I made my escape from your lordship’s mansion, to seek in the open air some relief to my nervous system, shaken as it was by this horrible rencounter with a visitant, for such I must believe her, from the other world. Your lordship has now heard the cause of my discomposure, and of my sudden desire to leave your hospitable castle. In other places I trust we may often meet, but God protect me from ever spending a second night under that roof!”

Strange as the General’s tale was, he spoke with such a deep air of conviction that it cut short all the usual commentaries which are made on such stories. Lord Woodville never once asked him if he was sure he did not dream of the apparition, or suggested any of the possibilities by which it is fashionable to explain supernatural appearances as wild vagaries of the fancy, or deceptions of the optic nerves, On the contrary, he seemed deeply impressed with the truth and reality of what he had heard; and, after a considerable pause regretted, with much appearance of sincerity, that his early friend should in his house have suffered so severely.

“I am the more sorry for your pain, my dear Browne,” he continued, “that it is the unhappy, though most unexpected, result of an experiment of my own. You must know that, for my father and grandfather’s time, at least, the apartment which was assigned to you last night had been shut on account of reports that it was disturbed by supernatural sights and noises. When I came, a few weeks since, into possession of the estate, I thought the accommodation which the castle afforded for my friends was not extensive enough to permit the inhabitants of the invisible world to retain possession of a comfortable sleeping apartment. I therefore caused the Tapestried Chamber, as we call it, to be opened, and, without destroying its air of antiquity, I had such new articles of furniture placed in it as became the modern times. Yet, as the opinion that the room was haunted very strongly prevailed among the domestics, and was also known in the neighbourhood and to many of my friends, I feared some prejudice might be entertained by the first occupant of the Tapestried Chamber, which might tend to revive the evil report which it had laboured under, and so disappoint my purpose of rendering it a useful part or the house. I must confess, my dear Browne, that your arrival yesterday, agreeable to me for a thousand reasons besides, seemed the most favourable opportunity of removing the unpleasant rumours which attached to the room, since your courage was indubitable, and your mind free of any preoccupation on the subject. I could not, therefore, have chosen a more fitting subject for my experiment.”

“Upon my life,” said General Browne, somewhat hastily, “I am infinitely obliged to your lordship – very particularly indebted indeed. I am likely to remember for some time the consequences of the experiment, as your lordship is pleased to call it.”

“Nay, now you are unjust, my dear friend,” said Lord Woodville. “You have only to reflect for a single moment, in order to be convinced that I could not augur the possibility of the pain to which you have been so unhappily exposed. I was yesterday morning a complete sceptic on the subject of supernatural appearances. Nay, I am sure that, had I told you what was said about that room, those very reports would have induced you, by your own choice, to select it for your accommodation. It was my misfortune, perhaps my error, but really cannot be termed my fault, that you have been afflicted so strangely.”

“Strangely indeed!” said the General, resuming his good temper; “and I acknowledge that I have no right to be offended with your lordship for treating me like what I used to think myself – a man of some firmness and courage. But I see my post horses are arrived, and I must not detain your lordship from your amusement.”

“Nay, my old friend,” said Lord Woodville, “since you cannot stay with us another day – which, indeed, I can no longer urge – give me at least half an hour more. You used to love pictures, and I have a gallery of portraits, some of them by Vandyke, representing ancestry to whom this property and castle formerly belonged. I think that several of them will strike you as possessing merit.”

General Browne accepted the invitation, though somewhat unwillingly. It was evident he was not to breathe freely or at ease till he left Woodville Castle far behind him. He could not refuse his friend’s invitation, however; and the less so, that he was a little ashamed of the peevishness which he had displayed towards his well-meaning entertainer.

The General, therefore, followed Lord Woodville through several rooms into a long gallery hung with pictures, which the latter pointed out to his guest, telling the names, and giving some account of the personages whose portraits presented themselves in progression. General Browne was but little interested in the details which these accounts conveyed to him. They were, indeed, of the kind which are usually found in an old family gallery. Here was a Cavalier who had ruined the estate in the royal cause; there a fine lady who had reinstated it by contracting a match with a wealthy Roundhead. There hung a gallant who had been in danger for corresponding with the exiled Court at Saint Germain’s; here one who had taken arms for William at the Revolution; and there a third that had thrown his weight alternately into the scale of Whig and Tory.

While Lord Woodville was cramming these words into his guest’s ear, “against the stomach of his sense,” they gained the middle of the gallery, when he beheld General Browne suddenly start, and assume an attitude of the utmost surprise, not unmixed with fear, as his eyes were suddenly caught and riveted by a portrait of an old lady in a sacque, the fashionable dress of the end of the seventeenth century.

“There she is!” he exclaimed – “there she is, in form and features, though inferior in demoniac expression to the accursed hag who visited me last night!”

“If that be the case,” said the young nobleman, “there can remain no longer any doubt of the horrible reality of your apparition. That is the picture of a wretched ancestress of mine, of whose crimes a black and fearful catalogue is recorded in a family history in my charter-chest. The recital of them would be too horrible; it is enough to say, that in yon fatal apartment incest and unnatural murder were committed. I will restore it to the solitude to which the better judgement of those who preceded me had consigned it; and never shall anyone, so long as I can prevent it, be exposed to a repetition of the supernatural horrors which could shake such courage as yours.”

Thus the friends, who had met with such glee, parted in a very different mood – Lord Woodville to command the Tapestried Chamber to be unmantled, and the door built up; and General Browne to seek in some less beautiful country, and with some less dignified friend, forgetfulness of the painful night which he had passed in Woodville Castle.

The Keepsake (1829)

A STRANGE STORY
FROM THE COAST

Rebecca Harding Davis

1879

The incident of which you have asked me to give you an account occurred six years ago, but the details are still fresh in my memory. The matter impressed me at the time with peculiar force. I am quite sure that I cannot convey any of this impression to you. I can only give you the facts, and very probably your shrewd common sense will readily find a rational explanation of them. I confess honestly, however, that I have never been able to account for them to myself on any ordinary basis of reasoning.

In February of 1873 her physician ordered C——— to the seashore. Our medical men were then just beginning to find out that the tonic of a bath of salt air for lungs and body, even in winter, was a surer restorer of exhausted vitality than the usual prescriptions of interminable quinine and beef-tea.

We went down together to an old farmhouse on the New Jersey coast in which we had spent a summer years before. The farmer, who was also, according to a common custom there, captain of a coast-schooner, was trading in the South that winter, and had taken his wife with him. We rented the house, opened it, built up fires and began housekeeping in a couple of hours. The older part of the house, built long before the Revolution, consisted of log huts joined one to another, through whose vacant rooms and fireless chimneys the wind from the sea whistled drearily, but the living-room and chamber which we occupied, with their double doors, red rag-carpets and hearths heaped with blazing logs from the wrecks which strewed the beach, were snug and comfortable enough. Outside, the solitude and silence, even at noonday, were so profound that it was incredible to us that we were but a day’s journey from New York. This was surely some forgotten outskirt of the world which we had first discovered. The windows on one side of the living-room opened on the vast sweep of water, swelling and sinking that day gray and sullen under the low wintry sky; and on the other upon a plane of sand as interminable, broken at intervals by swamps overgrown with black bare laurel-bushes, by pine woods and by a few lonely fishermen’s houses, the surf-boats set up on end against them, rows of crab-cars and seine-reels fronting the leafless orchards.

When C——— and I had visited this coast before it had borrowed a certain gaiety and lightness from the summer. The marshes were rich in color; artists were camping under their yellow umbrellas here and there, catching brilliant effects of sky or water; sportsmen from New York in irreproachable shooting-rig were popping at the snipe among the reeds; the sea and bay were full of white scudding sails. But in winter it lapsed back to its primitive condition: the land seemed to answer the sea out of depths of immeasurable age and silence. The only sign of life was the trail of smoke upward to the clouds from some distant cabin, or a ghostly sail flitting along the far horizon. The sand heaped itself day by day in fantastic unbroken ridges along the beach. The very fences and houses had grown hoary with lichen and gray moss that shivered unwholesomely in the wind. Some of these old log houses had been built two centuries ago by Quaker refugees from England under the Proprietary Barclay. They built the houses and settled down in them, so far barred out of the world on this lonely coast that they did not know when their old persecutor Charles was dead. We were almost persuaded that they had forgotten to die themselves when we saw the old gray-coated, slow-moving folk going in and out of these houses, with the same names as those of the men who built them, the same features and inexorable habits of hard work and prosy gossip, the same formal tricks of speech and strange superstitions. Indeed, these people usually live to an old age so extreme that it seems as if Death himself forgot this out-of-the-way corner of the world on his rounds. In many of the houses there had been but two generations since the days of the Stuarts, son and father living far beyond the ninetieth year.

A wiry, withered youth of seventy-six, Captain Jeremiah Holdcomb (who is still living, by the way), whom we met one day on the beach, constituted himself our guide and protector: he took us from farmhouse to farmhouse by day to make friends with the “old people,” always coming in at night to tell us the histories of them and of their houses, and to chuckle boyishly over the “onaccountable notions of them as was gettin’ on in years,” and to sip a glass of toddy, unctuously smacking his withered lips and wagging his white poll.

One day, as a storm was rising, C——— and I led the old man across the garden at an earlier hour than usual to set him safely on his way homeward. A raw nor’easter blew heavily off sea that evening; the sun had not been seen for two days; the fog was banked up to landward in solid wet masses; the landscape was walled in by it until nothing was left in view but our house and the rotted leaves of the garden-beds, half buried now in drifted sand.

“You have never told us the history of this house, captain?” said C———, looking back at the dilapidated log building behind us.

Holdcomb, as I thought, evaded the question at first. The house, he said when C——— urged it, had been built by a family named Whynne, and still belonged to them, the young man from whom we rented it being himself only a tenant. The Whynnes were of the oldest Quaker stock; the men had always followed the water; they “took to brandy,” Holdcomb said, “as a lamb to its dam’s milk. Men and women was oneasy, wanderin’ folk.” But they all came home to this house at the last, which was the reason, he supposed, they were so long-lived. He referred here to a belief which we had found current among these people, that a man’s hold upon life was stronger in the house in which he was born than in any other.

“Because thar,” explained the captain, “is where the yerth first got a grip on him, and thar’s the last place it’ll be loosened. Now, the Whynnes all lived in this house to an oncommon old age. Thar was a kind of backbone of obstinacy in them all. I reckon Death himself had to have a tough fight with them before he got them under. Old Abner Whynne lived to be a hunderd and four. He died – let me see – he died just sixty year ago, come January. Priscilla was his youngest da’ater. She’s livin’ yet: she’s got no notion of dyin’. She’s the only Whynne, though, that is livin’.”

On further inquiry it appeared that this said Priscilla had married a Perot, and, being now a childless widow, occupied the Perot house, another decayed old habitation on the other side of the marshes, to the north.

“She was ninety-two last June,” said Holdcomb. “It’s thirty years since she has been able to hear thunder. But she keeps a-watchin’ and a-watchin’ out of them black eyes of hern. God knows what fur. But whenever I see her I says to myself, ‘It’ll come to you someday, Priscilla,’ says I, whatever it be. She’s got an awful holt on livin’, that ther woman. All the Whynnes had, as I told you. She’s a mere shackle of bones, and as deaf as that dead sherk yander, but she’s got a kind of life in her yet, sech as these pink-an’-white mishy young gells never knowed. I’ll take you to see her tomorrow. If she gets a sight of anybody that’s come from out of the towns and the crowd, it kind of gives her a fresh start. Yes, we’ll go and see her tomorrow,” climbing over the bars. “Well, I’ll be goin’ now. That’s all ther is to tell about this house.”

“No, no,” said C———. “One moment, captain. Those queer squares of brick at the end of the garden, what are they?”

The old man shuffled uneasily: “I don’t see no brick. I don’t know nothin about ’em.”

“Surely, you can see them – close to the house, almost covered with the sand. They look like the entrance to a vault – or they might be graves.”

By this time Holdcomb had succeeded in ridding his startled face of every glimmer of meaning, “Oh, them?” staring at them with unconcern. “They were ther long before I was born. I wouldn’t worry myself about them if I was you. They’ve somethin’ to do, ’s likely, with them old Whynnes that’s dead an’ gone. I’d let ’em rest. Never dig deep into a rotten ma’ash, ’s we say hereabouts.”

With that old Jeremiah hobbled quickly away, and C——— and I returned to the house, pausing to look curiously at the sunken squares of brick over which the sand had drifted deep. I remember that C——— remarked irritably that it was evident that the old man knew for what purpose they had been built there, and chose to conceal it from us.

“There is something evil about them,” she added, declaring that whenever she passed them she was conscious of some sudden unpleasant physical influence, as though she had breathed miasma. Her illness had made her peculiarly susceptible to outside influences, real or imaginary. I thought nothing more at the time, therefore, of her assertion, though later circumstances reminded me of it.

The next day we crossed the marshes under Jeremiah’s guidance, and found Priscilla in the old Perot house. This woman differed from any other human being I had ever seen in some indescribable way. The peculiar effect of it upon me returns whenever I remember her: I would rather see a ghost than think of that nightmare of a woman.

Age had ravaged and gnawed her away mercilessly: nothing was left of her in the world but a little quick-moving shadow. The delicate features, the restless, birdlike hands, the shrunken outline of shape, made but a silhouette of the actual woman that she once had been. The brown flannel gown and crossed white handkerchief which she wore after the Quaker fashion seemed to me like a load hung upon a ghost. For the rest, she was vivacious, keen, hard; she talked incessantly in a shrill, vehement pipe; our answers necessarily were written or by signs. She welcomed us with a kind of fierce eagerness, examined the cut and material of our clothes, and questioned us about the city and the news of the day with the delight of a prisoner to whose dungeon had come a glimmer of light from the world outside. She chattered in return the gossip of the neighborhood – gossip which from her lips obscurely hinted at malignant and foul meanings – occasionally rebuffing old Holdcomb with savage contempt.

“But she’s not such a bad un,” he said, turning deprecatingly to us. “Naterally, she’s a kind, decent soul, Priscilla is. But, you see, it’s excitement to her to talk that way: all them Whynnes must have excitement of one sort or another. The men took to liquor, and the women – Now, Priscilla—” suddenly checking himself: “it’s like bein’ shut up in jail, what with livin’ here alone and that dreadful deafness.”

The old creature had gone, moving with a quick, nervous step, to a corner cupboard, from which she brought out a plate of seed-cakes. She stood holding them out to me, poising herself on tiptoe, her dark luminous eyes fixed on me from underneath the shaggy white brows.

“No, C———,” I said, “this is not a bad woman: she is not immodest nor malignant.” Yet I drew back from her. Now I was conscious wherein she differed from other aged people. It was a young woman who looked out of those strange eyes at me. Old Priscilla Perot, in the isolation of her thirty years of deafness, had grown vulgar and bitter in her speech, but back of that was another creature, who was not vulgar, who never spoke. I fancied that it looked out with all the unsatisfied passion and longing of youth through these eyes before me. They seemed perpetually challenging the world to give back something that was lost with a silent, sad entreaty strangely at variance with the shrill, mean talk that came from the woman’s lips. I wondered idly when this creature in her had ever lived, and what had killed it, and whether it would ever, in all the ages to come, waken and live again. How many possible human beings, after all, die in each of us and are forgotten before the body gives up too and has to be hidden out of sight!

Old Priscilla went out into the kitchen and bustled aimlessly about. Our coming had made her restless; she laughed without cause; frequent nervous shudders passed over her lean body.

“It’s always the way when anyone from the city comes near her,” said Jeremiah. “She was main fond of the crowd and of town.”

“So I should have guessed,” said C———. “Do you notice the dainty dress and the high shoes and jaunty bit of ribbon in her cap? Yet she impresses me strangely, as though she might have had once a much finer, more delicate, nature than she shows to us. – She has not always lived here? What is her history?” turning to Holdcomb.

The old fellow gave a scared look at the wan little figure skipping in and out of the dark kitchen: “Lord! how should I know? She belongs to them as was dead and gone before my time.” To stop short all further inquiry he began talking to her by signs. She perched herself upon the high wooden chair at one side of the fireplace, looking at C———, her head a little on one side.

“She wants to know what changes I remember in this place?” for so Holdcomb had interpreted C———’s question. “Not many – not many: my time has been so short. Now, my father could remember when a good part of Ocean and Monmouth counties was under the sea. But he lived to a good age. Under this house where you are there’s been dug up sherks’ teeth and the backbones of whales. My grandfather, ’s likely, could remember when they swam over this field,” pursing up her thin lips thoughtfully. “Thee wasn’t here in the war of 1812?” turning sharply on C———.

“No.”

“I was here: I had come home for the first time from New York then. I watched the English vessels come up the inlet: it was a gusty afternoon like this. They had come up to plunder the farms. The men that weren’t Friends took their guns and went down to fire on them from the shore.”

“And those that were Friends?” asked C———.

“Took their guns and went along,” with a shrill laugh and nod. “Oh, the young people in the house were terribly frightened. It was all I could do to keep their courage up, silly children.”

“Were you not afraid?”

“No. I wasn’t young, and I had nothing to lose.” She had turned her head, with her back to us, and was talking into the darkness. She hurled out the last words with a kind of defiance. “I had nothing to lose.”

“True enough!” said Jeremiah, with many wags of the head and senile blinks of sympathy; but, catching our inquiring looks, he recovered himself with a sudden deprecatory cough and leaned his chin on his cane, silent and attentive.

“I set the children to barring up the windows,” continued Priscilla after a moment’s pause, “and then I took a ladder and climbed on to the roof. I put my back against the chimney and my feet on the top rung, and there I saw the fight. Our men hid among the salt grass of the ma’ash and picked ’em off one by one. They was main good shots. I saw Ben Stover aim at a man up on the foremast, and then there was a whiff of smoke and down he went in a lump into the water. They said his dyin’ yell was terrible to hear,” she added with a chuckle.

“What became of Stover after that?” asked Jeremiah.

“He died when he was a young man – only sixty or thereabout. He used to go up and down the beach lookin’ for Kidd’s treasure, muttering to himself. They said he went mad because there was blood on his hands, him bein’ a Quaker. But I knew different from that: it was the money drove him mad – Kidd’s money – he was so sure of finding it.”

She fell back in her chair, breathless with her vehemence. But in a few minutes she sat upright again and thrust her bloodless, peaked face into mine. “Where did thee say thee came from?”

“New York, mother,” signed Jeremiah.

“New York – a-ah!” drawing in her breath. “I lived nigh New York – in a country-place three mile from town, but now they tell me it’s in the heart of the city, built over with huckster-shops. Does thee know it?”

I shook my head.

“No, nobody would remember it.” she said gently. “I would know it: nothing they could build on it would hide it from me.” Her eyes deepened in their sad quiet, the shrill tones softened. For the moment it was the voice of a young woman that we heard.

C——— was about to question her, but Jeremiah interposed: “Take care! Don’t ask her what she means. Never before sin’ I’ve known her has she spoken of the time she was in New York. God knows what’s drove them words out of her now!”

To change the current of her thoughts he leaned forward and told her by signs the story of our coming to the Whynne house. I was quite willing that she should be turned from any dangerous subjects: I had the uncomfortable feeling when with her that we were dealing with Death himself, or with some forgotten part of a past age more alien and incomprehensible than Death.

“Thee is living in my house?” turning sharply on us. “Yes, it’s mine: it will never belong to any but a Whynne. I know every board in it.”

Her head dropped on her breast and her eyes were fixed on vacancy. After waiting a few moments, finding that she had apparently forgotten us, we rose to leave her. As C——— came up to bid her good-bye she said, “You will come to your house while we are there?”

“I?” She started up, standing erect without her staff: her voice was feebler than a whisper, her hands were clasped over her head. But it was the voice and gesture of a young, passionate woman. “Into that house? I’ll never cross the threshold while I’m living. It’s just a step across the ma’ash, thee knows,” appealing to Jeremiah, “but it’s nigh sixty year since I put my foot in it. I’ve never forgot that I was Josiah Perot’s wife. There’s them waitin’ for me there as Josiah never could abide. But when I’m dead—” She threw out her arms with a sudden indescribable gesture of freedom. “I’ll have done with Josiah Perot when I’m dead.”

C——— drew me away, and we hurried homeward. Glancing back, we could see the woman standing in the doorway: her back was turned toward us, looking out to Sea.

It was a gusty, chilly afternoon. Spectral whitish drifts of fog were blown inland across the marshes. The sun went down in an angry yellow glare which foreboded ill; and then the night fell suddenly, unusually dark, full of shrill whispers of the wind through the swamps and the threatening roar of the sea.

We had, however, I remember, a comfortable hot supper soon ready, and we closed the curtains and heaped up the fire in the living-room to shut out the darkness and strange noises without.

When supper was over and Captain Holdcomb was seated with his pipe in the chimney-corner, we urged him to tell us the history of Priscilla without reserve.

“There’s not much to tell,” he said. “She was born in this house, and she married Josiah Perot well on in life; and if Josiah was a bit stupid he was a steady, God-fearin’ fellow; and that’s more than could be said of any Whynne that ever lived.”

“But before she married Perot?”

“Well, nothin’ happened remarkable – onless,” he added reluctantly, “that curious occurrence at Abner Whynne’s death. I kin tell you about that,” dropping into the singsong of an oft-told tale. “Abner Whynne was this woman’s father. He lived to be a hunderd and four. He lived with his wife down to Sherk River, for the old people had give up this house to their da’ater Peggy, who married Sam Volk.”

“Where was Priscilla?”

“Well, I might as well tell the whole on’t. It was like this. She wa’n’t like the rest on ’em. She wa’n’t ez handsome as Peggy, but she was of a different sort, I’ve heard say – finer an’ harder to please. She went up to New York, and ther she fell in with a Captain John Salterre, commanding a brig that run to the Mediterranean. He war a handsome fellow, ’cordin’ to accounts, and of a high family – very different from the Whynnes. Word came back that she war married to him, and next (that al’ays was the queer part of it to me) that he had sent her to school. Oh, I’ve heard my father say when she came back in 1812 she could speak one of them foreign tongues quite fluent. Her father al’ays set great store by Priscilla, though she never come anigh him. Peggy grew to be a humble, hard-workin’ woman in middle age, and war a faithful da’ater. But, Lord! he cared not a copper cent for her. It was all ‘My da’ater Priscilla,’ because she had made the grand marriage in New York. When her mother died down to Sherk River, Peggy war ther. She said, ‘now, daddy, thee must come along home to me.’ – ‘I will not, Margaret, he says. – ‘But thee must,’ says she: ‘thee cannot live here alone.’ For he was then ninety-eight. – ‘I hev my lines to watch,’ says he. For he was a fisherman, thee knows. ‘Very well, daddy,’ says Peggy, ‘thee can set thee lines in the inlet jest as well as Sherk River.’ Then she ups and packs his clock and his wooden chair (it’s this one I’m sittin’ on, only it had a sheepskin cover on then) and his tea-kettle and his fire-dogs, so’s he might feel at home, and she fixed them all up in this hyar room back of me.” Jeremiah, with his staff, pushed open the door into the half-ruined chamber behind him. The log walls had fallen to decay half a century ago, but there was the fireplace with rusted irons on the hearth – the very fire-dogs he had mentioned, perhaps.

“That was his room, and he could do as he pleased in it. He used to set by the door yander, his old deaf yaller dog Turk lyin’ atween his knees, both on ’em a-lookin’ out at the sea hour in an’ hour out. He lived on here with Peggy for six year. In that time no word came from Priscilla. He used to talk about her and her grandeur to the men a-fishin’, but we all knowed it was jest his notions, for she never sent him a letter or made a sign. I was a peart young lad then, rising sixteen. It’s jest sixty year ago, last October, when one mornin’ Peggy went in to get the old man’s coffee for him. She al’ays made his bite of breakfast ready afore anything else. ‘I’ll have no coffee, Peggy,’ says he. – ‘Is thee sick, daddy?’ says she. For it was the first time he had ever refused his breakfast. As for sickness, he had never been sick an hour since any living man could remember, though as to his boyhood nobody was left on this yerth that remembered that. So Peggy was sort of stunned. ‘Is thee sick?’ says she. – ‘No: I never was better, he says; but I’ll eat naught, I tell thee.’ So he fell asleep, and Peggy went out. But she could not ’tend to her work, she was that dazed. She told me she was mendin’ Sam’s nets that mornin’ (Sam was her husband), and presently out comes daddy dressed and leanin’ on his staff as usual. He sat down in this chair by the fire yander, and she brought him his breakfast, and he ate it. About an hour after Joshua Van Dorn came in, and he and Peggy talked of the blue mackerel, for there was a school of them in, and Sam hed made a good haul that mornin’. Joshua was but a boy about twenty, but a strong, rugged fellow. Abner said nothin’ to him until he was on his feet to go: then he says, ‘Joshua, Sam’ll be out eel-fishin’ tonight, and I want thee to come an’ watch with me. I’ll die tonight when the tide goes out.’ Joshua thought it was jest his notions. ‘All right, daddy’ says he, winkin’ at Peggy. ‘I’ll come and watch with thee, and eat breakfast with thee too in the mornin’. Who’ll I bring with me? Jeremiah Holdcomb?’ – ‘Jeremiah’ll do as well as another: it’s the same to me. It’ll not take a strong man to streak me,’ says the old man; and he laughed, looking down at himself. For he was lean like Priscilla. The Whynnes wear away with age. Peggy said he sot ’most all day by the door yander, lookin’ out to sea. Ther’s some think that old sea-farin’ men hes a warnin’ from the water when their time’s come. I dunno how that may be. But old Abner he sot lookin’ out all day. When Sam come in he talked about the blue-mackerel haul. Sam watched him keerful, but he couldn’t see as there was aught the matter with him.”

“Was no clergyman sent for?” demanded C———. “Did nobody remind him of the God that he was going to meet?”

Jeremiah looked up startled, chuckled and grew suddenly grave: “Nobody’d go to a Whynne with that sort of talk. I doubt ef old Abner in all his hunderd year had ever thought of a God, any more than his dog Turk hed. Him and Priscilla war jest alike. They belonged to this yerth. But as to their turnin’ up agen in any other – I dunno: I reckon they won’t,” shaking his head decisively.

“Go on with the story,” said C———.

“Well, come evenin’, Sam started out eel-fishin’. Daddy nodded to him. ‘Good-bye, Sam Volk, says he: ‘I’ll be gone afore thee gets back. Sam humored him. ‘Good-bye, daddy,’ he says. ‘Is there aught I ken do for thee afore I go?’ – ‘No,’ he says, ‘no.’ But he took Sam’s hand and kept looking up at him. ‘Onless,’ he says, ‘thee could fetch Priscilla hyar. I’d like to hev seen the girl afore I go. I hev it on my mind ther’s somethin’ she wants to say to me.’ – I can’t do that, thee knows, daddy,’ says Sam. For we all thought she was in foreign parts. But she’d been livin’ in New York for four year, and that very night, as it turned out, she was on her way home in John Van Dorn’s schooner.

“Well, Joshua and I come in to watch. We sent Peggy to bed at the usual time, eight o’clock, for neither she nor we thought aught ra’aly ailed the old man. He took no notice of her when she went, nor of the children: he never could abide children. ‘I’ll make you some toddy, boys, to keep you awake,’ he says; and we war willin’. Ther was not a man on the Jarsey coast could brew toddy like old Abner. It was prime toddy, that’s a fact. He drank a bit, and then he went to bed (he wouldn’t hev any help in ondressin’), and when he was stretched out he whistled for old Turk, and the brute lay down across his feet. ‘Good fellow! good fellow!’ he says, and he put his hand on the dog’s head and straightened himself, and so went to sleep. About ten o’clock Joshua called to me: he was standin’ by the bed. ‘Jerry,’ says he, ‘ther’s a queer settlin’ in the old man’s face, and his pulse is mighty low. Shouldn’t wonder ef he’d been in the right of it about himself, after all.’ – ‘Shell I call Peggy?’ I says – ‘no,’ says he: ‘wait a bit.’ But in a hour he says, ‘Jerry, go and call Peggy.’ So I called her. But what could we do? He was goin’ out with the tide. He didn’t move or speak, and his eyes were shet: he didn’t hear Peggy or the children when they was cryin’ about him. His breath got slowly thinner and thinner, and his flesh colder. When Peggy called to him he took no notice, but the dog raised himself after a while on his fore legs and looked in his face and gave a howl. I declar’ it skeert me, it was so like a human bein’. The old man stirred at that, and sort of smiled, and his lips moved as if to say ‘Good fellow!’ But he was too far gone to speak. Then it was all quiet. I opened the window yander” (pointing to the square opening in the ruined wall of the room outside), “and I stood by it watchin’ the tide go down, jest as you might be doin’ now. And he lay on the bed hyar jest by the door. It was a clear night, and I could see the line of white surf sinkin’ lower and lower. I knowed by Peggy’s face, leanin’ over him, that he was goin’ with it fast. At last the sea fell out of sight into the darkness. Then I shut the window: I knowed it was all over. When I come up to the bed he was dead: Joshua was closin’ his eyes. We folded his hands and straightened him. It seemed to me but a few minutes till he was stark and stiff and dreadful cold. I remember Joshua said it was onusual, and was because there was so little blood in his body, but how that might be I dunno. We sot with him till mornin’. Now, here’s the cur’ous part of the story. You’ll likely not believe it, but I’ll tell you word for word, jest as it happened. An hour after Abner Whynne died his da’ater Priscilla come to the house. She had landed at the inlet, where the men war a-fishin’, and Sam brought her over. She war not a very young woman, but she was like a lady – very fine appearing. She was greatly excited when she found her father dead, though she skercely spoke a word. ‘You come too late,’ says Peggy. ‘You might have given him a deal of comfort. But you’re too late.’ I didn’t know before that Peggy war so bitter agen her. – ‘I must speak to him,’ she said; and she tore off the sheet and put her hand to his heart. I could see her start when she felt the cold. ‘Daddy!’ she cried, ‘daddy!’ – ‘Let the dead rest, Priscilla,’ says Peggy. – ‘Go out, all of you,’ she says, motionin’ to the door. ‘Let me have him to myself.’

“I went out, an’ took Peggy. Priscilla kept a-cryin’ in a low voice, ‘Daddy! daddy!’ I went outside – I was that cur’ous – and looked in the window. Fur God! I tell you the truth. The dead man opened his eyes and sat up. ‘Why did you bring me back?’ he said. ‘Why did you not let me alone, Priscilla? I was at rest.’ She leaned over him, sobbin’. Presently he says, ‘Is your husband here?’ Then she whispered something. God knows what. But I reckon the whole truth was wrenched out of her. You can’t lie to the dead. He sat up in the bed, and I saw him point with one hand to the door. ‘Begone!’ says he: ‘you are no da’ater of mine.’ She stood a minute, and then came out, and ran a-past me, cryin’, into the dark.”

“Of course you only fancied that you saw the man alive through the window?” said C———.

“I dunno,” said Holdcomb doggedly. “I do know as she has never crossed the doorway from that night, and that’s sixty year gone. And,” lowering his voice, “when we come back into the room the old man was dead and stark as we had left him. But he was sitting bolt upright in the bed.”

“What do you suppose she had told him?”

“Oh, that soon come out. She never had been John Salterre’s wife. A sort of shame had seized her at last, and she had left him and come home. She’s lived hyar ever since. Four year later she married Josiah Perot, who was a heap better husband than she deserved. She married him for a home: she never could abide to work. But nobody ever thought she cared aught for him. The Whynnes never forget, and I believe she thinks of John Salterre at this minute, and keers for him jest the same as she did when she war a young girl.”

“What became of him? Did he ever find her?” I asked.

Jeremiah hesitated: “I didn’t mean to tell thee that. A year after her father died Salterre found out whar she was, and put off straight from New York on a schooner for this inlet. The schooner – the Petrel it was – struck the bar out yander, and the crew was lost, Salterre and all. They war buried in the sand on the beach, jest where they come ashore, ’s the custom was.”

The old man rose and began to put on his coat. We were not sorry to have him go. His ghastly story made us quite willing to close the door on the dilapidated apartment outside and to turn our thoughts to cheerfuller matters.

For a week afterward the threatened nor’-east storm kept us in-doors. The captain did not come to pay his daily visit, and we heard from a neighbor that he “was attendin’ on Priscilla Perot, who was waitin’ her call.”

“Jerry’s a main good doctor,” she added. “But I doubt he’ll not keep old Priscilla. She’s bein’ took off afore her time: the Whynnes live to a great old age. But they say she’s been restlesslike ever since she talked to thee about her young days in this house.”

The storm continued to rage so heavily that it shut us in to an absolute solitude. Even the hardiest fishermen did not venture out upon the beach. On the second night it abated. C——— and I were sitting by the fire reading between ten and eleven o’clock, when, finding that the beating of the rain upon the roof had ceased, I opened the door into the ruined room of which Holdcomb had told the story, and looked out. The wind had changed: the storm-clouds were driving to the east, and were banked on that horizon in a solid rampart; the moon shone out whitely on the surging sea and on the drenched marshes webbed with the swollen black lines of the creeks. The tide-water had risen to an unprecedented height, and was within three feet of our door.

I called C——— to look. “If the storm had lasted a few hours longer,” I said, “the Whynne house would have gone at last.”

We both stood in the doorway between the living-room, in which we had been sitting, and Abner Whynne’s old chamber. The latter was clearly lighted by the moon and by the fire and lamplight in the room behind us. As I looked down through the broken wall to the marsh, C——— touched my arm, whispering, “Who is this?”

I turned. A small dark figure was crossing the beach, coming up toward the house. It came with such rapidity that before I had time to speak it stood in the outer doorway, and was in the room beside us.

“Priscilla!” cried C———.

The woman had reached the spot where, as Jeremiah told us, her father had died. She halted there a moment. I saw her face as distinctly as that of C———, being about the same distance from both. It was Priscilla, and yet not Priscilla. The weight of age had dropped away. This was the creature which I had fancied still lived in the woman, young, passionate, it might be wicked, but in no sense Perot’s vulgar, malignant widow.

She hesitated but a moment, and then passed through the back door into the garden, where the sand lay heaped by the storm in deep wet drifts. C——— and I hurried after her, each with the same thought, that the dying woman had become deranged and had escaped from her attendants with the wild fancy of reaching her old home. She suddenly flung out her arms with a vehement gesture of triumph, and passed around a projection of the wall. We reached the spot in an instant. It was the place where the mysterious heaps of brick were erected, one of which rose slightly above the sand. She was not there: sea and marsh and beach were utterly vacant.

We went into the house, and, I am bound to confess, we slept little that night.

Captain Holdcomb came early the next morning.

“The widow Perot is dead at last,” was his first greeting.

“What time did she die?” asked C———.

“Last night at half-past ten o’clock.” C——— rose, and going out beckoned the old man to follow her. “These are graves,” she said, pointing to the heap of bricks. “Who were buried here?”

“I didn’t keer to tell thee: I was afraid it might make thee oncomfortable. But – as thee knows so much the crew of the Petrel was buried onder them. That one which is part oncovered by the wind is whar Captain John Salterre is laid.”

The old man never knew our reason for asking. There is my ghost-story, the only one for which I have never heard a rational explanation.

“Lippincott’s Monthly Magazine”, Jan. 1879

THE OPEN DOOR

Charlotte Riddell

1882

Some people do not believe in ghosts. For that matter, some people do not believe in anything. There are persons who even affect incredulity concerning that open door at Ladlow Hall. They say it did not stand wide open – that they could have shut it; that the whole affair was a delusion; that they are sure it must have been a conspiracy; that they are doubtful whether there is such a place as Ladlow on the face of the earth; that the first time they are in Meadowshire they will look it up.

That is the manner in which this story, hitherto unpublished, has been greeted by my acquaintances. How it will be received by strangers is quite another matter. I am going to tell what happened to me exactly as it happened, and readers can credit or scoff at the tale as it pleases them. It is not necessary for me to find faith and comprehension in addition to a ghost story, for the world at large. If such were the case, I should lay down my pen.

Perhaps, before going further, I ought to premise there was a time when I did not believe in ghosts either. If you had asked me one summer’s morning years ago when you met me on London Bridge if I held such appearances to be probable or possible, you would have received an emphatic “No” for answer.

But, at this rate, the story of the Open Door will never be told; so we will, with your permission, plunge into it immediately.

•   •   •

“Sandy!”

“What do you want?”

“Should you like to earn a sovereign?”

“Of course I should.”

A somewhat curt dialogue, but we were given to curtness in the office of Messrs Frimpton, Frampton and Fryer, auctioneers and estate agents, St. Benet’s Hill, City.

(My name is not Sandy or anything like it, but the other clerks so styled me because of a real or fancied likeness to some character, an ill-looking Scotchman, they had seen at the theatre. From this it may be inferred I was not handsome. Far from it. The only ugly specimen in my family, I knew I was very plain; and it chanced to be no secret to me either that I felt grievously discontented with my lot. I did not like the occupation of clerk in an auctioneer’s office, and I did not like my employers.

We are all of us inconsistent, I suppose, for it was a shock to me to find they entertained a most cordial antipathy to me.)

“Because,” went on Parton, a fellow, my senior by many years – a fellow who delighted in chaffing me, “I can tell you how to lay hands on one.”

“How?” I asked, sulkily enough, for I felt he was having what he called his fun.

“You know that place we let to Carrison, the tea-dealer?”

Carrison was a merchant in the China trade, possessed of fleets of vessels and towns of warehouses; but I did not correct Parton’s expression, I simply nodded.

“He took it on a long lease, and he can’t live in it; and our governor said this morning he wouldn’t mind giving anybody who could find out what the deuce is the matter, a couple of sovereigns and his travelling expenses.”

“Where is the place?” I asked, without turning my head; for the convenience of listening I had put my elbows on the desk and propped up my face with both hands.

“Away down in Meadowshire, in the heart of the grazing country.”

“And what is the matter?” I further enquired.

“A door that won’t keep shut.”

“What?”

“A door that will keep open, if you prefer that way of putting it,” said Parton.

“You are jesting.”

“If I am, Carrison is not, or Fryer either. Carrison came here in a nice passion, and Fryer was in a fine rage; I could see he was, though he kept his temper outwardly. They have had an active correspondence it appears, and Carrison went away to talk to his lawyer. Won’t make much by that move, I fancy.”

“But tell me,” I entreated, “why the door won’t keep shut?”

“They say the place is haunted.”

“What nonsense!” I exclaimed.

“Then you are just the person to take the ghost in hand. I thought so while old Fryer was speaking.”

“If the door won’t keep shut,” I remarked, pursuing my own train of thought, “why can’t they let it stay open?”

“I have not the slightest idea. I only know there are two sovereigns to be made, and that I give you a present of the information.”

And having thus spoken, Parton took down his hat and went out, either upon his own business or that of his employers.

There was one thing I can truly say about our office, we were never serious in it. I fancy that is the case in most offices nowadays; at all events, it was the case in ours. We were always chaffing each other, playing practical jokes, telling stupid stories, scamping our work, looking at the clock, counting the weeks to next St. Lubbock’s Day, counting the hours to Saturday.

For all that we were all very earnest in our desire to have our salaries raised, and unanimous in the opinion no fellows ever before received such wretched pay. I had twenty pounds a year, which I was aware did not half provide for what I ate at home. My mother and sisters left me in no doubt on the point, and when new clothes were wanted I always hated to mention the fact to my poor worried father.

We had been better off once, I believe, though I never remember the time. My father owned a small property in the country, but owing to the failure of some bank, I never could understand what bank, it had to be mortgaged; then the interest was not paid, and the mortgages foreclosed, and we had nothing left save the half-pay of a major, and about a hundred a year which my mother brought to the common fund.

We might have managed on our income, I think, if we had not been so painfully genteel; but we were always trying to do something quite beyond our means, and consequently debts accumulated, and creditors ruled us with rods of iron.

Before the final smash came, one of my sisters married the younger son of a distinguished family, and even if they had been disposed to live comfortably and sensibly she would have kept her sisters up to the mark. My only brother, too, was an officer, and of course the family thought it necessary he should see we preserved appearances.

It was all a great trial to my father, I think, who had to bear the brunt of the dunning and harass, and eternal shortness of money; and it would have driven me crazy if I had not found a happy refuge when matters were going wrong at home at my aunt’s. She was my father’s sister, and had married so “dreadfully below her” that my mother refused to acknowledge the relationship at all.

For these reasons and others, Parton’s careless words about the two sovereigns stayed in my memory.

I wanted money badly – I may say I never had sixpence in the world of my own – and I thought if I could earn two sovereigns I might buy some trifles I needed for myself, and present my father with a new umbrella. Fancy is a dangerous little jade to flirt with, as I soon discovered.

She led me on and on. First I thought of the two sovereigns; then I recalled the amount of the rent Mr. Carrison agreed to pay for Ladlow Hall; then I decided he would gladly give more than two sovereigns if he could only have the ghost turned out of possession. I fancied I might get ten pounds – twenty pounds. I considered the matter all day, and I dreamed of it all night, and when I dressed myself next morning I was determined to speak to Mr. Fryer on the subject.

I did so – I told that gentleman Parton had mentioned the matter to me, and that if Mr. Fryer had no objection, I should like to try whether I could not solve the mystery. I told him I had been accustomed to lonely houses, and that I should not feel at all nervous; that I did not believe in ghosts, and as for burglars, I was not afraid of them.

“I don’t mind your trying,” he said at last. “Of course you understand it is no cure, no pay. Stay in the house for a week; if at the end of that time you can keep the door shut, locked, bolted, or nailed up, telegraph for me, and I will go down – if not, come back. If you like to take a companion there is no objection.”

I thanked him, but said I would rather not have a companion.

“There is only one thing, sir, I should like,” I ventured.

“And that—?” he interrupted.

“Is a little more money. If I lay the ghost, or find out the ghost, I think I ought to have more than two sovereigns.”

“How much more do you think you ought to have?” he asked.

His tone quite threw me off my guard, it was so civil and conciliatory, and I answered boldly:

“Well, if Mr. Carrison cannot now live in the place perhaps he wouldn’t mind giving me a ten-pound note.”

Mr. Fryer turned, and opened one of the books lying on his desk. He did not look at or refer to it in any way – I saw that.

“You have been with us how long, Edlyd?” he said.

“Eleven months tomorrow,” I replied.

“And our arrangement was, I think, quarterly payments, and one month’s notice on either side?”

“Yes, sir.” I heard my voice tremble, though I could not have said what frightened me.

“Then you will please to take your notice now. Come in before you leave this evening, and I’ll pay you three months’ salary, and then we shall be quits.”

“I don’t think I quite understand,” I was beginning, when he broke in:

“But I understand, and that’s enough. I have had enough of you and your airs, and your indifference, and your insolence here. I never had a clerk I disliked as I do you. Coming and dictating terms, forsooth! No, you shan’t go to Ladlow. Many a poor chap” – (he said “devil”) – “would have been glad to earn half a guinea, let alone two sovereigns; and perhaps you may be before you are much older.”

“Do you mean that you won’t keep me here any longer, sir?” I asked in despair. “I had no intention of offending you. I—”

“Now you need not say another word,” he interrupted, “for I won’t bandy words with you. Since you have been in this place you have never known your position, and you don’t seem able to realize it. When I was foolish enough to take you, I did it on the strength of your connections, but your connections have done nothing for me. I have never had a penny out of any one of your friends – if you have any. You’ll not do any good in business for yourself or anybody else, and the sooner you go to Australia” – (here he was very emphatic) – “and get off these premises, the better I shall be pleased.”

I did not answer him – I could not. He had worked himself to a white heat by this time, and evidently intended I should leave his premises then and there. He counted five pounds out of his cash-box, and, writing a receipt, pushed it and the money across the table, and bade me sign and be off at once.

My hand trembled so I could scarcely hold the pen, but I had presence of mind enough left to return one pound ten in gold, and three shillings and fourpence I had, quite by the merest good fortune, in my waistcoat pocket.

“I can’t take wages for work I haven’t done,” I said, as well as sorrow and passion would let me. “Good-morning,” and I left his office and passed out among the clerks.

I took from my desk the few articles belonging to me, left the papers it contained in order, and then, locking it, asked Parton if he would be so good as to give the key to Mr. Fryer.

“What’s up?” he asked “Are you going?”

I said, “Yes, I am going”.

“Got the sack?”

“That is exactly what has happened.”

“Well, I’m d———!” exclaimed Mr. Parton.

I did not stop to hear any further commentary on the matter, but bidding my fellow-clerks good-bye, shook the dust of Frimpton’s Estate and Agency Office from off my feet.

I did not like to go home and say I was discharged, so I walked about aimlessly, and at length found myself in Regent Street. There I met my father, looking more worried than usual.

“Do you think, Phil,” he said (my name is Theophilus), “you could get two or three pounds from your employers?”

Maintaining a discreet silence regarding what had passed, I answered:

“No doubt I could.”

“I shall be glad if you will then, my boy,” he went on, “for we are badly in want of it.”

I did not ask him what was the special trouble. Where would have been the use? There was always something – gas, or water, or poor-rates, or the butcher, or the baker, or the boot-maker. Well, it did not much matter, for we were well accustomed to the life; but, I thought, “if ever I marry, we will keep within our means.” And then there rose up before me a vision of Patty, my cousin – the blithest, prettiest, most useful, most sensible girl that ever made sunshine in a poor man’s house.

My father and I had parted by this time, and I was still walking aimlessly on, when all at once an idea occurred to me. Mr. Fryer had not treated me well or fairly. I would hoist him on his own petard. I would go to headquarters, and try to make terms with Mr. Carrison direct.

No sooner thought than done. I hailed a passing omnibus, and was ere long in the heart of the city. Like other great men, Mr. Carrison was difficult of access – indeed, so difficult of access, that the clerk to whom I applied for an audience told me plainly I could not see him at all. I might send in my message if I liked, he was good enough to add, and no doubt it would be attended to. I said I should not send in a message, and was then asked what I would do. My answer was simple. I meant to wait till I did see him. I was told they could not have people waiting about the office in this way.

I said I supposed I might stay in the street. “Carrison didn’t own that,” I suggested.

The clerk advised me not to try that game, or I might get locked up.

I said I would take my chance of it.

After that we went on arguing the question at some length, and we were in the middle of a heated argument, in which several of Carrison’s “young gentlemen”, as they called themselves, were good enough to join, when we were all suddenly silenced by a grave-looking individual, who authoritatively enquired:

“What is all this noise about?”

Before anyone could answer I spoke up: “I want to see Mr. Carrison, and they won’t let me.”

“What do you want with Mr. Carrison?”

“I will tell that to himself only.”

“Very well, say on – I am Mr. Carrison.”

For a moment I felt abashed and almost ashamed of my persistency; next instant, however, what Mr. Fryer would have called my “native audacity” came to the rescue, and I said, drawing a step or two nearer to him, and taking off my hat:

“I wanted to speak to you about Ladlow hall, if you please, sir.”

In an instant the fashion of his face changed, a look of irritation succeeded to that of immobility; an angry contraction of the eyebrows disfigured the expression of his countenance.

“Ladlow Hall!” he repeated; “and what have you got to say about Ladlow Hall?”

“That is what I wanted to tell you, sir,” I answered, and a dead hush seemed to fall on the office as I spoke.

The silence seemed to attract his attention, for he looked sternly at the clerks, who were not using a pen or moving a finger.

“Come this way, then,” he said abruptly; and next minute I was in his private office.

“Now, what is it?” he asked, flinging himself into a chair, and addressing me, who stood, hat in hand, beside the great table in the middle of the room.

I began – I will say he was a patient listener – at the very beginning, and told my story straight through. I concealed nothing. I enlarged on nothing. A discharged clerk, I stood before him, and in the capacity of a discharged clerk, I said what I had to say. He heard me to the end, then he sat silent, thinking.

At last he spoke. “You have heard a great deal of conversation about Ladlow, I suppose?” he remarked.

“No sir; I have heard nothing except what I have told you.”

“And why do you desire to strive to solve such a mystery?”

“If there is any money to be made, I should like to make it, sir.”

“How old are you?”

“Two-and-twenty last January.”

“And how much salary had you at Frimpton’s?”

“Twenty pounds a year.”

“Humph! More than you are worth, I should say.”

“Mr. Fryer seemed to imagine so, sir, at any rate,” I agreed, sorrowfully.

“But what do you think?” he asked, smiling in spite of himself.

“I think I did quite as much work as the other clerks,” I answered.

“That is not saying much, perhaps,” he observed. I was of his opinion, but I held my peace.

“You will never make much of a clerk, I am afraid,” Mr. Carrison proceeded, fitting his disparaging remarks upon me as he might on a lay figure. “You don’t like desk work?”

“Not much, sir.”

“I should judge the best thing you could do would be to emigrate,” he went on, eyeing me critically.

“Mr. Fryer said I had better go to Australia or—” I stopped, remembering the alternative that gentleman had presented.

“Or where?” asked Mr. Carrison.

“devil, sir” I explained, softly and apologetically.

He laughed – he lay back in his chair and laughed – and I laughed myself, though ruefully.

After all, twenty pounds was twenty pounds, though I had not thought much of the salary till I lost it.

We went on talking for a long time after that; he asked me all about my father and my early life, and how we lived, and where we lived, and the people we knew; and, in fact, put more questions than I can well remember.

“It seems a crazy thing to do,” he said at last; “and yet I feel disposed to trust you. The house is standing perfectly empty. I can’t live in it, and I can’t get rid of it; all my own furniture I have removed, and there is nothing in the place except a few old-fashioned articles belonging to Lord Ladlow. The place is a loss to me. It is of no use trying to let it, and thus, in fact, matters are at a deadlock. You won’t be able to find out anything, I know, because, of course, others have tried to solve the mystery ere now; still, if you like to try you may. I will make this bargain with you. If you like to go down, I will pay your reasonable expenses for a fortnight; and if you do any good for me, I will give you a ten-pound note for yourself. Of course I must be satisfied that what you have told me is true and that you are what you represent. Do you know anybody in the city who would speak for you?”

I could think of no one but my uncle. I hinted to Mr. Carrison he was not grand enough or rich enough, perhaps, but I knew nobody else to whom I could refer him.

“What!” he said, “Robert Dorland, of Cullum Street. He does business with us. If he will go bail for your good behaviour I shan’t want any further guarantee. Come along.”

And to my intense amazement, he rose, put on his hat, walked me across the outer office and along the pavements till we came to Cullum Street.

“Do you know this youth, Mr. Dorland?” he said, standing in front of my uncle’s desk, and laying a hand on my shoulder.

“Of course I do, Mr. Carrison,” answered my uncle, a little apprehensively; for, as he told me afterwards, he could not imagine what mischief I had been up to. “He is my nephew.”

“And what is your opinion of him – do you think he is a young fellow I may safely trust?”

My uncle smiled, and answered, “That depends on what you wish to trust him with.”

“A long column of addition, for instance.”

“It would be safer to give that task to somebody else.”

“Oh, uncle!” I remonstrated; for I had really striven to conquer my natural antipathy to figures – worked hard, and every bit of it against the collar.

My uncle got off his stool, and said, standing with his back to the empty fire-grate:

“Tell me what you wish the boy to do, Mr. Carrison, and I will tell you whether he will suit your purpose or not. I know him, I believe, better than he knows himself.”

In an easy, affable way, for so rich a man, Mr. Carrison took possession of the vacant stool, and nursing his right leg over his left knee, answered:

“He wants to go and shut the open door at Ladlow for me. Do you think he can do that?”

My uncle looked steadily back at the speaker, and said, “I thought, Mr. Carrison, it was quite settled no one could shut it?”

Mr. Carrison shifted a little uneasily on his seat, and replied: “I did not set your nephew the task he fancies he would like to undertake.”

“Have nothing to do with it, Phil,” advised my uncle, shortly.

“You don’t believe in ghosts, do you, Mr. Dorland?” asked Mr. Carrison, with a slight sneer.

“Don’t you, Mr. Carrison?” retorted my uncle.

There was a pause – an uncomfortable pause – during the course of which I felt the ten pounds, which, in imagination, I had really spent, trembling in the scale. I was not afraid. For ten pounds, or half the money, I would have faced all the inhabitants of spirit land. I longed to tell them so; but something in the way those two men looked at each other stayed my tongue.

“If you ask me the question here in the heart of the city, Mr. Dorland,” said Mr. Carrison, at length, slowly and carefully, “I answer ‘No’ ; but it you were to put it to me on a dark night at Ladlow, I should beg time to consider. I do not believe in supernatural phenomena myself, and yet – the door at Ladlow is as much beyond my comprehension as the ebbing and flowing of the sea.”

“And you can’t Live at Ladlow?” remarked my uncle.

“I can’t live at Ladlow, and what is more, I can’t get anyone else to live at Ladlow.”

“And you want to get rid of your lease?”

“I want so much to get rid of my lease that I told Fryer I would give him a handsome sum if he could induce anyone to solve the mystery. Is there any other information you desire, Mr. Dorland? Because if there is, you have only to ask and have. I feel I am not here in a prosaic office in the city of London, but in the Palace of Truth.”

My uncle took no notice of the implied compliment. When wine is good it needs no bush. If a man is habitually honest in his speech and in his thoughts, he desires no recognition of the fact.

“I don’t think so,” he answered; “it is for the boy to say what he will do. If he be advised by me he will stick to his ordinary work in his employers’ office, and leave ghost-hunting and spirit-laying alone.”

Mr. Carrison shot a rapid glance in my direction, a glance which, implying a secret understanding, might have influenced my uncle, could I have stooped to deceive my uncle.

“I can’t stick to my work there any longer,” I said. “I got my marching orders today.”

“What had you been doing, Phil?” asked my uncle.

“I wanted ten pounds to go and lay the ghost!” I answered, so dejectedly, that both Mr. Carrison and my uncle broke out laughing.

“Ten pounds!” cried my uncle, almost between laughing and crying. “Why, Phil boy, I had rather, poor man though I am, have given thee ten pounds than that thou should’st go ghost-hunting or ghost-laying.”

When he was very much in earnest my uncle went back to thee and thou of his native dialect. I liked the vulgarism, as my mother called it, and I knew my aunt loved to hear him use the caressing words to her. He had risen, not quite from the ranks it is true, but if ever a gentleman came ready born into the world it was Robert Dorland, upon whom at our home everyone seemed to look down.

“What will you do, Edlyd?” asked Mr. Carrison; “you hear what your uncle says, ‘Give up the enterprise’, and what I say; I do not want either to bribe or force your inclinations.”

“I will go, sir,” I answered quite steadily. “I am not afraid, and I should like to show you—” I stopped. I had been going to say, “I should like to show you I am not such a fool as you all take me for,” but I felt such an address would be too familiar, and refrained.

Mr. Carrison looked at me curiously. I think he supplied the end of the sentence for himself, but he only answered:

“I should like you to show me that door fast shut; at any rate, if you can stay in the place alone for a fortnight, you shall have your money.”

“I don’t like it, Phil,” said my uncle: “I don’t like this freak at all.”

“I am sorry for that, uncle,” I answered, “for I mean to go.”

“When?” asked Mr. Carrison.

“Tomorrow morning,” I replied.

“Give him five pounds, Dorland, please, and I will send you my cheque. You will account to me for that sum, you understand,” added Mr. Carrison, turning to where I stood.

“A sovereign will be quite enough,” I said.

“You will take five pounds, and account to me for it,” repeated Mr. Carrison, firmly; “also, you will write to me every day, to my private address, and if at any moment you feel the thing too much for you, throw it up. Good afternoon,” and without more formal leave-taking he departed.

“It is of no use talking to you, Phil, I suppose?” said my uncle.

“I don’t think it is,” I replied; “you won’t say anything to them at home, will you?”

“I am not very likely to meet any of them, am I?” he answered, without a shade of bitterness – merely stating a fact.

“I suppose I shall not see you again before I start,” I said, “so I will bid you good-bye now.”

“Good-bye, my lad; I wish I could see you a bit wiser and steadier.”

I did not answer him; my heart was very full, and my eyes too. I had tried, but office-work was not in me, and I felt it was just as vain to ask me to sit on a stool and pore over writing and figures as to think a person born destitute of musical ability could compose an opera.

Of course I went straight to Patty; though we were not then married, though sometimes it seemed to me as if we never should be married, she was my better half then as she is my better half now.

She did not throw cold water on the project; she did not discourage me. What she said, with her dear face aglow with excitement, was, “I only wish, Phil, I was going with you.” Heaven knows, so did I.

Next morning I was up before the milkman. I had told my people overnight I should be going out of town on business. Patty and I settled the whole plan in detail. I was to breakfast and dress there, for I meant to go down to Ladlow in my volunteer garments. That was a subject upon which my poor father and I never could agree; he called volunteering child’s play, and other things equally hard to bear; whilst my brother, a very carpet warrior to my mind, was never weary of ridiculing the force, and chaffing me for imagining I was “a soldier”.

Patty and I had talked matters over, and settled, as I have said, that I should dress at her father’s.

A young fellow I knew had won a revolver at a raffle, and willingly lent it to me. With that and my rifle I felt I could conquer an army.

It was a lovely afternoon when I found myself walking through leafy lanes in the heart of Meadowshire. With every vein of my heart I loved the country, and the country was looking its best just then: grass ripe for the mower, grain forming in the ear, rippling streams, dreamy rivers, old orchards, quaint cottages.

“Oh, that I had never to go back to London,” I thought, for I am one of the few people left on earth who love the country and hate cities. I walked on, I walked a long way, and being uncertain as to my road, asked a gentleman who was slowly riding a powerful roan horse under arching trees – a gentleman accompanied by a young lady mounted on a stiff white pony – my way to Ladlow Hall.

“That is Ladlow Hall,” he answered, pointing with his whip over the fence to my left hand. I thanked him and was going on, when he said:

“No one is living there now.”

“I am aware of that,” I answered.

He did not say anything more, only courteously bade me good-day, and rode off. The young lady inclined her head in acknowledgement of my uplifted cap, and smiled kindly. Altogether I felt pleased, little things always did please me. It was a good beginning – half-way to a good ending!

When I got to the Lodge I showed Mr. Carrison’s letter to the woman, and received the key.

“You are not going to stop up at the Hall alone, are you, sir?” she asked.

“Yes, I am,” I answered, uncompromisingly, so uncompromisingly that she said no more. The avenue led straight to the house; it was uphill all the way, and bordered by rows of the most magnificent limes I ever beheld. A light iron fence divided the avenue from the park, and between the trunks of the trees I could see the deer browsing and cattle grazing. Ever and anon there came likewise to my ear the sound of a sheep-bell.

It was a long avenue, but at length I stood in front of the Hall – a square, solid-looking, old-fashioned house, three stories high, with no basement; a flight of steps up to the principal entrance; four windows to the right of the door, four windows to the left; the whole building flanked and backed with trees; all the blinds pulled down, a dead silence brooding over the place: the sun westering behind the great trees studding the park. I took all this in as I approached, and afterwards as I stood for a moment under the ample porch; then, remembering the business which had brought me so far, I fitted the great key in the lock, turned the handle, and entered Ladlow Hall.

For a minute – stepping out of the bright sunlight – the place looked to me so dark that I could scarcely distinguish the objects by which I was surrounded; but my eyes soon grew accustomed to the comparative darkness, and I found I was in an immense hall, lighted from the roof, a magnificent old oak staircase conducted to the upper rooms.

The floor was of black and white marble. There were two fireplaces, fitted with dogs for burning wood; around the walls hung pictures, antlers, and horns, and in odd niches and corners stood groups of statues, and the figures of men in complete suits of armour.

To look at the place outside, no one would have expected to find such a hall. I stood lost in amazement and admiration, and then I began to glance more particularly around.

Mr. Carrison had not given me any instructions by which to identify the ghostly chamber – which I concluded would most probably be found on the first floor.

I knew nothing of the story connected with it – if there were a story. On that point I had left London as badly provided with mental as with actual luggage – worse provided, indeed, for a hamper, packed by Patty, and a small bag were coming over from the station; but regarding the mystery I was perfectly unencumbered. I had not the faintest idea in which apartment it resided. Well, I should discover that, no doubt, for myself ere long.

I looked around me – doors – doors – doors I had never before seen so many doors together all at once. Two of them stood open – one wide, the other slightly ajar.

“I’ll just shut them as a beginning,” I thought, “before I go upstairs.”

The doors were of oak, heavy, well-fitting, furnished with good locks and sound handles. After I had closed I tried them. Yes, they were quite secure. I ascended the great staircase feeling curiously like an intruder, paced the corridors, entered the many bed-chambers – some quite bare of furniture, others containing articles of an ancient fashion, and no doubt of considerable value – chairs, antique dressing-tables, curious wardrobes, and such like. For the most part the doors were closed, and I shut those that stood open before making my way into the attics.

I was greatly delighted with the attics. The windows lighting them did not, as a rule, overlook the front of the Hall, but commanded wide views over wood, and valley, and meadow. Leaning out of one, I could see that to the right of the Hall the ground, thickly planted, shelved down to a stream, which came out into the daylight a little distance beyond the plantation, and meandered through the deer park. At the back of the Hall the windows looked out on nothing save a dense wood and a portion of the stable-yard, whilst on the side nearest the point from whence I had come there were spreading gardens surrounded by thick yew hedges, and kitchen-gardens protected by high walls; and further on a farmyard, where I could perceive cows and oxen, and, further still, luxuriant meadows, and fields glad with waving corn.

“What a beautiful place!” I said. “Carrison must have been a duffer to leave it.” And then I thought what a great ramshackle house it was for anyone to be in all alone.

Getting heated with my long walk, I suppose, made me feel chilly, for I shivered as I drew my head in from the last dormer window, and prepared to go downstairs again.

In the attics, as in the other parts of the house I had as yet explored, I closed the doors, when there were keys locking them; when there were not, trying them, and in all cases, leaving them securely fastened.

When I reached the ground floor the evening was drawing on apace, and I felt that if I wanted to explore the whole house before dusk I must hurry my proceedings.

“I’ll take the kitchens next,” I decided, and so made my way to a wilderness of domestic offices lying to the rear of the great hall. Stone passages, great kitchens, an immense servants’-hall, larders, pantries, coal-cellars, beer-cellars, laundries, brewhouses, housekeeper’s room – it was not of any use lingering over these details. The mystery that troubled Mr. Carrison could scarcely lodge amongst cinders and empty bottles, and there did not seem much else left in this part of the building.

I would go through the living-rooms, and then decide as to the apartments I should occupy myself.

The evening shadows were drawing on apace, so I hurried back into the hall, feeling it was a weird position to be there all alone with those ghostly hollow figures of men in armour, and the statues on which the moon’s beams must fall so coldly. I would just look through the lower apartments and then kindle a fire. I had seen quantities of wood in a cupboard close at hand, and felt that beside a blazing hearth, and after a good cup of tea, I should not feel the solitary sensation which was oppressing me.

The sun had sunk below the horizon by this time, for to reach Ladlow I had been obliged to travel by cross lines of railway, and wait besides for such trains as condescended to carry third-class passengers; but there was still light enough in the hail to see all objects distinctly. With my own eyes I saw that one of the doors I had shut with my own hands was standing wide!

I turned to the door on the other side of the hall. It was as I had left it – closed. This, then, was the room – this with the open door. For a second I stood appalled; I think I was fairly frightened.

That did not last long, however. There lay the work I had desired to undertake, the foe I had offered to fight; so without more ado I shut the door and tried it.

“Now I will walk to the end of the hall and see what happens,” I considered. I did so. I walked to the foot of the grand staircase and back again, and looked.

The door stood wide open.

I went into the room, after just a spasm of irresolution – went in and pulled up the blinds: a good-sized room, twenty by twenty (I knew, because I paced it afterwards), lighted by two long windows.

The floor, of polished oak, was partially covered with a Turkey carpet. There were two recesses beside the fireplace, one fitted up as a bookcase, the other with an old and elaborately caned cabinet. I was astonished also to find a bedstead in an apartment so little retired from the traffic of the house; and there were also some chairs of an obsolete make, covered, so far as I could make out, with Faded tapestry. Beside the bedstead, which stood against the wall opposite to the door, I perceived another door. It was fast locked, the only locked door I had as yet met with in the interior of the house. It was a dreary, gloomy room: the dark panelled walls; the black, shining floor; the windows high from the ground; the antique furniture; the dull four-poster bedstead, with dingy velvet curtains; the gaping chimney; the silk counterpane that looked like a pall.

“Any crime might have been committed in such a room,” I thought pettishly; and then I looked at the door critically.

Someone had been at the trouble of fitting bolts upon it, for when I passed out I not merely shut the door securely, but bolted it as well.

“I will go and get some wood, and then look at it again,” I soliloquised. When I came back it stood wide open once more.

“Stay open, then!” I cried in a fury. “I won’t trouble myself any more with you tonight!”

Almost as I spoke the words, there came a ring at the front door. Echoing through the desolate house, the peal in the then state of my nerves startled me beyond expression.

It was only the man who had agreed to bring over my traps. I bade him lay them down in the hall, and, while looking out some small silver, asked where the nearest post-office was to be found. Not far from the park gates, he said; if I wanted any letter sent, he would drop it in the box for me; the mail-cart picked up the bag at ten o’clock.

I had nothing ready to post then, and told him so. Perhaps the money I gave was more than he expected, or perhaps the dreariness of my position impressed him as it had impressed me, for he paused with his hand on the lock, and asked:

“Are you going to stop here all alone, master?”

“All alone,” I answered, with such cheerfulness as was possible under the circumstances.

“That’s the room, you know,” he said, nodding in the direction of the open door, and dropping his voice to a whisper.

“Yes, I know,” I replied.

“What, you’ve been trying to shut it already, have you? Well, you are a game one!” And with this complementary if not very respectful comment he hastened out of the house. Evidently he had no intention of proffering his services towards the solution of the mystery.

I cast one glance at the door – it stood wide open. Through the windows I had left bare to the night, moonlight was beginning to stream cold and silvery. Before I did aught else I felt I must write to Mr. Carrison and Patty, so straightway I hurried to one of the great tables in the hall, and lighting a candle my thoughtful link girl had provided, with many other things, sat down and dashed off the two epistles.

Then down the long avenue, with its mysterious lights and shades, with the moonbeams glinting here and there, playing at hide-and-seek round the boles of the trees and through the tracery of quivering leaf and stem, I walked as fast as if I were doing a match against time.

It was delicious, the scent of the summer odours, the smell of the earth; if it had not been for the door I should have felt too happy. As it was—

“Look here, Phil,” I said, all of a sudden; “life’s not child’s play, as uncle truly remarks. That door is just the trouble you have now to face, and you must face it! But for that door you would never have been here. I hope you are not going to turn coward the very first night. Courage! – that is your enemy – conquer it.”

“I will try,” my other self answered back. “I can but try. I can but fail.”

The post-office was at Ladlow Hollow, a little hamlet through which the stream I had remarked dawdling on its way across the park flowed swiftly, spanned by an ancient bridge.

As I stood by the door of the little shop, asking some questions of the postmistress, the same gentleman I had met in the afternoon mounted on his roan horse, passed on foot. He wished me goodnight as he went by, and nodded familiarly to my companion, who curtseyed her acknowledgements.

“His lordship ages fast,” she remarked, following the retreating figure with her eyes.

“His lordship,” I repeated. “Of whom are you speaking?”

“Of Lord Ladlow,” she said.

“Oh! I have never seen him,” I answered, puzzled. “Why, that was Lord Ladlow!” she exclaimed.

You may be sure I had something to think about as I walked back to the Hall – something beside the moonlight and the sweet night-scents, and the rustle of beast and bird and leaf, that make silence seem more eloquent than noise away down in the heart of the country.

Lord Ladlow! my word, I thought he was hundreds, thousands of miles away; and here I find him – he walking in the opposite direction from his own home – I an inmate of his desolate abode. Hi! – what was that? I heard a noise in a shrubbery close at hand, and in an instant I was in the thick of the underbrush. Something shot out and darted into the cover of the further plantation. I followed, but I could catch never a glimpse of it. I did not know the lie of the ground sufficiently to course with success, and I had at length to give up the hunt – heated, baffled, and annoyed.

When I got into the house the moon’s beams were streaming down upon the hall; I could see every statue, every square of marble, every piece of armour. For all the world it seemed to me like something in a dream; but I was tired and sleepy, and decided I would not trouble about fire or food, or the open door, till the next morning: I would go to sleep.

With this intention I picked up some of my traps and carried them to a room on the first floor I had selected as small and habitable. I went down for the rest, and this time chanced to lay my hand on my rifle.

It was wet. I touched the floor – it was wet likewise.

I never felt anything like the thrill of delight which shot through me. I had to deal with flesh and blood, and I would deal with it, heaven helping me.

The next morning broke clear and bright. I was up with the lark – had washed, dressed, breakfasted, explored the house before the postman came with my letters.

One from Mr. Carrison, one from Patty, and one from my uncle: I gave the man half a crown, I was so delighted, and said I was afraid my being at the Hall would cause him some additional trouble.

“No, sir,” he answered, profuse in his expressions of gratitude; “I pass here every morning on my way to her ladyship’s.”

“Who is her ladyship?” I asked.

“The Dowager Lady Ladlow,” he answered – “the old lord’s widow.”

“And where is her place?” I persisted.

“If you keep on through the shrubbery and across the waterfall, you come to the house about a quarter of a mile further up the stream.”

He departed, after telling me there was only one post a day; and I hurried back to the room in which I had breakfasted, carrying my letters with me.

I opened Mr. Carrison’s first. The gist of it was, “Spare no expense; if you run short of money telegraph for it.”

I opened my uncle’s next. He implored me to return; he had always thought me hare-brained, but he felt a deep interest in and affection for me, and thought he could get me a good berth if I would only try to settle down and promise to stick to my work. The last was from Patty. O Patty, God bless you! Such women, I fancy, the men who fight best in battle, who stick last to a sinking ship, who are firm in life’s struggles, who are brave to resist temptation, must have known and loved. I can’t tell you more about the letter, except that it gave me strength to go on to the end.

I spent the forenoon considering that door. I looked at it from within and from without. I eyed it critically. I tried whether there was any reason why it should fly open, and I found that so long as I remained on the threshold it remained closed; if I walked even so far away as the opposite side of the hall, it swung wide.

Do what I would, it burst from latch and bolt. I could not lock it because there was no key. Well, before two o’clock I confess I was baffled.

At two there came a visitor – none other than Lord Ladlow himself. Sorely I wanted to take his horse round to the stables, but he would not hear of it.

“Walk beside me across the park, if you will be so kind,” he said; “I want to speak to you.”

We went together across the park, and before we parted I felt I could have gone through fire and water for this simple-spoken nobleman.

“You must not stay here ignorant of the rumours which are afloat,” he said. “Of course, when I let the place to Mr. Carrison I knew nothing of the open door.”

“Did you not, sir? – my lord, I mean,” I stammered.

He smiled. “Do not trouble yourself about my title, which, indeed, carries a very empty state with it, but talk to me as you might to a friend. I had no idea there was any ghost story connected with the Hall, or I should have kept the place empty.”

I did not exactly know what to answer, so I remained silent.

“How did you chance to be sent here?” he asked, after a pause.

I told him. When the first shock was over, a lord did not seem very different from anybody else. If an emperor had taken a morning canter across the park, I might, supposing him equally affable, have spoken as familiarly to him as to Lord Ladlow. My mother always said I entirely lacked the bump of veneration!

Beginning at the beginning, I repeated the whole story, from Parton’s remark about the sovereign to Mr. Carrison’s conversation with my uncle. When I had left London behind in the narrative, however, and arrived at the Hall, I became somewhat more reticent. After all, it was his Hall people could not live in – his door that would not keep shut; and it seemed to me these were facts he might dislike being forced upon his attention.

But he would have it. What had I seen? What did I think of the matter? Very honestly I told him I did not know what to say. The door certainly would not remain shut, and there seemed no human agency to account for its persistent opening; but then, on the other hand, ghosts generally did not tamper with firearms, and my rifle, though not loaded, had been tampered with – I was sure of that.

My companion listened attentively. “You are not frightened, are you?” he enquired at length.

“Not now,” I answered. “The door did give me a start last evening, but I am not afraid of that since I find someone else is afraid of a bullet.”

He did not answer for a minute; then he said: “The theory people have set up about the open door is this: as in that room my uncle was murdered, they say the door will never remain shut till the murderer is discovered.”

“Murdered!” I did not like the word at all; it made me feel chill and uncomfortable.

“Yes – he was murdered sitting in his chair, and the assassin has never been discovered. At first many persons inclined to the belief that I killed him; indeed, many are of that opinion still.”

“But you did not, sir – there is not a word of truth in that story, is there?”

He laid his hand on my shoulder as he said: “No, my lad; not a word. I loved the old man tenderly. Even when he disinherited me for the sake of his young wife, I was sorry, but not angry; and when he sent for me and assured me he had resolved to repair that wrong, I tried to induce him to leave the lady a handsome sum in addition to her jointure. ‘If you do not, people may think she has not been the source of happiness you expected,’ I added.

“‘Thank you, Hal,’ he said. ‘You are a good fellow; we will talk further about this tomorrow.’ And then he bade me goodnight.

“Before morning broke – it was in the summer two years ago – the household was aroused by a fearful scream. It was his death-cry. He had been stabbed from behind in the neck. He was seated in his chair writing – writing a letter to me. But for that I might have found it harder to clear myself than was in the case; for his solicitors came forward and said he had signed a will leaving all his personalty to me – he was very rich – unconditionally, only three days previously. That, of course, supplied the motive, as my lady’s lawyer put it. She was very vindictive, spared no expense in trying to prove my guilt, and said openly she would never rest till she saw justice done, if it cost her the whole of her fortune. The letter lying before the dead man, over which blood had spurted, she declared must have been placed on his table by me; but the coroner saw there was an animus in this, for the few opening lines stated my uncle’s desire to confide in me his reasons for changing his will – reasons, he said, that involved his honour, as they had destroyed his peace. ‘In the statement you will find sealed up with my will in – ’ At that point he was dealt his death-blow. The papers were never found, and the will was never proved. My lady put in the former will, leaving her everything. Ill as I could afford to go to law, I was obliged to dispute the matter, and the lawyers are at it still, and very likely will continue at it for years. When I lost my good name, I lost my good health, and had to go abroad; and while I was away Mr. Carrison took the Hall. Till I returned, I never heard a word about the open door. My solicitor said Mr. Carrison was behaving badly; but I think now I must see them or him, and consider what can be done in the affair. As for yourself, it is of vital importance to me that this mystery should be cleared up, and if you are really not timid, stay on. I am too poor to make rash promises, but you won’t find me ungrateful.”

“Oh, my lord!” I cried – the address slipped quite easily and naturally off my tongue – “I don’t want any more money or anything, if I can only show Patty’s father I am good for something—”

“Who is Patty?” he asked.

He read the answer in my face, for he said no more.

“Should you like to have a good dog for company?” he enquired after a pause.

I hesitated; then I said: “No, thank you. I would rather watch and hunt for myself.”

And as I spoke, the remembrance of that “something” in the shrubbery recurred to me, and I told him I thought there had been someone about the place the previous evening.

“Poachers,” he suggested; but I shook my head.

“A girl or a woman, I imagine. However, I think a dog might hamper me.”

He went away, and I returned to the house. I never left it all day. I did not go into the garden, or the stable-yard, or the shrubbery, or anywhere; I devoted myself solely and exclusively to that door.

If I shut it once, I shut it a hundred times, and always with the same result. Do what I would, it swung wide. Never, however, when I was looking at it. So long as I could endure to remain, it stayed shut – the instant I turned my back, it stood open.

About four o’clock I had another visitor; no other than Lord Ladlow’s daughter – the Honourable Beatrice, riding her funny little white pony.

She was a beautiful girl of fifteen or thereabouts, and she had the sweetest smile you ever saw.

“Papa sent me with this,” she said; “he would not trust any other messenger,” and she put a piece of paper in my hand.

Keep your food under lock and key; buy what you require yourself. Get your water from the pump in the stable-yard. I am going from home; but if you want anything, go or send to my daughter.

“Any answer?” she asked, patting her pony’s neck.

“Tell his lordship, if you please, I will ‘keep my powder dry’!” I replied.

“You have made papa look so happy,” she said, still patting that fortunate pony.

“If it is in my power, I will make him look happier still, Miss—” and I hesitated, not knowing how to address her.

“Call me Beatrice,” she said, with an enchanting grace; then added, slyly, “Papa promises me I shall be introduced to Patty ere long,” and before I could recover from my astonishment, she had tightened the bit and was turning across the park.

“One moment, please,” I cried. “You can do something for me.”

“What is it?” and she came back, trotting over the great sweep in front of the house.

“Lend me your pony for a minute.”

She was off before I could even offer to help her alight – off, and gathering up her habit dexterously with one hand, led the docile old sheep forward with the other.

I took the bridle – when I was with horses I felt amongst my own kind – stroked the pony, pulled his ears, and let him thrust his nose into my hand.

Miss Beatrice is a countess now, and a happy wife and mother; but I sometimes see her, and the other night she took me carefully into a conservatory and asked:

“Do you remember Toddy, Mr. Edlyd?”

“Remember him!” I exclaimed; “I can never forget him!”

“He is dead!” she told me, and there were tears in her beautiful eyes as she spoke the words. “Mr. Edlyd, I loved Toddy!”

Well, I took Toddy up to the house, and under the third window to the right hand. He was a docile creature, and let me stand on the saddle while I looked into the only room in Ladlow Hall I had been unable to enter.

It was perfectly bare of furniture, there was not a thing in it – not a chair or table, not a picture on the walls, or ornament on the chimney-piece.

“That is where my grand-uncle’s valet slept,” said Miss Beatrice. “It was he who first ran in to help him the night he was murdered.”

“Where is the valet?” I asked.

“Dead,” she answered. “The shock killed him. He loved his master more than he loved himself.” I had seen all I wished, so I jumped off the saddle, which I had carefully dusted with a branch plucked from a lilac tree; between jest and earnest pressed the hem of Miss Beatrice’s habit to my lips as I arranged its folds; saw her wave her hand as she went at a hard gallop across the park; and then turned back once again into the lonely house, with the determination to solve the mystery attached to it or die in the attempt.

Why, I cannot explain, but before I went to bed that night I drove a gimlet I found in the stables hard into the floor, and said to the door:

“Now I am keeping you open.”

When I went down in the morning the door was close shut, and the handle of the gimlet, broken off short, lying in the hall.

I put my hand to wipe my forehead; it was dripping with perspiration. I did not know what to make of the place at all! I went out into the open air for a few minutes; when I returned the door again stood wide.

If I were to pursue in detail the days and nights that followed, I should weary my readers. I can only say they changed my life. The solitude, the solemnity, the mystery, produced an effect I do not profess to understand, but that I cannot regret.

I have hesitated about writing of the end, but it must come, so let me hasten to it. Though feeling convinced that no human agency did or could keep the door open, I was certain that some living person had means of access to the house which I could not discover, This was made apparent in trifles which might well have escaped unnoticed had several, or even two people occupied the mansion, but that in my solitary position it was impossible to overlook. A chair would be misplaced, for instance; a path would be visible over a dusty floor; my papers I found were moved; my clothes touched – letters I carried about with me, and kept under my pillow at night; still, the fact remained that when I went to the post-office, and while I was asleep, someone did wander over the house. On Lord Ladlow’s return I meant to ask him for some further particulars of his uncle’s death, and I was about to write to Mr. Carrison and beg permission to have the door where the valet had slept broken open, when one morning, very early indeed, I spied a hairpin lying close beside it.

What an idiot I had been! If I wanted to solve the mystery of the open door, of course I must keep watch in the room itself. The door would not stay wide unless there was a reason for it, and most certainly a hairpin could not have got into the house without assistance.

I made up my mind what I should do – that I would go to the post early, and take up my position about the hour I had hitherto started for Ladlow Hollow. I felt on the eve of a discovery, and longed for the day to pass, that the night might come.

It was a lovely morning; the weather had been exquisite during the whole week, and I flung the hall door wide to let in the sunshine and the breeze. As I did so, I saw there was a basket on the top step – a basket filled with rare and beautiful fruit and flowers.

Mr. Carrison had let off the gardens attached to Ladlow Hall for the season – he thought he might as well save something out of the fire, he said, so my fare had not been varied with delicacies of that kind. I was very fond of fruit in those days, and seeing a card addressed to me, I instantly selected a tempting peach, and ate it a little greedily perhaps.

I might say I had barely swallowed the last morsel, when Lord Ladlow’s caution recurred to me. The fruit had a curious flavour – there was a strange taste hanging about my palate. For a moment, sky, trees and park swam before my eyes; then I made up my mind what to do.

I smelt the fruit – it had all the same faint odour; then I put some in my pocket – took the basket and locked it away – walked round to the farmyard – asked for the loan of a horse that was generally driven in a light cart, and in less than half an hour was asking in Ladlow to be directed to a doctor.

Rather cross at being disturbed so early, he was at first inclined to pooh-pooh my idea; but I made him cut open a pear and satisfy himself the fruit had been tampered with.

“It is fortunate you stopped at the first peach,” he remarked, after giving me a draught, and some medicine to take back, and advising me to keep in the open air as much as possible. “I should like to retain this fruit and see you again tomorrow.”

We did not think then on how many morrows we should see each other! Riding across to Ladlow, the postman had given me three letters, but I did not read them till I was seated under a great tree in the park, with a basin of milk and a piece of bread beside me.

Hitherto, there had been nothing exciting in my correspondence. Patty’s epistles were always delightful, but they could not be regarded as sensational; and about Mr. Carrison’s there was a monotony I had begun to find tedious. On this occasion, however, no fault could be found on that score. The contents of his letter greatly surprised me. He said Lord Ladlow had released him from his bargain – that I could, therefore, leave the Hall at once. He enclosed me ten pounds, and said he would consider how he could best advance my interests; and that I had better call upon him at his private house when I returned to London.

“I do not think I shall leave Ladlow yet awhile,” I considered, as I replaced his letter in its envelope. “Before I go I should like to make it hot for whoever sent me that fruit; so unless Lord Ladlow turns me out I’ll stay a little longer.”

Lord Ladlow did not wish me to leave. The third letter was from him.

I shall return home tomorrow night (he wrote), and see you on Wednesday. I have arranged satisfactorily with Mr. Carrison, and as the Hall is my own again, I mean to try to solve the mystery it contains myself. If you choose to stop and help me to do so, you would confer a favour, and I will try to make it worth your while.

“I will keep watch tonight, and see if I cannot give you some news tomorrow,” I thought. And then I opened Patty’s letter – the best, dearest, sweetest letter any postman in all the world could have brought me.

If it had not been for what Lord Ladlow said about his sharing my undertaking, I should not have chosen that night for my vigil. I felt ill and languid – fancy, no doubt, to a great degree inducing these sensations. I had lost energy in a most unaccountable manner. The long, lonely days had told upon my spirits – the fidgety feeling which took me a hundred times in the twelve hours to look upon the open door, to close it, and to count how many steps I could take before it opened again, had tried my mental strength as a perpetual blister might have worn away my physical. In no sense was I fit for the task I had set myself, and yet I determined to go through with it. Why had I never before decided to watch in that mysterious chamber? Had I been at the bottom of my heart afraid? In the bravest of us there are depths of cowardice that lurk unsuspected till they engulf our courage.

The day wore on – the long, dreary day; evening approached – the night shadows closed over the Hall. The moon would not rise for a couple of hours more. Everything was still as death. The house had never before seemed to me so silent and so deserted.

I took a light, and went up to my accustomed room, moving about for a time as though preparing for bed; then I extinguished the candle, softly opened the door, turned the key, and put it in my pocket, slipped softly downstairs, across the hall, through the open door. Then I knew I had been afraid, for I felt a thrill of terror as in the dark I stepped over the threshold. I paused and listened – there was not a sound – the night was still and sultry, as though a storm were brewing. Not a leaf seemed moving – the very mice remained in their holes! Noiselessly I made my way to the other side of the room. There was an old-fashioned easy-chair between the bookshelves and the bed; I sat down in it, shrouded by the heavy curtain.

The hours passed – were ever hours so long? The moon rose, came and looked in at the windows, and then sailed away to the west; but not a sound, no, not even the cry of a bird. I seemed to myself a mere collection of nerves. Every part of my body appeared twitching. It was agony to remain still; the desire to move became a form of torture. Ah! a streak in the sky; morning at last, Heaven be praised! Had ever anyone before so welcomed the dawn? A thrush began to sing – was there ever heard such delightful music? It was the morning twilight, soon the sun would rise; soon that awful vigil would be over, and yet I was no nearer the mystery than before. Hush! what was that? It had come. After the hours of watching and waiting; after the long night and the long suspense, it came in a moment.

The locked door opened – so suddenly, so silently, that I had barely time to draw back behind the curtain, before I saw a woman in the room. She went straight across to the other door and closed it, securing it as I saw with bolt and lock. Then just glancing around, she made her way to the cabinet, and with a key she produced shot back the wards. I did not stir, I scarcely breathed, and yet she seemed uneasy. Whatever she wanted to do she evidently was in haste to finish, for she took out the drawers one by one, and placed them on the floor; then, as the light grew better, I saw her first kneel on the floor, and peer into every aperture, and subsequently repeat the same process, standing on a chair she drew forward for the purpose. A slight, lithe woman, not a lady, clad all in black – not a bit of white about her. What on earth could she want? In a moment it flashed upon me – THE WILL AND THE LETTER! SHE IS SEARCHING FOR THEM.

I sprang from my concealment – I had her in my grasp; but she tore herself out of my hands, fighting like a wildcat: she hit, scratched, kicked, shifting her body as though she had not a bone in it, and at last slipped herself free, and ran wildly towards the door by which she had entered.

If she reached it, she would escape me. I rushed across the room and just caught her dress as she was on the threshold. My blood was up, and I dragged her back: she had the strength of twenty devils, I think, and struggled as surely no woman ever did before.

“I do not want to kill you,” I managed to say in gasps, “but I will if you do not keep quiet.”

“Bah!” she cried; and before I knew what she was doing she had the revolver out of my pocket and fired.

She missed: the ball just glanced off my sleeve. I fell upon her – I can use no other expression, for it had become a fight for life, and no man can tell the ferocity there is in him till he is placed as I was then – fell upon her, and seized the weapon. She would not let it go, but I held her so tight she could not use it. She bit my face; with her disengaged hand she tore my hair. She turned and twisted and slipped about like a snake, but I did not feel pain or anything except a deadly horror lest my strength should give out.

Could I hold out much longer? She made one desperate plunge, I felt the grasp with which I held her slackening; she felt it too, and seizing her advantage tore herself free, and at the same instant fired again blindly, and again missed.

Suddenly there came a look of horror into her eyes – a frozen expression of fear.

“See!” she cried; and flinging the revolver at me, fled.

I saw, as in a momentary flash, that the door I had beheld locked stood wide – that there stood beside the table an awful figure, with uplifted hand – and then I saw no more. I was struck at last; as she threw the revolver at me she must have pulled the trigger, for I felt something like red-hot iron enter my shoulder, and I could but rush from the room before I fell senseless on the marble pavement of the hall.

When the postman came that morning, finding no one stirring, be looked through one of the long windows that flanked the door; then he ran to the farmyard and called for help.

“There is something wrong inside,” he cried. “That young gentleman is lying on the floor in a pool of blood.”

As they rushed round to the front of the house they saw Lord Ladlow riding up the avenue, and breathlessly told him what had happened.

“Smash in one of the windows,” be said; “and go instantly for a doctor.”

They laid me on the bed in that terrible room, and telegraphed for my father. For long I hovered between life and death, but at length I recovered sufficiently to be removed to the house Lord Ladlow owned on the other side of the Hollow.

Before that time I had told him all I knew, and begged him to make instant search for the will.

“Break up the cabinet if necessary,” I entreated, “I am sure the papers are there.”

And they were. His lordship got his own, and as to the scandal and the crime, one was hushed up and the other remained unpunished. The dowager and her maid went abroad the very morning I lay on the marble pavement at Ladlow Hall – they never returned.

My lord made that one condition of his silence.

Not in Meadowshire, but in a fairer county still, I have a farm which I manage, and make both ends meet comfortably.

Patty is the best wife any man ever possessed – and I – well, I am just as happy if a trifle more serious than of old; but there are times when a great horror of darkness seems to fall upon me, and at such periods I cannot endure to be left alone.

Weird Stories by Mrs. J. H. Riddell (1882)

NISSA

Albert Delpit

1884 / 1891

Gaston lighted a cigarette, saying,

“It isn’t a long story, but it is dramatic. Confound it! Whenever I think of it, a chill through every vein. You remember that two years ago I was sent on a mission to Persia to study and describe the province of Irak-Adjemi. I began by settling in Ispahan, and completed my studies in three months. But, had I returned at once, my reputation for thorough scholarship would have been lost. I was almost bored to death, when the governor was changed. The Shah sent, in place of the former one, his cousin Malcom-Khan.”

“The one who has been in France?”

“Yes, and you knew one of the heroes of my story, Mehmed-Aga, who was on the staff of the prince. He has the rank of general or rather, as they call it in Persia, sertip.”

“I remember. A man of about thirty, very elegant and clever, who sometimes supped with us?”

“You can understand my pleasure in meeting him there. There is something particularly charming about these Orientals who have become semi-Parisians. Contact with our civilization seems to refine and soften their primitive barbarism. At the end of a week the sertip and I were inseparable.”

“And the drama?”

“You are in too great of a hurry. I haven’t finished the introduction. One morning I was riding on horseback through the city, lost in reverie, and for the hundredth time enjoying its fairy-like charm. Imagine broad avenues, lined on the right and left by arcades, the whole interspersed with huge plane-trees, watered by ever-flowing rills; farther beyond—”

“A description! My dear fellow, you’re not working for the ministry. You promised me a dramatic story; tell it. Above all, don’t wander into descriptions.”

Gaston sighed, and then continued.

I was approaching the mosque of Tchechel-Sutoun, when at a street corner, I saw a woman in a litter. Usually Persian women in the street look like bundles. They are veiled, of course, or rather they wear on their heads a sort of curtain which covers their faces. This Persian, on the contrary, displayed a slender, graceful figure. Her eyes were large and full of fire. My horse was walking and slowly followed the litter. I fancied that the stranger looked back once or twice, but as flirtations are extremely improbable occurrences in the East, I paid little heed and had nearly forgotten the meeting when, two days later, I again encountered the litter. This time I was not alone. Mehmed Aga was with me. I recognized the veiled lady at a glance, especially her marvellous eyes, whence flashed a beam of lambent flame. As before, she looked back, but for a longer time. I glanced at the sertip, he pretended not to have noticed anything. We moved on in this way for about ten minutes when the litter turned abruptly toward the Djoulffa bridge, one of the finest pieces of architecture in the world. It has thirty huge arches over the Zenderud, a very changeable river. In the summer you may cross it dry-shod; in the month of November, the time when this adventure occurred, its waves were as swift and violent as a torrent leaping from Alpine glaciers. The Djoulffa bridge is a sort of meeting place for people who go out in the cool air of the evening. I hesitated, therefore, to follow my incognita openly, but she had no scruples. Leaning half way out of the litter she dropped her handkerchief. Oh, these Persian women are quick-witted.

~  ~  ~  ~  ~

“And did the sertip say nothing?”

~  ~  ~  ~  ~

Not at the moment. He kept silent during the rest of our ride, but twisted his moustache as if his thoughts were far away. “Come in,” he said when we reached the palace; and, after we were smoking in his private room, he added: “My dear fellow, I made no comment just now. But instead of keeping that dainty handkerchief pressed close to your heart, you are going to throw it into the fire.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that you are not to be strangled or stabbed, or flung into the Zenderud. I am in charge of the police in this city, and answerable to the French legation.”

“But—”

“Not another word. You Parisians are the most amazing fellows! You always imagine yourselves on the Boulevard des Capucines. We are in the East, my dear boy, and in the East, husbands do not jest. Your stranger is no stranger to me. Her name is Nissa.”

“Nissa!”

“If the name is charming the husband is not. He is a very rich merchant, famous for his violent temper and his jealousy. His mother was of English origin, but he is thoroughly Oriental in character. He’d kill you like a dog.”

“And what is this Ispahan Bluebeard’s name?”

“Astoulla. I don’t wish you to make his acquaintance. But you know where he lives. His house is just on the river brink at the end of the bridge.”

“And Nissa, what do people say of her?”

“Oh, true Parisian! People don’t talk about women in our country, or if they do – well, they are sewed up in a sack and flung into the water.”

“What an outrage!”

“Oh, we are civilized now,” replied the sertip cooly. “Formerly a live cat would have been put into the bag, also. Terrified by the water, the cat would tear the woman’s face. This is no longer done – at least, not frequently. The result of European influence!”

This little conversation was rather a wet blanket on my enthusiasm. Besides, Mehmed Aga had the good taste not to push the subject further. I dined with him and in the evening he sent for some musicians who played several airs for us in the fashion of the country. But my thoughts were preoccupied. I still saw the graceful figure bending from the litter, and the little hand which dropped from the handkerchief. A persistent voice murmured in my ear like the refrain of a ballad: “Nissa! – Nissa.” All night long I suffered from nightmare, in which a huge cat named Astoulla scratched my face. I woke at eleven o’clock in the morning, completely disenchanted.

~  ~  ~  ~  ~

While sitting on the terrace that evening a hideously ugly old woman entered the low doorway of the house and asked to see me. As soon as we were alone, she said:

“Are you a brave man?”

I smiled with the fatuity peculiar to men who are asked that question.

“I have a proposal to make,” she added. “It is dark. No one will see us. You must follow me. When half way, I shall tie a bandage over your eyes, but you must swear not to try to discover where I am taking you.”

“I promise.”

She made a grimace, which rendered her still more frightful. I had consented off hand, urged by an irresistible impulse. Daylight had dispelled my fears, the nightmare had gradually faded from my mind, and I constantly heard the voice murmuring in my ear: “Nissa! Nissa!” The old woman evidently came from her. I went into my room and took a small revolver. Five minutes after we were on our way. It was crazy, utterly absurd, I am perfectly aware of that. But there are some absurdities concerning which we do not reason. The unknown Nissa exerted some mysterious power over me. I had not even seen her, yet I ardently longed for her presence. Her sparkling eyes had fired my heart.

When we reached the Djoulffa bridge the old woman stopped, and, drawing a handkerchief from her pocket, tied it firmly over my eyes. I could see nothing; then she seized my hand, and I let her lead me. By the cooler air I guessed that we were crossing the river; then I heard the sound of voices at the right and left. It never entered my mind that I might be noticed by these passing pedestrians. I was completely absorbed in my dream, thinking of the young Persian’s graceful figure, delicate little hand, and glowing eyes. After a few minutes’ walk the old woman turned toward the right, but we did not leave the banks of the Zenderud. I heard its tumultuous waves dashing against the arches of the bridge. At last my guide stopped; I heard the creaking of a key, and the old woman said under her breath:

“Go up.”

We mounted only five steps, then my feet pressed a thick, soft carpet. At the same time the bandage was snatched away. I found myself in a somewhat small room, dimly lighted by a copper lamp. Usually, in Persia, the walls are bare. Here, on the contrary, they were draped with yellow cashmere. Perfumes were burning in a brazier – the acrid Oriental perfumes which intoxicate like the fumes of old wine. Against the background of yellow cashmere on the walls hung musical instruments, the nefir which resembles our hautboy, timbals, two kematches, a sort of viol, and, here and there, weapons interspersed with necklaces. Outside was the dull, rhythmic beat of the waves of the river. Drawing aside the portiere, I saw that it washed the very walls of the house. Almost instantly I heard a slight, rustling noise, and turning saw – Nissa. I was fairly dazzled. She was probably seventeen or eighteen. Her thick black hair, falling on her neck and shoulders, reminded one of the raven locks of Regnault’s Salome. Her face, somewhat creamy in tint, resembled mother of pearl, but I was especially struck by the contrast between her dazzling white teeth and very black eyes. The lashes, lids, and lips were painted. She gazed calmly at me with her sparkling eyes, then took my hand and leading me to a sofa, said:

“My husband has gone to Teheran; we can have a little fun.”

She spoke in English, with a marked guttural accent, then tapped with a copper ring on a small drum and coffee was served. Afterwards, she began to talk in low, rapid tones, telling me that she was terribly bored and had noticed me at once. Meanwhile her glances grew more tender, her hand gently pressed mine. Just at that moment there was a noise in the next room. She sprang up, trembling from head to foot. Her graceful advances, the caress, the sudden terror that succeeded each other so rapidly that I had not had time to analyze my own impressions. Still with the same swift, feline grace, she darted to the wall, snatched a small, sharp dagger, and slipped it up her sleeve. Then, turning to me with an energetic gesture, she whispered, “Wait!” and vanished behind the heavy drapery.

~  ~  ~  ~  ~

A vague sense of anxiety stole over me. I remembered the sertip’s warnings. Perhaps I had been a little imprudent. Suddenly the noise in the next room commenced again; I heard voices, a short struggle – silence followed. All at once the portiere was raised and Nissa appeared again. She was very pale, so pale that the mother of pearl tints in her complexion blended with the pearl necklace she wore. She stood half leaning against the wall, like a white statue relieved against the yellow background of the drapery. Then she advanced a few paces into the apartment, smiling: her hands and the knife were red.

“Great Heavens! What has happened?”

“Nothing,” she replied, flung the knife into a corner, and added quietly:

“It was my husband. He would have killed us; I preferred to anticipate him. Come and help me throw the body into the water.”

I stood motionless, gazing at her in horror. She looked at me, but her eyes expressed the most absolute contempt, and I shall never forget the tone in which she said:

“Oh! how nervous these Frenchmen are!”

Shrugging her shoulders, she called a female servant and told her to open the window. Then, as if they were doing the most everyday thing, the two lifted the corpse and flung it into the water, which swept it away. In truth, the adventure was becoming too Oriental for a Parisian. I confess that I was overwhelmed with frantic terror, and waiting for nothing more, rushed off like a madman. How did I go? I have actually no idea. At the end of ten minutes I found myself again in the city, through which I rushed at full speed as if pursued by a legion of fiends.

On reaching home I double-locked my door, execrating Nissa and all the houris of the Oriental world.

~  ~  ~  ~  ~

What a night I spent! I did not sleep until the morning and then fell into a leaden stupor. When I awoke, the sun, already high in the heavens, was pouring floods of light into my room. I felt overwhelmed by a sort of moral paralysis. A man does not disappear without the interference of justice. Nissa did not even conceal her deed; the servant had seen and helped her. I should be implicated in the affair, and the bare thought of being mixed up with such a crime made my hair bristle with horror. Should I confide the whole matter to the French Minister? Unfortunately he had just obtained leave of absence, and the first Secretary of Legation was too young for me to apply to him. In any case my whole future was destroyed. I remained all day a prey to the keenest anxiety, not daring to leave the house. Evening came before I had formed any plan, and still there was no news of Nissa. Had she been arrested? What had become of her? I went to bed early, but could not sleep. The second day, unable to endure the situation longer, I resolved so visit the sertip. Anything would be preferable to the uncertainty in which I was living. I felt sure that Mehmed-Aga would not go out before breakfast, so I reached the palace at noon. I was told that he was in his office as usual and, after being announced, I entered. The sertip was peacefully smoking his chibouque.

“Ah, is it you?” he said. “Are you well?”

“Very well. thank you.”

“By the way,” he added, “have you heard the news?”

“The news – the news? No, I – I don’t know anything.”

“You remember the rich merchant, Astoulla?”

“Remember As—”

“Why yes, the husband of Nissa, of whom we were speaking.”

I felt the blood mount to the roots of my hair. It was all over, the crime was known, and I dared not think of the end of the adventure. I stammered an almost unintelligible “yes.”

“Poor fellow!” continued the sertip. “He has suddenly disappeared.”

I felt a curious choking sensation in the throat but managed to answer:

“What! he has – he has disappeared? Why! That’s very – very queer.”

“Yes, very queer.”

And the sertip looked intently at me. I could bear his gaze no longer, and was on the point of confessing everything, when he said:

“He was going to Teheran, and all at once he vanished. Nothing more has been heard of him.”

For the second time the sertip looked intently at me. A brief silence followed. Then, puffing a cloud of smoke from his chibouque, he added with the most peaceful tranquility:

“God is great!”

Les Amours Cruelles (1884)

English translation 1891

THE REAL
AND THE COUNTERFEIT

Louisa Baldwin

1894

Will Musgrave determined that he would neither keep Christmas alone, nor spend it again with his parents and sisters in the south of France. The Musgrave family annually migrated southward from their home in Northumberland, and Will as regularly followed them to spend a month with them in the Riviera, till he had almost forgotten what Christmas was like in England. He rebelled at having to leave the country at a time when, if the weather was mild, he should be hunting, or if it was severe, skating, and he had no real or imaginary need to winter in the south. His chest was of iron and his lungs of brass. A raking east wind that drove his parents into their thickest furs, and taught them the number of their teeth by enabling them to count a separate and well-defined ache for each, only brought a deeper colour into the cheek, and a brighter light into the eye of the weather-proof youth. Decidedly he would not go to Cannes, though it was no use annoying his father and mother, and disappointing his sisters, by telling them beforehand of his determination.

Will knew very well how to write a letter to his mother in which his defection should appear as an event brought about by the overmastering power of circumstances, to which the sons of Adam must submit. No doubt that a prospect of hunting or skating, as the fates might decree, influenced his decision. But he had also long promised himself the pleasure of a visit from two of his college friends, Hugh Armitage and Horace Lawley, and he asked that they might spend a fortnight with him at Stonecroft, as a little relaxation had been positively ordered for him by his tutor.

“Bless him,” said his mother fondly, when she had read his letter, “I will write to the dear boy and tell him how pleased I am with his firmness and determination.” But Mr Musgrave muttered inarticulate sounds as he listened to his wife, expressive of incredulity rather than of acquiescence, and when he spoke it was to say, “Devil of a row three young fellows will kick up alone at Stonecroft! We shall find the stables full of broken-kneed horses when we go home again.”

Will Musgrave spent Christmas day with the Armitages at their place near Ripon. And the following night they gave a dance at which he enjoyed himself as only a very young man can do, who has not yet had his fill of dancing, and who would like nothing better than to waltz through life with his arm round his pretty partner’s waist.

The following day, Musgrave and Armitage left for Stonecroft, picking up Lawley on the way, and arriving at their destination late in the evening, in the highest spirits and with the keenest appetites. Stonecroft was a delightful haven of refuge at the end of a long journey across country in bitter weather, when the east wind was driving the light dry snow into every nook and cranny. The wide, hospitable front door opened into an oak panelled hall with a great open fire burning cheerily, and lighted by lamps from overhead that effectually dispelled all gloomy shadows. As soon as Musgrave had entered the house he seized his friends, and before they had time to shake the snow from their coats, kissed them both under the mistletoe bough and set the servants tittering in the background.

“You’re miserable substitutes for your betters,” he said, laughing and pushing them from him, “but it’s awfully unlucky not to use the mistletoe. Barker, I hope supper’s ready, and that it is something very hot and plenty of it, for we’ve travelled on empty stomachs and brought them with us,” and he led his guests upstairs to their rooms.

“What a jolly gallery!” said Lawley enthusiastically as they entered a long wide corridor, with many doors and several windows in it, and hung with pictures and trophies of arms.

“Yes, its our one distinguishing feature at Stonecroft,” said Musgrave. “It runs the whole length of the house, from the modern end of it to the back, which is very old, and built on the foundations of a Cistercian monastery which once stood on this spot. The gallery’s wide enough to drive a carriage and pair down it, and it’s the main thoroughfare of the house. My mother takes a constitutional here in bad weather, as though it were the open air, and does it with her bonnet on to aid the delusion.”

Armitage’s attention was attracted by the pictures on the walls, and especially by the life-size portrait of a young man in a blue coat, with powdered hair, sitting under a tree with a stag-hound lying at his feet.

“An ancestor of yours?” he said, pointing at the picture.

“Oh, they’re all one’s ancestors, and a motley crew they are, I must say for them. It may amuse you and Lawley to find from which of them I derive my good looks. That pretty youth whom you seem to admire is my great-great-grandfather. He died at twenty-two, a preposterous age for an ancestor. But come along Armitage, you’ll have plenty of time to do justice to the pictures by daylight, and I want to show you your rooms. I see everything is arranged comfortably, we are close together. Our pleasantest rooms are on the gallery, and here we are nearly at the end of it. Your rooms are opposite to mine, and open into Lawley’s in case you should be nervous in the night and feel lonely so far from home, my dear children.”

And Musgrave bade his friends make haste, and hurried away whistling cheerfully to his own room.

The following morning the friends rose to a white world. Six inches of fine snow, dry as salt, lay everywhere, the sky overhead a leaden lid, and all the signs of a deep fall yet to come.

“Cheerful this, very,” said Lawley, as he stood with his hands in his pockets, looking out of the window after breakfast. “The snow will have spoilt the ice for skating.”

“But it won’t prevent wild duck shooting,” said Armitage, “and I say, Musgrave, we’ll rig up a toboggan out there. I see a slope that might have been made on purpose for it. If we get some tobogganing, it may snow day and night for all I care, we shall be masters of the situation anyway.”

“Well thought of, Armitage,” said Musgrave, jumping at the idea.

“Yes, but you need two slopes and a little valley between for real good tobogganing,” objected Lawley, “otherwise you only rush down the hillock like you do from the Mount Church to Funchal, and then have to retrace your steps as you do there, carrying your car on your back. Which lessens the fun considerably.”

“Well, we can only work with the material at hand,” said Armitage; “let’s go and see if we can’t find a better place for our toboggan, and something that will do for a car to slide in.”

“That’s easily found – empty wine cases are the thing, and stout sticks to steer with,” and away rushed the young men into the open air, followed by half a dozen dogs barking joyfully.

“By Jove! if the snow keeps firm, we’ll put runners on strong chairs and walk over to see the Harradines at Garthside, and ask the girls to come out sledging, and we’ll push them,” shouted Musgrave to Lawley and Armitage, who had outrun him in the vain attempt to keep up with a deer-hound that headed the party.

After a long and careful search they found a piece of land exactly suited to their purpose, and it would have amused their friends to see how hard the young men worked under the beguiling name of pleasure. For four hours they worked like navvies making a toboggan slide. They shovelled away the snow, then with pickaxe and spade, levelled the ground, so that when a carpet of fresh snow was spread over it, their improvised car would run down a steep incline and be carried by the impetus up another, till it came to a standstill in a snow drift.

“If we can only get this bit of engineering done today,” said Lawley, chucking a spadeful of earth aside as he spoke, “the slide will be in perfect order for tomorrow.”

“Yes, and when once it’s done, it’s done forever,” said Armitage, working away cheerfully with his pick where the ground was frozen hard and full of stones, and cleverly keeping his balance on the slope as he did so. “Good work lasts no end of a time, and posterity will bless us for leaving them this magnificent slide.”

“Posterity may, my dear fellow, but hardly our progenitors if my father should happen to slip down it,” said Musgrave.

When their task was finished, and the friends were transformed in appearance from navvies into gentlemen, they set out through thick falling snow to walk to Garthside to call on their neighbours the Harradines. They had earned their pleasant tea and lively talk, their blood was still aglow from their exhilarating work, and their spirits at the highest point. They did not return to Stonecroft till they had compelled the girls to name a time when they would come with their brothers and be launched down the scientifically prepared slide, in wine cases well padded with cushions for the occasion.

Late that night the young men sat smoking and chatting together in the library. They had played billiards till they were tired, and Lawley had sung sentimental songs, accompanying himself on the banjo, till even he was weary, to say nothing of what his listeners might be. Armitage sat leaning his light curly head back in the chair, gently puffing out a cloud of tobacco smoke. And he was the first to break the silence that had fallen on the little company.

“Musgrave,” he said suddenly, “an old house is not complete unless it is haunted. You ought to have a ghost of your own at Stonecroft.”

Musgrave threw down the yellow-backed novel he had just picked up, and became all attention.

“So we have, my dear fellow. Only it has not been seen by any of us since my grandfather’s time. It is the desire of my life to become personally acquainted with our family ghost.”

Armitage laughed. But Lawley said, “You would not say that if you really believed in ghosts.”

“I believe in them most devoutly, but I naturally wish to have my faith confirmed by sight. You believe in them too, I can see.”

“Then you see what does not exist, and so far you are in a fair way to see ghosts. No, my state of mind is this,” continued Lawley, “I neither believe, nor entirely disbelieve in ghosts. I am open to conviction on the subject. Many men of sound judgement believe in them, and others of equally good mental capacity don’t believe in them. I merely regard the case of the bogies as not proven. They may, or may not exist, but till their existence is plainly demonstrated, I decline to add such an uncomfortable article to my creed as a belief in bogies.”

Musgrave did not reply, but Armitage laughed a strident laugh.

“I’m one against two, I’m in an overwhelming minority,” he said. “Musgrave frankly confesses his belief in ghosts, and you are neutral, neither believing nor disbelieving, but open to conviction. Now I’m a complete unbeliever in the supernatural, root and branch. People’s nerves no doubt play them queer tricks, and will continue to do so to the end of the chapter, and if I were so fortunate as to see Musgrave’s family ghost tonight, I should no more believe in it than I do now. By the way, Musgrave, is the ghost a lady or a gentleman?” he asked flippantly.

“I don’t think you deserve to be told.”

“Don’t you know that a ghost is neither he nor she?” said Lawley. “Like a corpse, it is always it.”

“That is a piece of very definite information from a man who neither believes nor disbelieves in ghosts. How do you come by it, Lawley?” asked Armitage.

“Mayn’t a man be well informed on a subject although he suspends his judgment about it? I think I have the only logical mind among us. Musgrave believes in ghosts though he has never seen one, you don’t believe in them, and say that you would not be convinced if you saw one, which is not wise, it seems to me.”

“It is not necessary to my peace of mind to have a definite opinion on the subject. After all, it is only a matter of patience, for if ghosts really exist we shall each be one in the course of time, and then, if we’ve nothing better to do, and are allowed to play such unworthy pranks, we may appear again on the scene, and impartially scare our credulous and incredulous surviving friends.”

“Then I shall try to be beforehand with you, Lawley, and turn bogie first; it would suit me better to scare than to be scared. But, Musgrave, do tell me about your family ghost; I’m really interested in it, and I’m quite respectful now.”

“Well, mind you are, and I shall have no objection to tell you what I know about it, which is briefly this: Stonecroft, as I told you, is built on the site of an old Cistercian Monastery destroyed at the time of the Reformation. The back part of the house rests on the old foundations, and its walls are built with the stones that were once part and parcel of the monastery. The ghost that has been seen by members of the Musgrave family for three centuries past, is that of a Cistercian monk, dressed in the white habit of his order. Who he was, or why he has haunted the scenes of his earthly life so long, there is no tradition to enlighten us. The ghost has usually been seen once or twice in each generation. But as I said, it has not visited us since my grandfather’s time, so, like a comet, it should be due again presently.”

“How you must regret that was before your time,” said Armitage.

“Of course I do, but I don’t despair of seeing it yet. At least I know where to look for it. It has always made its appearance in the gallery, and I have my bedroom close to the spot where it was last seen, in the hope that if I open my door suddenly some moonlight night I may find the monk standing there.”

“Standing where?” asked the incredulous Armitage.

“In the gallery, to be sure, midway between your two doors and mine. That is where my grandfather last saw it. He was waked in the dead of night by the sound of a heavy door shutting. He ran into the gallery where the noise came from, and, standing opposite the door of the room I occupy, was the white figure of the Cistercian monk. As he looked, it glided the length of the gallery and melted like mist into the wall. The spot where he disappeared is on the old foundations of the monastery, so that he was evidently returning to his own quarters.”

“And your grandfather believed that he saw a ghost?” asked Armitage disdainfully.

“Could he doubt the evidence of his senses? He saw the thing as clearly as we see each other now, and it disappeared like a thin vapour against the wall.”

“My dear fellow, don’t you think that it sounds more like an anecdote of your grandmother than of your grandfather?” remarked Armitage. He did not intend to be rude, though he succeeded in being so, as he was instantly aware by the expression of cold reserve that came over Musgrave’s frank face. “Forgive me, but I never can take a ghost story seriously,” he said. “But this much I will concede – they may have existed long ago in what were literally the dark ages, when rush-lights and sputtering dip candles could not keep the shadows at bay. But in this latter part of the nineteenth century, when gas and the electric light have turned night into day, you have destroyed the very conditions that produced the ghost – or rather the belief in it, which is the same thing. Darkness has always been bad for human nerves. I can’t explain why, but so it is. My mother was in advance of the age on the subject, and always insisted on having a good light burning in the night nursery, so that when as a child I woke from a bad dream I was never frightened by the darkness. And in consequence I have grown up a complete unbeliever in ghosts, spectres, wraiths, apparitions, dopplegangers, and the whole bogie crew of them,” and Armitage looked round calmly and complacently.

“Perhaps I might have felt as you do if I had not begun life with the knowledge that our house was haunted,” replied Musgrave with visible pride in the ancestral ghost. “I only wish that I could convince you of the existence of the supernatural from my own personal experience. I always feel it to be the weak point in a ghost story, that it is never told in the first person. It is a friend, or a friend of one’s friend, who was the lucky man, and actually saw the ghost.”

And Armitage registered a vow to himself, that within a week from that time Musgrave should see his family ghost with his own eyes, and ever after be able to speak with his enemy in the gate.

Several ingenious schemes occurred to his inventive mind for producing the desired apparition. But he had to keep them burning in his breast. Lawley was the last man to aid and abet him in playing a practical joke on their host, and he feared he should have to work without an ally. And though he would have enjoyed his help and sympathy, it struck him that it would be a double triumph achieved, if both his friends should see the Cistercian monk. Musgrave already believed in ghosts, and was prepared to meet one more than half way, and Lawley, though he pretended to a judicial and impartial mind concerning them, was not unwilling to be convinced of their existence, if it could be visibly demonstrated to him.

Armitage became more cheerful than usual as circumstances favoured his impious plot. The weather was propitious for the attempt he meditated, as the moon rose late and was approaching the full. On consulting the almanac he saw with delight that three nights hence she would rise at 2 a.m., and an hour later the end of the gallery nearest Musgrave’s room would be flooded with her light. Though Armitage could not have an accomplice under the roof, he needed one within reach, who could use needle and thread, to run up a specious imitation of the white robe and hood of a Cistercian monk. And the next day, when they went to the Harradines to take the girls out in their improvised sledges, it fell to his lot to take charge of the youngest Miss Harradine. As he pushed the low chair on runners over the hard snow, nothing was easier than to bend forward and whisper to Kate, “I am going to take you as fast as I can, so that no one can hear what we are saying. I want you to be very kind, and help me to play a perfectly harmless practical joke on Musgrave. Will you promise to keep my secret for a couple of days, when we shall all enjoy a laugh over it together?”

“O yes, I’ll help you with pleasure, but make haste and tell me what your practical joke is to be.”

“I want to play ancestral ghost to Musgrave, and make him believe that he has seen the Cistercian monk in his white robe and cowl, that was last seen by his respected credulous grand-papa.”

“What a good idea! I know he is always longing to see the ghost, and takes it as a personal affront that it has never appeared to him. But might it not startle him more than you intend?” and Kate turned her glowing face towards him, and Armitage involuntarily stopped the little sledge. “For it is one thing to wish to see a ghost, you know, and quite another to think that you see it.”

“Oh, you need not fear for Musgrave! We shall be conferring a positive favour on him, in helping him to see what he’s so wishful to see. I’m arranging it so that Lawley shall have the benefit of the show as well, and see the ghost at the same time with him. And if two strong men are not a match for one bogie, leave alone a home-made counterfeit one, it’s a pity.”

“Well, if you think it’s a safe trick to play, no doubt you are right. But how can I help you? With the monk’s habit, I suppose?”

“Exactly. I shall be so grateful to you if you will run up some sort of garment, that will look passably like a white Cistercian habit to a couple of men, who I don’t think will be in a critical frame of mind during the short time they are allowed to see it. I really wouldn’t trouble you if I were anything of a sempster (is that the masculine of sempstress?) myself, but I’m not. A thimble bothers me very much, and at college, when I have to sew on a button, I push the needle through on one side with a threepenny bit, and pull it out on the other with my teeth, and it’s a laborious process.”

Kate laughed merrily. “Oh, I can easily make something or other out of a white dressing gown, fit for a ghost to wear, and fasten a hood to it.”

Armitage then told her the details of his deeply laid scheme, how he would go to his room when Musgrave and Lawley went to theirs on the eventful night, and sit up till he was sure that they were fast asleep. Then when the moon had risen, and if her light was obscured by clouds he would be obliged to postpone the entertainment till he could be sure of her aid, he would dress himself as the ghostly monk, put out the candles, softly open the door and look into the gallery to see that all was ready. “Then I shall slam the door with an awful bang, for that was the noise that heralded the ghost’s last appearance, and it will wake Musgrave and Lawley, and bring them both out of their rooms like a shot. Lawley’s door is next to mine, and Musgrave’s opposite, so that each will command a magnificent view of the monk at the same instant, and they can compare notes afterwards at their leisure.”

“But what shall you do if they find you out at once?”

“Oh, they won’t do that! The cowl will be drawn over my face, and I shall stand with my back to the moonlight. My private belief is, that in spite of Musgrave’s yearnings after a ghost, he won’t like it when he thinks he sees it. Nor will Lawley, and I expect they’ll dart back into their rooms and lock themselves in as soon as they catch sight of the monk. That would give me time to whip back into my room, turn the key, strip off my finery, hide it, and be roused with difficulty from a deep sleep when they come knocking at my door to tell me what a horrible thing has happened. And one more ghost story will be added to those already in circulation,” and Armitage laughed aloud in anticipation of the fun.

“It is to be hoped that everything will happen just as you have planned it, and then we shall all be pleased. And now will you turn the sledge round and let us join the others; we have done conspiring for the present. If we are seen talking so exclusively to each other, they will suspect that we are brewing some mischief together. Oh, how cold the wind is! I like to hear it whistle in my hair!” said Kate as Armitage deftly swung the little sledge round and drove it quickly before him, facing the keen north wind, and she buried her chin in her warm furs.

Armitage found an opportunity to arrange with Kate, that he would meet her half way between Stonecroft and her home, on the afternoon of the next day but one, when she would give him a parcel containing the monk’s habit. The Harradines and their house party were coming on Thursday afternoon to try the toboggan slide at Stonecroft. But Kate and Armitage were willing to sacrifice their pleasure to the business they had in hand.

There was no other way but for the conspirators to give their friends the slip for a couple of hours, when the important parcel would be safely given to Armitage, secretly conveyed by him to his own room, and locked up till he should want it in the small hours of the morning.

When the young people arrived at Stonecroft, Miss Harradine apologised for her younger sister’s absence, occasioned, she said, by a severe headache. Armitage’s heart beat rapidly when he heard the excuse, and he thought how convenient it was for the inscrutable sex to be able to turn on a headache at will, as one turns on hot or cold water from a tap.

After luncheon, as there were more gentlemen than ladies, and Armitage’s services were not necessary at the toboggan slide, he elected to take the dogs for a walk, and set off in the gayest spirits to keep his appointment with Kate. Much as he enjoyed maturing his ghost plot, he enjoyed still more the confidential talks with Kate that had sprung out of it, and he was sorry that this was to be the last of them. But the moon in heaven could not be stayed for the performance of his little comedy, and her light was necessary to its due performance. The ghost must be seen at three o’clock next morning, at the time and place arranged, when the proper illumination for its display would be forthcoming.

As Armitage walked swiftly over the hard snow, he caught sight of Kate at a distance. She waved her hand gaily and pointed smiling to the rather large parcel she was carrying. The red glow of the winter sun shone full upon her, bringing out the warm tints in her chestnut hair, and filling her brown eyes with soft lustre, and Armitage looked at her with undisguised admiration.

“It’s awfully good of you to help me so kindly,” he said as he took the parcel from her, “and I shall come round tomorrow to tell you the result of our practical joke. But how is the headache?” he asked smiling, “you look so unlike aches or pains of any kind, I was forgetting to enquire about it.”

“Thank you, it is better. It was not altogether a made-up headache, though it happened opportunely. I was awake in the night, not in the least repenting that I was helping you, of course, but wishing it was all well over. One has heard of this kind of trick sometimes proving too successful, of people being frightened out of their wits by a make-believe ghost, and I should never forgive myself if Mr Musgrave or Mr Lawley were seriously alarmed.”

“Really, Miss Harradine, I don’t think that you need give yourself a moment’s anxiety about the nerves of a couple of burly young men. If you are afraid for anyone, let it be for me. If they find me out, they will fall upon me and rend me limb from limb on the spot. I can assure you I am the only one for whom there is anything to fear,” and the transient gravity passed like a cloud from Kate’s bright face. And she admitted that it was rather absurd to be uneasy about two stalwart young men compounded more of muscle than of nerves. And they parted, Kate hastening home as the early twilight fell, and Armitage, after watching her out of sight, retracing his steps with the precious parcel under his arm.

He entered the house unobserved, and reaching the gallery by a back staircase, felt his way in the dark to his room. He deposited his treasure in the wardrobe, locked it up, and attracted by the sound of laughter, ran downstairs to the drawing-room. Will Musgrave and his friends, after a couple of hours of glowing exercise, had been driven indoors by the darkness, nothing loath to partake of tea and hot cakes, while they talked and laughed over the adventures of the afternoon.

“Wherever have you been, old fellow?” said Musgrave as Armitage entered the room. “I believe you’ve a private toboggan of your own somewhere that you keep quiet. If only the moon rose at a decent time, instead of at some unearthly hour in the night, when it’s not of the slightest use to anyone, we would have gone out looking for you.”

“You wouldn’t have had far to seek, you’d have met me on the turnpike road.”

“But why this subdued and chastened taste? Imagine preferring a constitutional on the high road when you might have been tobogganing with us! My poor friend, I’m afraid you are not feeling well!” said Musgrave with an affectation of sympathy that ended in boyish laughter and a wrestling match between the two young men, in the course of which Lawley more than once saved the tea table from being violently overthrown.

Presently, when the cakes and toast had disappeared before the youthful appetites, lanterns were lighted, and Musgrave and his friends, and the Harradine brothers, set out as a bodyguard to take the young ladies home. Armitage was in riotous spirits, and finding that Musgrave and Lawley had appropriated the two prettiest girls in the company, waltzed untrammelled along the road before them lantern in hand, like a very will-o’-the-wisp.

The young people did not part till they had planned fresh pleasures for the morrow, and Musgrave, Lawley, and Armitage returned to Stonecroft to dinner, making the thin air ring to the jovial songs with which they beguiled the homeward journey.

Late in the evening, when the young men were sitting in the library, Musgrave suddenly exclaimed, as he reached down a book from an upper shelf, “Hallo! I’ve come on my grandfather’s diary! Here’s his own account of how he saw the white monk in the gallery. Lawley, you may read it if you like, but it shan’t be wasted on an unbeliever like Armitage. By Jove! what an odd coincidence! It’s forty years this very night, the thirtieth of December, since he saw the ghost,” and he handed the book to Lawley, who read Mr Musgrave’s narrative with close attention.

“Is it a case of ‘almost thou persuadest me’?” asked Armitage, looking at his intent and knitted brow.

“I hardly know what I think. Nothing positive either way at any rate.” And he dropped the subject, for he saw Musgrave did not wish to discuss the family ghost in Armitage’s unsympathetic presence.

They retired late, and the hour that Armitage had so gleefully anticipated drew near. “Good-night both of you,” said Musgrave as he entered his room, “I shall be asleep in five minutes. All this exercise in the open air makes a man absurdly sleepy at night,” and the young men closed their doors, and silence settled down upon Stonecroft Hall.

Armitage and Lawley’s rooms were next to each other, and in less than a quarter of an hour Lawley shouted a cheery good-night, which was loudly returned by his friend. Then Armitage felt somewhat mean and stealthy. Musgrave and Lawley were both confidingly asleep, while he sat up alert and vigilant maturing a mischievous plot that had for its object the awakening and scaring of both the innocent sleepers. He dared not smoke to pass the tedious time, lest the tell-tale fumes should penetrate into the next room through the keyhole, and inform Lawley if he woke for an instant that his friend was awake too, and behaving as though it were high noon.

Armitage spread the monk’s white habit on the bed, and smiled as he touched it to think that Kate’s pretty fingers had been so recently at work upon it. He need not put it on for a couple of hours yet, and to occupy the time he sat down to write. He would have liked to take a nap. But he knew that if he once yielded to sleep, nothing would wake him till he was called at eight o’clock in the morning. As he bent over his desk the big clock in the hall struck one, so suddenly and sharply it was like a blow on the head, and he started violently. “What a swinish sleep Lawley must be in that he can’t hear a noise like that!” he thought, as snoring became audible from the next room. Then he drew the candles nearer to him, and settled once more to his writing, and a pile of letters testified to his industry, when again the clock struck. But this time he expected it, and it did not startle him, only the cold made him shiver. “If I hadn’t made up my mind to go through with this confounded piece of folly, I’d go to bed now,” he thought, “but I can’t break faith with Kate. She’s made the robe and I’ve got to wear it, worse luck,” and with a great yawn, he threw down his pen, and rose to look out of the window.

It was a clear frosty night. At the edge of the dark sky, sprinkled with stars, a faint band of cold light heralded the rising moon. How different from the grey light of dawn, that ushers in the cheerful day, is the solemn rising of the moon in the depth of a winter night. Her light is not to rouse a sleeping world and lead men forth to their labour, it falls on the closed eyes of the weary, and silvers the graves of those whose rest shall be broken no more. Armitage was not easily impressed by the sombre aspect of nature, though he was quick to feel her gay and cheerful influence, but he would be glad when the farce was over, and he no longer obliged to watch the rise and spread of the pale light, solemn as the dawn of the last day.

He turned from the window, and proceeded to make himself into the best imitation of a Cistercian monk that he could contrive. He slipped the white habit over all his clothing, that he might seem of portly size, and marked dark circles round his eyes, and thickly powdered his face a ghastly white.

Armitage silently laughed at his reflection in the glass, and wished that Kate could see him now. Then he softly opened the door and looked into the gallery. The moonlight was shimmering duskily on the end window to the right of his door and Lawley’s. It would soon be where he wanted it, and neither too light nor too dark for the success of his plan. He stepped silently back again to wait, and a feeling as much akin to nervousness as he had ever known came over him. His heart beat rapidly, he started like a timid girl when the silence was suddenly broken by the hooting of an owl. He no longer cared to look at himself in the glass. He had taken fright at the mortal pallor of his powdered face. “Hang it all! I wish Lawley hadn’t left off snoring. It was quite companionable to hear him.”

And again he looked into the gallery, and now the moon shed her cold beams where he intended to stand. He put out the light and opened the door wide, and stepping into the gallery threw it to with an echoing slam that only caused Musgrave and Lawley to start and turn on their pillows. Armitage stood dressed as the ghostly monk of Stonecroft, in the pale moonlight in the middle of the gallery, waiting for the door on either side to fly open and reveal the terrified faces of his friends.

He had time to curse the ill-luck that made them sleep so heavily that night of all nights, and to fear lest the servants had heard the noise their master had been deaf to, and would come hurrying to the spot and spoil the sport. But no one came, and as Armitage stood, the objects in the long gallery became clearer every moment, as his sight accommodated itself to the dim light.

“I never noticed before that there was a mirror at the end of the gallery! I should not have believed the moonlight was bright enough for me to see my own reflection so far off, only white stands out so in the dark. But is it my own reflection? Confound it all, the thing’s moving and I’m standing still! I know what it is! It’s Musgrave dressed up to try to give me a fright, and Lawley’s helping him. They’ve forestalled me, that’s why they didn’t come out of their rooms when I made a noise fit to wake the dead. Odd we’re both playing the same practical joke at the same moment! Come on, my counterfeit bogie, and we’ll see which of us turns white-livered first!”

But to Armitage’s surprise, that rapidly became terror, the white figure that he believed to be Musgrave disguised, and like himself playing ghost, advanced towards him, slowly gliding over the floor which its feet did not touch. Armitage’s courage was high, and he determined to hold his ground against the something ingeniously contrived by Musgrave and Lawley to terrify him into belief in the supernatural.

But a feeling was creeping over the strong young man that he had never known before. He opened his dry mouth as the thing floated towards him, and there issued a hoarse inarticulate cry, that woke Musgrave and Lawley and brought them to their doors in a moment, not knowing by what strange fright they had been startled out of their sleep. Do not think them cowards that they shrank back appalled from the ghostly forms the moonlight revealed to them in the gallery. But as Armitage vehemently repelled the horror that drifted nearer and nearer to him, the cowl slipped from his head, and his friends recognised his white face, distorted by fear, and, springing towards him as he staggered, supported him in their arms. The Cistercian monk passed them like a white mist that sank into the wall, and Musgrave and Lawley were alone with the dead body of their friend, whose masquerading dress had become his shroud.

The Shadow on the Blind (1894)

THE LITTLE ROOM

Madeline Yale Wynne

1895

“How would it do for a smoking-room?”

“Just the very place! only, you know, Roger, you must not think of smoking in the house. I am almost afraid that having just a plain, common man around, let alone a smoking man, will upset Aunt Hannah. She is New England – Vermont New England – boiled down.”

“You leave Aunt Hannah to me; I’ll find her tender side. I’m going to ask her about the old sea-captain and the yellow calico.”

“Not yellow calico – blue chintz.”

“Well, yellow shell then.”

“No, no! don’t mix it up so; you won’t know yourself what to expect, and that’s half the fun.”

“Now you tell me again exactly what to expect; to tell the truth, I didn’t half hear about it the other day; I was wool-gathering. It was something queer that happened when you were a child, wasn’t it?”

“Something that began to happen long before that, and kept happening, and may happen again; but I hope not.”

“What was it?”

“I wonder if the other people in the car can hear us?”

“I fancy not; we don’t hear them – not consecutively, at least.”

“Well, mother was born in Vermont, you know; she was the only child by a second marriage. Aunt Hannah and Aunt Maria are only half-aunts to me, you know.”

“I hope they are half as nice as you are.”

“Roger, be still; they certainly will hear us.”

“Well, don’t you want them to know we are married?”

“Yes, but not just married. There’s all the difference in the world.”

“You are afraid we look too happy!”

“No; only I want my happiness all to myself.”

“Well, the little room?”

“My aunts brought mother up; they were nearly twenty years older than she. I might say Hiram and they brought her up. You see, Hiram was bound out to my grandfather when he was a boy, and when grandfather died Hiram said he ’s’posed he went with the farm, ’long o’ the critters,’ and he has been there ever since. He was my mother’s only refuge from the decorum of my aunts. They are simply workers. They make me think of the Maine woman who wanted her epitaph to be: ‘She was a hard working woman.’”

“They must be almost beyond their working-days. How old are they?”

“Seventy, or thereabouts; but they will die standing; or, at least, on a Saturday night, after all the housework is done up. They were rather strict with mother, and I think she had a lonely childhood. The house is almost a mile away from any neighbors, and off on top of what they call Stony Hill. It is bleak enough up there, even in summer.

“When mamma was about ten years old they sent her to cousins in Brooklyn, who had children of their own, and knew more about bringing them up. She stayed there till she was married; she didn’t go to Vermont in all that time, and of course hadn’t seen her sisters, for they never would leave home for a day. They couldn’t even be induced to go to Brooklyn to her wedding, so she and father took their wedding trip up there.”

“And that’s why we are going up there on our own?”

“Don’t, Roger; you have no idea how loud you speak.”

“You never say so except when I am going to say that one little word.”

“Well, don’t say it, then, or say it very, very quietly.”

“Well, what was the queer thing?”

“When they got to the house, mother wanted to take father right off into the little room; she had been telling him about it, just as I am going to tell you, and she had said that of all the rooms, that one was the only one that seemed pleasant to her. She described the furniture and the books and paper and everything, and said it was on the north side, between the front and back room. Well, when they went to look for it, there was no little room there; there was only a shallow china-closet. She asked her sisters when the house had been altered and a closet made of the room that used to be there. They both said the house was exactly as it had been built – that they had never made any changes, except to tear down the old woodshed and build a smaller one.

“Father and mother laughed a good deal over it, and when anything was lost they would always say it must be in the little room, and any exaggerated statement was called ‘little-roomy.’ When I was a child I thought that was a regular English phrase, I heard it so often.

“Well, they talked it over, and finally they concluded that my mother had been a very imaginative sort of a child, and had read in some book about such a little room, or perhaps even dreamed it, and then had ‘made believe,’ as children do, till she herself had really thought the room was there.”

“Why, of course, that might easily happen.”

“Yes, but you haven’t heard the queer part yet; you wait and see if you can explain the rest as easily.

“They stayed at the farm two weeks, and then went to New York to live. When I was eight years old my father was killed in the war, and mother was broken-hearted. She never was quite strong afterwards, and that summer we decided to go up to the farm for three months.

“I was a restless sort of a child, and the journey seemed very long to me; and finally, to pass the time, mamma told me the story of the little room, and how it was all in her own imagination, and how there really was only a china-closet there.

“She told it with all the particulars; and even to me, who knew beforehand that the room wasn’t there, it seemed just as real as could be. She said it was on the north side, between the front and back rooms; that it was very small, and they sometimes called it an entry. There was a door also that opened out-of-doors, and that one was pain’ted green, and was cut in the middle like the old Dutch doors, so that it could be used for a window by opening the top part only. Directly opposite the door was a lounge or couch; it was covered with blue chintz – India chintz – some that had been brought over by an old Salem sea-captain as a ‘venture.’ He had given it to Hannah when she was a young girl. She was sent to Salem for two years to school. Grandfather originally came from Salem.”

“I thought there wasn’t any room or chintz.”

“That is just it. They had decided that mother had imagined it all, and yet you see how exactly everything was pain’ted in her mind, for she had even remembered that Hiram had told her that Hannah could have married the sea-captain if she had wanted to!

“The India cotton was the regular blue stamped chintz, with the peacock figure on it. The head and body of the bird were in profile, while the tail was full front view behind it. It had seemed to take mamma’s fancy, and she drew it for me on a piece of paper as she talked. Doesn’t it seem strange to you that she could have made all that up, or even dreamed it?

“At the foot of the lounge were some hanging shelves with some old books on them. All the books were leather-colored except one; that was bright red, and was called the Ladies’ Album. It made a bright break between the other thicker books.

“On the lower shelf was a beautiful pink seashell, lying on a mat made of balls of red shaded worsted. This shell was greatly coveted by mother, but she was only allowed to play with it when she had been particularly good. Hiram had shown her how to hold it close to her ear and hear the roar of the sea in it.

“I know you will like Hiram, Roger; he is quite a character in his way.

“Mamma said she remembered, or thought she remembered, having been sick once, and she had to lie quietly for some days on the lounge; then was the time she had become so familiar with everything in the room, and she had been allowed to have the shell to play with all the time. She had had her toast brought to her in there, with make-believe tea. It was one of her pleasant memories of her childhood; it was the first time she had been of any importance to anybody, even herself.

“Right at the head of the lounge was a light-stand, as they called it, and on it was a very brightly polished brass candlestick and a brass tray, with snuffers. That is all I remember of her describing, except that there was a braided rag rug on the floor, and on the wall was a beautiful flowered paper – roses and morning-glories in a wreath on a light blue ground. The same paper was in the front room.”

“And all this never existed except in her imagination?”

“She said that when she and father went up there, there wasn’t any little room at all like it anywhere in the house; there was a china-closet where she had believed the room to be.”

“And your aunts said there had never been any such room.”

“That is what they said.”

“Wasn’t there any blue chintz in the house with a peacock figure?”

“Not a scrap, and Aunt Hannah said there had never been any that she could remember; and Aunt Maria just echoed her – she always does that. You see, Aunt Hannah is an up-and-down New England woman. She looks just like herself; I mean, just like her character. Her joints move up and down or backward and forward in a plain square fashion. I don’t believe she ever leaned on anything in her life, or sat in an easy-chair. But Maria is different; she is rounder and softer; she hasn’t any ideas of her own; she never had any. I don’t believe she would think it right or becoming to have one that differed from Aunt Hannah’s, so what would be the use of having any? She is an echo, that’s all.

“When mamma and I got there, of course I was all excitement to see the china-closet, and I had a sort of feeling that it would be the little room after all. So I ran ahead and threw open the door, crying, ‘Come and see the little room.’

“And Roger,” said Mrs. Grant, laying her hand in his, “there really was a little room there, exactly as mother had remembered it. There was the lounge, the peacock chintz, the green door, the shell, the morning-glory, and rose paper, everything exactly as she had described it to me.”

“What in the world did the sisters say about it?”

“Wait a minute and I will tell you. My mother was in the front hall still talking with Aunt Hannah. She didn’t hear me at first, but I ran out there and dragged her through the front room, saying, ‘The room is here – it is all right.’

“It seemed for a minute as if my mother would fain’t. She clung to me in terror. I can remember now how strained her eyes looked and how pale she was.

“I called out to Aunt Hannah and asked her when they had had the closet taken away and the little room built; for in my excitement I thought that that was what had been done.

“‘That little room has always been there,’ said Aunt Hannah, ‘ever since the house was built.’

“‘But mamma said there wasn’t any little room here, only a china-closet, when she was here with papa,’ said I.

“‘No, there has never been any china-closet there; it has always been just as it is now,’ said Aunt Hannah.

“Then mother spoke; her voice sounded weak and far off. She said, slowly, and with an effort, ‘Maria, don’t you remember that you told me that there had never been any little room here? and Hannah said so too, and then I said I must have dreamed it?’

“‘No, I don’t remember anything of the kind,’ said Maria, without the slightest emotion. ‘I don’t remember you ever said anything about any china-closet. The house has never been altered; you used to play in this room when you were a child, don’t you remember?’

“‘I know it,’ said mother, in that queer slow voice that made me feel frightened. ‘Hannah, don’t you remember my finding the china-closet here, with the gilt-edged china on the shelves, and then you said that the china-closet had always been here?’

“‘No,’ said Hannah, pleasantly but unemotionally – ‘no, I don’t think you ever asked me about any china-closet, and we haven’t any gilt-edged china that I know of.’

“And that was the strangest thing about it. We never could make them remember that there had ever been any question about it. You would think they could remember how surprised mother had been before, unless she had imagined the whole thing. Oh, it was so queer! They were always pleasant about it, but they didn’t seem to feel any interest or curiosity. It was always this answer: ‘The house is just as it was built; there have never been any changes, so far as we know.’

“And my mother was in an agony of perplexity. How cold their gray eyes looked to me! There was no reading anything in them. It just seemed to break my mother down, this queer thing. Many times that summer, in the middle of the night, I have seen her get up and take a candle and creep softly downstairs. I could hear the steps creak under her weight. Then she would go through the front room and peer into the darkness, holding her thin hand between the candle and her eyes. She seemed to think the little room might vanish. Then she would come back to bed and toss about all night, or lie still and shiver; it used to frighten me.

“She grew pale and thin, and she had a little cough; then she did not like to be left alone. Sometimes she would make errands in order to send me to the little room for something – a book, or her fan, or her handkerchief; but she would never sit there or let me stay in there long, and sometimes she wouldn’t let me go in there for days together. Oh, it was pitiful!”

“Well, don’t talk any more about it, Margaret, if it makes you feel so,” said Mr. Grant.

“Oh yes, I want you to know all about it, and there isn’t much more – no more about the room.

“Mother never got well, and she died that autumn. She used often to sigh, and say, with a wan little laugh, ‘There is one thing I am glad of, Margaret: your father knows now all about the little room.’ I think she was afraid I distrusted her. Of course, in a child’s way, I thought there was something queer about it, but I did not brood over it. I was too young then, and took it as a part of her illness. But, Roger, do you know, it really did affect me. I almost hate to go there after talking about it; I somehow feel as if it might, you know, be a china-closet again.”

“That’s an absurd idea.”

“I know it; of course it can’t be. I saw the room, and there isn’t any china-closet there, and no gilt-edged china in the house, either.”

And then she whispered: “But, Roger, you may hold my hand as you do now, if you will, when we go to look for the little room.”

“And you won’t mind Aunt Hannah’s gray eyes?”

“I won’t mind anything.”

It was dusk when Mr. and Mrs. Grant went into the gate under the two old Lombardy poplars and walked up the narrow path to the door, where they were met by the two aunts.

Hannah gave Mrs. Grant a frigid but not unfriendly kiss; and Maria seemed for a moment to tremble on the verge of an emotion, but she glanced at Hannah, and then gave her greeting in exactly the same repressed and noncommittal way.

Supper was waiting for them. On the table was the gilt-edged china. Mrs. Grant didn’t notice it immediately, till she saw her husband smiling at her over his teacup; then she felt fidgety, and couldn’t eat. She was nervous, and kept wondering what was behind her, whether it would be a little room or a closet.

After supper she offered to help about the dishes, but, mercy! she might as well have offered to help bring the seasons round; Maria and Hannah couldn’t be helped.

So she and her husband went to find the little room, or closet, or whatever was to be there.

Aunt Maria followed them, carrying the lamp, which she set down, and then went back to the dish-washing.

Margaret looked at her husband. He kissed her, for she seemed troubled; and then, hand in hand, they opened the door. It opened into a china-closet. The shelves were neatly draped with scalloped paper; on them was the gilt-edged china, with the dishes missing that had been used at the supper, and which at that moment were being carefully washed and wiped by the two aunts.

Margaret’s husband dropped her hand and looked at her. She was trembling a little, and turned to him for help, for some explanation, but in an instant she knew that something was wrong. A cloud had come between them; he was hurt; he was antagonized.

He paused for an appreciable instant, and then said, kindly enough, but in a voice that cut her deeply:

“I am glad this ridiculous thing is ended; don’t let us speak of it again.”

“Ended!” said she. “How ended?” And somehow her voice sounded to her as her mother’s voice had when she stood there and questioned her sisters about the little room. She seemed to have to drag her words out. She spoke slowly: “It seems to me to have only just begun in my case. It was just so with mother when she – ”

“I really wish, Margaret, you would let it drop. I don’t like to hear you speak of your mother in connection with it. It – ” He hesitated, for was not this their wedding-day? “It doesn’t seem quite the thing, quite delicate, you know, to use her name in the matter.”

She saw it all now: he didn’t believe her. She felt a chill sense of withering under his glance.

“Come,” he added, “let us go out, or into the dining-room, somewhere, anywhere, only drop this nonsense.”

He went out; he did not take her hand now – he was vexed, baffled, hurt. Had he not given her his sympathy, his attention, his belief – and his hand? – and she was fooling him. What did it mean? – she so truthful, so free from morbidness – a thing he hated. He walked up and down under the poplars, trying to get into the mood to go and join her in the house.

Margaret heard him go out; then she turned and shook the shelves; she reached her hand behind them and tried to push the boards away; she ran out of the house on to the north side and tried to find in the darkness, with her hands, a door, or some steps leading to one. She tore her dress on the old rose-trees, she fell and rose and stumbled, then she sat down on the ground and tried to think. What could she think – was she dreaming?

She went into the house and out into the kitchen, and begged Aunt Maria to tell her about the little room – what had become of it, when had they built the closet, when had they bought the gilt-edged china?

They went on washing dishes and drying them on the spotless towels with methodical exactness; and as they worked they said that there had never been any little room, so far as they knew; the china-closet had always been there, and the gilt-edged china had belonged to their mother, it had always been in the house.

“No, I don’t remember that your mother ever asked about any little room,” said Hannah. “She didn’t seem very well that summer, but she never asked about any changes in the house; there hadn’t ever been any changes.”

There it was again: not a sign of interest, curiosity, or annoyance, not a spark of memory.

She went out to Hiram. He was telling Mr. Grant about the farm. She had meant to ask him about the room, but her lips were sealed before her husband.

Months afterwards, when time had lessened the sharpness of their feelings, they learned to speculate reasonably about the phenomenon, which Mr. Grant had accepted as something not to be scoffed away, not to be treated as a poor joke, but to be put aside as something inexplicable on any ordinary theory.

Margaret alone in her heart knew that her mother’s words carried a deeper significance than she had dreamed of at the time. “One thing I am glad of, your father knows now,” and she wondered if Roger or she would ever know.

Five years later they were going to Europe. The packing was done; the children were lying asleep, with their traveling things ready to be slipped on for an early start.

Roger had a foreign appointment. They were not to be back in America for some years. She had meant to go up to say good-bye to her aunts; but a mother of three children intends to do a great many things that never get done. One thing she had done that very day, and as she paused for a moment between the writing of two notes that must be posted before she went to bed, she said:

“Roger, you remember Rita Lash? Well, she and Cousin Nan go up to the Adirondacks every autumn. They are clever girls, and I have intrusted to them something I want done very much.”

“They are the girls to do it, then, every inch of them.”

“I know it, and they are going to.”

“Well?”

“Why, you see, Roger, that little room – ”

“Oh – ”

“Yes, I was a coward not to go myself, but I didn’t find time, because I hadn’t the courage.”

“Oh! that was it, was it?”

“Yes, just that. They are going, and they will write us about it.”

“Want to bet?”

“No; I only want to know.”

Rita Lash and Cousin Nan planned to go to Vermont on their way to the Adirondacks. They found they would have three hours between trains, which would give them time to drive up to the Keys farm, and they could still get to the camp that night. But, at the last minute, Rita was prevented from going. Nan had to go to meet the Adirondack party, and she promised to telegraph her when she arrived at the camp. Imagine Rita’s amusement when she received this message: “Safely arrived; went to the Keys farm; it is a little room.”

Rita was amused, because she did not in the least think Nan had been there. She thought it was a hoax; but it put it into her mind to carry the joke further by really stopping herself when she went up, as she meant to do the next week.

She did stop over. She introduced herself to the two maiden ladies, who seemed familiar, as they had been described by Mrs. Grant.

They were, if not cordial, at least not disconcerted at her visit, and willingly showed her over the house. As they did not speak of any other stranger’s having been to see them lately, she became confirmed in her belief that Nan had not been there.

In the north room she saw the roses and morning-glory paper on the wall, and also the door that should open into – what?

She asked if she might open it.

“Certainly,” said Hannah; and Maria echoed, “Certainly.”

She opened it, and found the china-closet. She experienced a certain relief; she at least was not under any spell. Mrs. Grant left it a china-closet; she found it the same. Good.

But she tried to induce the old sisters to remember that there had at various times been certain questions relating to a confusion as to whether the closet had always been a closet. It was no use; their stony eyes gave no sign.

Then she thought of the story of the sea-captain, and said, “Miss Keys, did you ever have a lounge covered with India chintz, with a figure of a peacock on it, given to you in Salem by a sea-captain, who brought it from India?”

“I dun’no as I ever did,” said Hannah. That was all. She thought Maria’s cheeks were a little flushed, but her eyes were like a stone wall.

She went on that night to the Adirondacks. When Nan and she were alone in their room she said, “By-the-way, Nan, what did you see at the farmhouse? and how did you like Maria and Hannah?”

Nan didn’t mistrust that Rita had been there, and she began excitedly to tell her all about her visit. Rita could almost have believed Nan had been there if she hadn’t known it was not so. She let her go on for some time, enjoying her enthusiasm, and the impressive way in which she described her opening the door and finding the “little room.” Then Rita said: “Now, Nan, that is enough fibbing. I went to the farm myself on my way up yesterday, and there is no little room, and there never has been any; it is a china-closet, just as Mrs. Grant saw it last.”

She was pretending to be busy unpacking her trunk, and did not look up for a moment; but as Nan did not say anything, she glanced at her over her shoulder. Nan was actually pale, and it was hard to say whether she was most angry or frightened. There was something of both in her look. And then Rita began to explain how her telegram had put her in the spirit of going up there alone. She hadn’t meant to cut Nan out. She only thought – Then Nan broke in: “It isn’t that; I am sure you can’t think it is that. But I went myself, and you did not go; you can’t have been there, for it is a little room.”

Oh, what a night they had! They couldn’t sleep. They talked and argued, and then kept still for a while, only to break out again, it was so absurd. They both maintained that they had been there, but both felt sure the other one was either crazy or obstinate beyond reason. They were wretched; it was perfectly ridiculous, two friends at odds over such a thing; but there it was – “little room,”  “china-closet,” – “china-closet,”  “little room.”

The next morning Nan was tacking up some tarlatan at a window to keep the midges out. Rita offered to help her, as she had done for the past ten years. Nan’s “No, thanks,” cut her to the heart.

“Nan,” said she, “come right down from that stepladder and pack your satchel. The stage leaves in just twenty minutes. We can catch the afternoon express train, and we will go together to the farm. I am either going there or going home. You better go with me.”

Nan didn’t say a word. She gathered up the hammer and tacks, and was ready to start when the stage came round.

It meant for them thirty miles of staging and six hours of train, besides crossing the lake; but what of that, compared with having a lie lying round loose between them! Europe would have seemed easy to accomplish, if it would settle the question.

At the little junction in Vermont they found a farmer with a wagon full of meal-bags. They asked him if he could not take them up to the old Keys farm and bring them back in time for the return train, due in two hours.

They had planned to call it a sketching trip, so they said, “We have been there before, we are artists, and we might find some views worth taking; and we want also to make a short call upon the Misses Keys.”

“Did ye calculate to pain’t the old house in the picture?”

They said it was possible they might do so. They wanted to see it, anyway.

“Waal, I guess you are too late. The house burnt down last night, and everything in it.”

“Harper’s Magazine”, Aug. 1895

The Little Room and Other Stories (1895)

OLD APPLEJOY’S GHOST

Frank R. Stockton

1900

The large and commodious apartments in the upper part of the old Applejoy mansion were occupied exclusively, at the time of our story, by the ghost of the grandfather of the present owner of the estate.

For many years old Applejoy’s ghost had wandered freely about the grand old house and the fine estate of which he had once been the lord and master. But early in that spring a change had come over the household of his grandson, John Applejoy, an elderly man, a bachelor, and – for the later portion of his life – almost a recluse. His young niece, Bertha, had come to live with him, and it was since her arrival that old Applejoy’s ghost had confined himself to the upper portions of the house.

This secluded existence, so different from his ordinary habits, was adopted entirely on account of the kindness of his heart. During the lives of two generations of his descendants he knew that he had frequently been seen by members of the family, but this did not disturb him, for in life he had been a man who had liked to assert his position, and the disposition to do so had not left him now. His sceptical grandson John had seen him and spoken with him, but declared that these ghostly interviews were only dreams or hallucinations. As to other people, it might be a very good thing if they believed that the house was haunted. People with uneasy consciences would not care to live in such a place.

But when this fresh young girl came upon the scene the case was entirely different. She was not twenty yet, and if anything should happen which would lead her to suspect that the house was haunted she might not be willing to live there. If that should come to pass, it would be a great shock to the ghost.

For a long time the venerable mansion had been a quiet, darkened, melancholy house. A few rooms only were occupied by John Applejoy and his housekeeper, Mrs. Dipperton, who for years had needed little space in which to pass the monotonous days of their lives. Bertha sang; she danced by herself on the broad piazza; she brought flowers into the house from the gardens, and, sometimes, it almost might have been imagined that the days which were gone had come back again.

One winter evening, when the light of the full moon entered softly through every unshaded window of the house, old Applejoy’s ghost sat in a high-backed chair, which on account of an accident to one of its legs had been banished to the garret. Throwing one shadowy leg over the other, he clasped the long fingers of his hazy hands and gazed thoughtfully out the window.

“Winter has come,” he said to himself. “And in two days it will be Christmas!” Suddenly he started to his feet. “Can it be,” he exclaimed, “that my close-fisted grandson John does not intend to celebrate Christmas! It has been years since he has done so, but now that Bertha is in the house, will he dare to pass over it as though it were but a common day? It is almost incredible that such a thing could happen, but so far there have been no signs of any preparations. I have seen nothing, heard nothing, smelt nothing. I will go this moment and investigate.”

Clapping his misty old cocked hat on his head and tucking the shade of his faithful cane under his arm, he descended to the lower part of the house. Glancing into the great parlours dimly lit by the moonlight, he saw that all the furniture was shrouded in ancient linen covers.

“Humph!” ejaculated old Applejoy’s ghost. “He expects no company here!” Forthwith he passed through the dining room and entered the kitchen and pantry. There were no signs that anything extraordinary in the way of cooking had been done, or was contemplated. “Two days before Christmas,” he groaned, “and a kitchen thus! How widely different from the olden time when I gave orders for the holidays! Let me see what the old curmudgeon has provided for Christmas.”

So saying, old Applejoy’s ghost went around the spacious pantry, looking upon shelves and tables. “Emptiness! Emptiness! Emptiness!” he exclaimed. “A cold leg of mutton, a ham half gone, and cold boiled potatoes – it makes me shiver to look at them! Pies? there ought to be rows and rows of them, and there is not one! And Christmas two days off!

“What is this? Is it possible? A chicken not full grown! Oh, John, how you have fallen! A small-sized fowl for Christmas day! And cider? No trace of it! Here is vinegar – that suits John, no doubt,” and then forgetting his present condition, he said to himself, “It makes my very blood run cold to look upon a pantry furnished out like this!” And with bowed head he passed out into the great hall.

If it were possible to prevent the desecration of his old home during the sojourn of the young and joyous Bertha, the ghost of old Applejoy was determined to do it, but to do anything he must put himself into communication with some living being. Still rapt in reverie he passed up the stairs and into the chamber where his grandson slept. There lay the old man, his eyelids as tightly closed as if there had been money underneath them. The ghost of old Applejoy stood by his bedside.

“I can make him wake up and look at me,” he thought, “so that I might tell him what I think of him, but what impression could I expect my words to make upon a one-chicken man like John? Moreover, if I should be able to speak to him, he would persuade himself that he had been dreaming, and my words would be of no avail!”

Old Applejoy’s ghost turned away from the bedside of his descendant, crossed the hall, and passed into the room of Mrs. Dipperton, the elderly housekeeper. There she lay fast asleep. The kind-hearted ghost shook his head as he looked down upon her.

“It would be of no use,” he said. “She would never be able to induce old John to turn one inch aside from his parsimonious path. More than that, if she were to see me she would probably scream – die, for all I know – and that would be a pretty preparation for Christmas!”

Out he went, and getting more and more anxious in his mind, the ghost passed to the front of the house and entered the chamber occupied by young Bertha. Once inside the door, he stopped reverently and removed his cocked hat.

The head of the bed was near the un-curtained window, and the bright light of the moon shone upon a face more beautiful in slumber than in the sunny hours of day. She slept lightly, her delicate eyelids trembled now and then as if they would open, and sometimes her lips moved, as if she would whisper something about her dreams.

Old Applejoy’s ghost drew nearer and bent slightly over her. If he could hear a few words he might find out where her mind wandered, what she would like him to do for her.

At last, faintly whispered and scarcely audible, he heard one word, “Tom!”

Old Applejoy’s ghost stepped back from the bedside, “She wants Tom! I like that! But I wish she would say something else. She can’t have Tom for Christmas – at least, not Tom alone. There is a great deal else necessary before this can be made a place suitable for Tom!”

Again he drew near to Bertha and listened, but instead of speaking, she suddenly opened her eyes. The ghost of old Applejoy drew back, and made a low, respectful bow. The maiden did not move, but fixed her lovely blue eyes upon the apparition, who trembled for fear that she might scream or faint.

“Am I asleep?” she murmured, and then, after turning her head from side to side to assure herself that she was in her own room, she looked full into the face of old Applejoy’s ghost, and boldly spoke to him. “Are you a spirit?” said she. If a flush of joy could redden the countenance of a ghost, his face would have glowed like sunlit rose. “Dear child,” he exclaimed, “I am the ghost of your uncle’s grandfather. His younger sister, Maria, was your mother, and therefore, I am the ghost of your great-grandfather.”

“Then you must be the original Applejoy,” said Bertha, “and I think it very wonderful that I am not afraid of you. You look as if you would not hurt anybody in this world, especially me!”

“There you have it, my dear!” he exclaimed, bringing his cane down upon the floor with a violence which had it been the cane it used to be would have wakened everybody in the house. “I vow to you there is not a person in the world for whom I have such an affection as I feel for you. You have brought into this house something of the old life. I wish I could tell you how happy I have been since the bright spring day that brought you here.”

“I did not suppose I would make anyone happy by coming here,” said Bertha. “Uncle John does not seem to care much about me, and I did not know about you.”

“No, indeed,” exclaimed the good ghost, “you did not know about me, but you will. First, however, we must get down to business. I came here tonight with a special object. It is about Christmas. Your uncle does not mean to have any Christmas in this house, but I intend, if I can possibly do so, to prevent him from disgracing himself. Still, I cannot do anything without help, and there is nobody to help me but you. Will you do it?”

Bertha could not refrain from a smile. “It would be funny to help a ghost,” she said, “but if I can assist you I shall be very glad.”

“I want you to go into the lower part of the house,” said he. “I have something to show you. I shall go down and wait for you. Dress yourself as warmly as you can, and have you some soft slippers that will make no noise?”

“Oh, yes,” said Bertha, her eyes twinkling with delight. “I shall be dressed and with you in no time.”

“Do not hurry yourself,” said the good ghost as he left the room “We have most of the night before us.”

When the young girl had descended the great staircase almost as noiselessly as the ghost, she found her venerable companion waiting for her. “Do you see the lantern on the table?” said he. “John uses it when he goes his round of the house at bedtime. There are matches hanging above it. Please light it. You may be sure I would not put you to this trouble if I were able to do it myself.”

When she had lighted the brass lantern, the ghost invited her to enter the study. “Now,” said he as he led the way to the large desk with the cabinet above it, “will you be so good as to open that glass door and put your hand into the front corner of that middle shelf? You will feel a key hanging upon a little hook.”

“But this is my uncle’s cabinet,” Bertha said, “and I have no right to meddle with his keys and things!”

The ghost drew himself up to the six feet two inches which had been his stature in life. “This was my cabinet,” he said, “and I have never surrendered it to your uncle John! With my own hands I screwed the little hook into that dark corner and hung the key upon it! Now I beg you to take down that key and unlock that little drawer at the bottom.”

Without a moment’s hesitation Bertha took the key from the hook unlocked and opened the drawer. “It is full of old keys all tied together in a bunch!” she said.

“Yes,” said the ghost. “Now, my dear, I want you to understand that what we are going to do is strictly correct and proper. This was once my house – everything in it I planned and arranged. I am now going to take you into the cellars of my old mansion. They are wonderful cellars; they were my pride and glory! Are you afraid,” he said, “to descend with me into these subterranean regions?”

“Not a bit!” exclaimed Bertha. “I think it will be the jolliest thing in the world to go with my great-grandfather into the cellars which he built himself, and of which he was so proud.”

This speech so charmed the ghost of old Applejoy that he would instantly have kissed his great-granddaughter had it not been that he was afraid of giving her a cold.

“You are a girl to my liking!” he exclaimed. “I wish you had been living at the time I was alive and master of this house. We should have had gay times together!”

“I wish you were alive now, dear Great-grandpapa,” said she. “Let us go on – I am all impatience!”

They then descended into the cellars, which, until the present owner came into possession of the estate, had been famous throughout the neighbourhood. “This way,” said old Applejoy’s ghost. “Do you see that row of old casks nearly covered with cobwebs and dust? They contain some of the choicest spirits ever brought into this country, rum from Jamaica, brandy from France, port and Madeira.

“Come into this little room. Now, then, hold up your lantern. Notice that row of glass jars on the shelf. They are filled with the finest mincemeat ever made and just as good as it ever was! And there are a lot more jars and cans all tightly sealed. I do not know what good things are in them, but I am sure their contents are just what will be wanted to fill out a Christmas table.

“Now, my dear, I want to show you the grandest thing in these cellars. Behold that wooden box! Inside it is an airtight box made of tin. Inside that is a great plum cake put into that box by me! I intended it to stay there for a long time, for plum cake gets better and better the longer it is kept. The people who eat that cake, my dear Bertha, will be blessed above all their fellow mortals!

“And now I think you have seen enough to understand thoroughly that these cellars are the abode of many good things to eat and to drink. It is their abode, but if John could have his way it would be their sepulchre!”

“But why did you bring me here, Great-grandpapa?” said Bertha. “Do you want me to come down here and have my Christmas dinner with you?”

“No, indeed,” said old Applejoy’s ghost. “Come upstairs, and let us go into the study.” Once they were there, Bertha sat down before the fireplace and warmed her fingers over the few embers it contained.

“Bertha,” said the spirit of her great-grandfather, “it is wicked not to celebrate Christmas, especially when one is able to do so in the most hospitable and generous way. For years John has taken no notice of Christmas, and it is our duty to reform him if we can! There is not much time before Christmas Day, but there is time enough to do everything that has to be done, if you and I go to work and set other people to work.”

“And how are we to do that?” asked Bertha.

“The straightforward thing to do,” said the ghost, “is for me to appear to your uncle, tell him his duty, and urge him to perform it, but I know what will be the result. He would call the interview a dream. But there is nothing dreamlike about you, my dear. If anyone hears you talking he will know he is awake.”

“Do you want me to talk to Uncle?” said Bertha, smiling.

“Yes,” said old Applejoy’s ghost. “I want you to go to him immediately after breakfast tomorrow morning and tell him exactly what has happened this night; about the casks of spirits, the jars of mincemeat, and the wooden box nailed fast and tight with the tin box inside holding the plum cake. John knows all about that cake, and he knows all about me, too.”

“And what is the message?” asked Bertha.

“It is simply this,” said the ghost. “When you have told him all the events of this night, and when he sees that they must have happened, I want you to tell him that it is the wish and desire of his grandfather, to whom he owes everything, that there shall be worthy festivities in this house on Christmas Day and Night. Tell him to open his cellars and spend his money. Tell him to send for at least a dozen good friends and relatives to attend the great holiday celebration that is to be held in this house.

“Now, my dear,” said old Applejoy’s ghost, drawing near to the young girl, “I want to ask you – a private, personal question. Who is Tom?”

At these words a sudden blush rushed into the cheeks of Bertha. “Tom?” she said. “What Tom?”

“I am sure you know a young man named Tom, and I want you to tell me who he is. My name was Tom, and I am very fond of Toms. Is he a nice young fellow? Do you like him very much?”

“Yes,” said Bertha, meaning the answer to cover both questions.

“And does he like you?”

“I think so,” said Bertha.

“That means you are in love with each other!” exclaimed old Applejoy’s ghost. “And now, my dear, tell me his last name. Out with it!”

“Mr. Burcham,” said Bertha, her cheeks now a little pale.

“Son of Thomas Burcham of the Meadows?”

“Yes, sir,” said Bertha.

The ghost of old Applejoy gazed down upon his great-granddaughter with pride and admiration. “My dear Bertha,” he exclaimed, “I congratulate you! I have seen young Tom. He is a fine-looking fellow, and if you love him I know he is a good one. Now, I’ll tell you what we will do, Bertha. We will have Tom here on Christmas.”

“Oh, Great-grandfather, I can’t ask Uncle to invite him!” she exclaimed.

“We will have a bigger party than we thought we would,” said the beaming ghost. “All the invited guests will be asked to bring their families. When a big dinner is given at this house, Thomas Burcham, Sr., must not be left out, and he is bound to bring Tom. Now skip back to your bed, and immediately after breakfast come here to your uncle and tell him everything I have told you to tell him.”

Bertha hesitated. “Great-grandfather,” she said, “if Uncle does allow us to celebrate Christmas, will you be with us?”

“Yes, indeed, my dear,” said he. “And you need not be afraid of my frightening anybody. I shall be everywhere and I shall hear everything, but I shall be visible only to the loveliest woman who ever graced this mansion. And now be off to bed without another word.”

“If she hadn’t gone,” said old Applejoy’s ghost to himself, “I couldn’t have helped giving her a good-night kiss.”

The next morning, as Bertha told the story of her night’s adventures to her uncle, the face of John Applejoy grew paler and paler. He was a hard-headed man, but a superstitious one, and when Bertha told him of his grandfather’s plum cake, the existence of which he had believed was not known to anyone but himself, he felt it was impossible for the girl to have dreamed these things. With all the power of his will he opposed this belief, but it was too much for him, and he surrendered. But he was a proud man and would not admit to his niece that he put any faith in the existence of ghosts.

“My dear,” said he, rising, his face still pale, but his expression under good control, “although there is nothing of weight in what you have told me – for traditions about my cellars have been afloat in the family – still your pretty little story suggests something to me. This is Christmastime and I had almost overlooked it. You are young and lively and accustomed to the celebration of holidays. Therefore, I have determined, my dear, to have a grand Christmas dinner and invite our friends and their families. I know there must be good things in the cellars, although I had almost forgotten them, and they shall be brought up and spread out and enjoyed. Now go and send Mrs. Dipperton to me, and when we have finished our consultation, you and I will make out a list of guests.”

When she had gone, John Applejoy sat down in his big chair and looked fixedly into the fire. He would not have dared to go to bed that night if he had disregarded the message from his grandfather.

Never had there been such a glorious Christmastime within the walls of the old house. The news that old Mr. Applejoy was sending out invitations to a Christmas dinner spread like wildfire through the neighbourhood. The idea of inviting people by families was considered a grand one, worthy indeed of the times of old Mr. Tom Applejoy, the grandfather of the present owner, who had been the most hospitable man in the whole country.

For the first time in nearly a century all the leaves of the great dining table were put into use, and the table had as much as it could do to stand up under its burdens brought from cellar, barn, and surrounding country. In the very middle of everything was the wonderful plum cake which had been put away by the famous grandfather of the host.

But the cake was not cut. “My friends,” said Mr. John Applejoy, “we may all look at this cake but we will not eat it! We will keep it just as it is until a marriage shall occur in this family. Then you are all invited to come and enjoy it!”

At the conclusion of this little speech old Applejoy’s ghost patted his grandson upon the head. “You don’t feel that, John,” he said to himself, “but it is approbation, and this is the first time I have ever approved of you!”

Late in the evening there was a grand dance in the great hall, which opened with an old-fashioned minuet, and when the merry guests were forming on the floor, a young man named Tom came forward and asked the hand of Bertha.

“No,” said she, “not this time. I am going to dance this first dance with – well, we will say by myself!”

At these words the most thoroughly gratified ghost in all space stepped up to the side of the lovely girl, and with his cocked hat folded flat under his left arm, he made a low bow and held out his hand. With his long waistcoat trimmed with lace, his tightly drawn stockings and his buckled shoes, there was not such a gallant figure in the whole company.

Bertha put out her hand and touched the shadowy fingers of her partner, and then, side by side, she and the ghost of her great-grandfather opened the ball. With all the grace of fresh young beauty and ancient courtliness they danced the minuet.

“What a strange young girl,” said some of the guests, “to go through that dance all by herself, but how beautifully she did it!”

“Very eccentric, my dear!” said Mr. John Applejoy when the dance was over. “But I could not help thinking as I looked at you that there was nobody in this room that was worthy to be your partner.”

“You are wrong there, old fellow!” was the simultaneous mental ejaculation of young Tom Burcham and of old Applejoy’s ghost.

Afield and Afloat (1900)

THE FIRST COMER

B. M. Croker

1896

“Making night hideous.”

—Hamlet

I am an old maid, and am not the least ashamed of the circumstance. Pray, why should women not be allowed the benefit of the doubt like men, and be supposed to remain single from choice?

I can assure you that it is not from want of offers that I am Miss Janet MacTavish, spinster. I could tell – but no matter. It is not to set down a list of proposals that I have taken pen in hand, but to relate a very mysterious occurrence that happened in our house last spring.

My sister Matilda and I are a well-to-do couple of maiden ladies, having no poor relatives, and a comfortable private fortune. We keep four servants (all female), and occupy a large detached house in a fashionable part of Edinburgh, and the circle in which we move is most exclusive and genteel.

Matilda is a good deal older than I am (though we dress alike), and is somewhat of an invalid.

Our east winds are certainly trying, and last March she had a very sharp attack of bronchitis, brought on (between ourselves) by her own rash imprudence. Though I may not say this to her face, I may say it here.

She does not approve of fiction, though, goodness knows, what I am going to set down is not fiction, but fact; but any literary work in a gay paper cover (of course, I don’t mean tracts), such as novels and magazines, is an abomination in her eyes, and “reading such-like trash” she considers sinful waste of time.

So, even if this falls into her hands by an odd chance, she will never read it, and I am quite safe in writing out everything that happened, as I dare not do if I thought that Mattie was coming after me and picking holes in every sentence.

Matilda is terribly particular about grammar and orthography, and reads over all my letters before I venture to close them.

Dear me, how I have wandered away from my point! I’m sure that no one will care to know that I am a little in awe of my elder, that she treats me sometimes as if I were still in my teens. But people may like to hear of the queer thing that happened to me, and I am really and truly coming to it at last.

Matilda was ill with bronchitis, very ill. Bella (that’s our sewing-maid and general factotum, who has been with us twelve years this term) and I took it in turns to sit up with her at night. It happened to be my night, and I was sitting over the fire in a half-kind of doze, when Matilda woke up, and nothing would serve her but a cup of tea of all things, at two o’clock in the morning – the kitchen fire out, no hot water, and everyone in the house in their beds, except myself.

I had some nice beef-tea in a little pan beside the hob, and I coaxed her hard to try some of that, but not a bit of it. Nothing would serve her but real tea, and I knew that once she had taken the notion in her head, I might just as well do her bidding first as last. So I opened the door and went out, thinking to take the small lamp, for, of course, all the gas was out, and turned off at the meter – as it ought to be in every decent house.

“You’ll no do that!” she said, quite cross. Mattie speaks broad when she is vexed, and we had had a bit of argument about the tea. “You’ll no do that, and leave me here without the light! Just go down and infuse me a cup of tea as quick as ever you can, for I know I’ll be awfully the better of it!”

So there was just nothing else for it, and down I went in the pitch-black darkness, not liking the job at all.

It was not that I was afraid. Not I. But the notion of having to rake up and make the kitchen fire, and boil the kettle, was an errand that went rather against the grain, especially as I’m a terrible bad hand at lighting a fire.

I was thinking of this and wondering where were the wood and the matches to be found, when, just as I reached the head of the stairs, I was delighted to hear a great raking out of cinders below in the kitchen. Such a raking and poking and banging of coals and knocking about of the range I never did hear, and I said to myself,

“This is fine; it’s washing morning” (we do our washing at home) “and later than I thought; and the servants are up, so it’s all right;” and I ran down the kitchen stairs, quite inspirited like by the idea. As I passed the door of the servants’ room (where cook and housemaid slept), Harris, that’s the housemaid, called out –

“Who’s that?”

I went to the door and said, “It’s I, Miss Janet. I want a cup of tea for Miss MacTavish.”

In a moment Harris had thrown on some clothes and was out in the passage. She was always a quick, willing girl, and very obliging. She said (it was black dark, and I could not see her) –

“Never you mind, Miss Janet; I’ll light the fire and boil up the kettle in no time.”

“You need not do that,” said I, “for there’s someone at the fire already, cook, I suppose.”

“Not me, ma’am” said a sleepy voice from the interior of the bedroom. “I’m in my bed.”

“Then who can it be?” I asked, for the banging and raking had become still more tremendous, and the thunder of the poker was just awful!

“It must be Bella,” said Harris, feeling her way to the kitchen door and pushing it open, followed by me.

We stood for full half a minute in the dark, whilst she felt about and groped for the matches, and still the noise continued.

“Bella,” I said crossly, “what on earth-”

But at this instant the match was struck, and dimly lit up the kitchen. I strained my eyes into the darkness, whilst Harris composedly lit a candle. I looked, and looked, and looked again, but there was no one in the kitchen but ourselves.

I was just petrified, I can tell you, and I staggered against the dresser, and gaped at the now silent fireplace. The coals and cinders and ashes were exactly as they had gone out, not a bit disturbed; anyone could see that they had never been stirred.

“In the name of goodness, Harris,” I said in a whisper, “where is the person that was poking that fire? You heard them yourself!”

“I heard a noise, sure enough, Miss Janet,” she said, not a bit daunted; “and if I was a body that believed in ghosts and such-like clavers, I’d say it was them,” putting firewood in the grate as she spoke. “It’s queer, certainly. Miss MacTavish will be wearying for her tea,” she added. “I know well what it is to have a kind of longing for a good cup. Save us! what a cold air there is in this kitchen. I wonder where cook put the bellows.”

Seeing that Harris was taking the matter so coolly, for very shame I was forced to do the like; so I did not say a word about my misgivings, nor the odd queer thrill I had felt as we stood in the pitch darkness and listened to the furious raking of the kitchen grate.

How icy cold the kitchen had been! just like a vault, and with the same damp, earthy smell!

I was in a mighty hurry to get back upstairs, believe me, and did all in my power to speed the fire and the kettle, and in due time we wended our way above, Harris bearing the tea on a tray, and walking last.

I left her to administer the refreshment, whilst I went into Bella’s room, which was close by, candle in hand.

“You are awake, I see, Bella,” I remarked, putting it down as I spoke (I felt that I must unbosom myself to someone, or never close an eye that night). “Tell me, did you hear a great raking of the kitchen fire just now?”

“Yes, miss, of course. Why, it woke me. I suppose you had occasion to go down for something, Miss Janet; but why did you not call me?”

“It was not I who woke you, Bella,” I rejoined quickly. “I was on my way downstairs when I heard that noise below, and I thought it was cook or Harris, but when I got down Harris came out of the bedroom. Cook was in bed. Maggie, you know, is up above you, and we went into the kitchen, thinking it might be you or her, and lit a candle; but I give you my word of honour that, although the noise was really terrible till we struck a light, when we looked about us not a soul was to be seen!”

At this, Bella started up in bed, and became of a livid, chalky kind of colour.

“No one, Miss Janet?” she gasped out.

“Not a soul!” I replied solemnly.

“Then, oh!” she exclaimed, now jumping bodily out on the floor, and looking quite wild and distracted, “tell me, in Heaven’s name, which of you went into the kitchen first, you or Harris?” She was so agitated, she seemed scarcely able to bring out the words, and her eyes rested upon mine with a strange, frightened look, that made me fancy she had taken temporary leave of her wits.

“Harris went first,” I answered shortly.

“Thank Heaven for that!” she returned, now collapsing on the edge of her bed. “But poor Kate Harris is a dead woman!”

I stared hard at Bella, as well I might. Was she talking in her sleep? or was I dreaming?

“What do you mean, Bella Cameron?” I cried. “Are you gone crazy? Are you gone clean daft?”.

“It was a warning,” she replied, in a low and awe-struck voice. “We Highlanders understand the like well! It was a warning of death! Kate Harris’s hour has come.”

“If you are going to talk such wicked nonsense, Bella,” I said, “I’m not going to stop to listen. Whatever you do, don’t let Matilda hear you going on with such foolishness. The house would not hold her, and you know that well.”

“All right, Miss Janet; you heard the commotion yourself – you will allow that; and you will see that the kitchen grate is never raked out for nothing. I only wish, from the bottom of my heart, that what I’ve told you may not come true; but, bad as it was, I’m thankful that you were not first in the kitchen.”

A few more indignant expostulations on my part, and lamentations on Bella’s, and then I went back to Matilda, and it being now near three o’clock, and she inclined to be drowsy, I lay down on the sofa, and got a couple of hours’ sleep.

A day or two afterwards I was suddenly struck with a strange thrill of apprehension by noticing how very, very ill Kate Harris looked. I taxed her with not feeling well, and she admitted that she had not been herself, and could not say what ailed her. She had no actual pain, but she felt weak all over, and could scarcely drag herself about the house, “It would go off. She would not see a doctor – No, no, no!-It was only just a kind of cold feeling in her bones, and a sort of notion that a hand was gripping her throat. It was all fancy; and Dr. Henderson (our doctor) would make fine game of her if he saw her by way of being a patient. She would be all right in a day or two.” Vain hope! In a day or two she was much worse. She was obliged to give in – to take to her bed. I sent for Dr. Henderson – indeed he called daily to visit Mattie – so I had only to pilot him down below to see Kate. He came out to me presently with a very grave face, and said –

“Has she any friends?” – pointing towards Kate’s door with his thumb.

“Friends! To be sure,” I answered. “She has a sister married to a tram conductor in Wickham Street.”

“Send for her at once; and you had better have her moved. She can’t last a week.”

“Do you mean that she is going to die?” I gasped, clutching the balusters, for we were standing in the lower hall.

“I am sorry to say the case is hopeless. Nothing can save her, and the sooner she is with her own people the better.”

I was, I need scarcely tell you, greatly shocked – terribly shocked – and presently, when I had recovered myself, I sent off, post-haste, for Kate’s sister.

I went in to see her. She, poor creature, was all curiosity to know what the doctor had said.

“He would tell me nothing, miss,” she observed smilingly. “Only felt my pulse, and tried my heart with a stethoscope, and my temperature with that queer little tube. I only feel a bit tired and out of breath; but you’ll find I’ll be all right in a day or two. I’m only sorry I’m giving all this trouble, and Bella and Mary having to do my work. However, I’ll be fit to clean the plate on Saturday.”

Poor soul, little did she dream that her work in this world was done!

And I, as I sat beside the bed and looked at her always pale face, her now livid lips and hollow eyes, told myself that already I could see the hand of Death on her countenance. I was obliged to tell her sister what the doctor had said; and how she cried – and so did I – and who was to tell Kate? We wished to keep her with us undisturbed – Matilda and I – but her people would not hear of it, and so we had an ambulance from the hospital and sent her home.

She just lived a week, and, strange to say, she had always the greatest craving for me to be with her, for me to sit beside her, and read to her, and hold her hand. She showed far more anxiety for my company than for that of any of her own people.

Bella alone, of all the household, expressed no astonishment when she heard the doctor’s startling verdict. Being in Mattie’s room at the time, she merely looked over at me gravely, and significantly shook her head.

One evening Bella and I were with her; she had lain silent for a long time, and then she said to me quite suddenly –

“Miss Janet, you’ll remember the morning you came downstairs looking for Miss MacTavish’s tea?” (Did I not recollect it, only too well!) “Somehow, I got a queer kind of chill then; I felt it at the time, to the very marrow of my bones. I have never been warm since. It was just this day fortnight. I remember it well, because it was washing Monday.”

That night Kate Harris died. She passed away, as it were, in her sleep, with her hand in mine. As she was with me on that mysterious night, so I was now with her.

Call me a superstitious old imbecile, or what you like, but I firmly believe that, had I entered that kitchen first, it would have been Janet MacTavish, and not Kate Harris, who was lying in her coffin!

Of course Matilda knows nothing of this, nor ever will. Perhaps – for she is one of your strong-minded folk – she would scoff at the idea, and at me, for a daft, silly body, and try to explain it all away quite reasonable like. I only wish she could!

Kingdom of Kerry (1896)

HOW FEAR DEPARTED
FROM
THE LONG GALLERY

E. F. Benson

1911

Church-Peveril is a house so beset and frequented by spectres, both visible and audible, that none of the family which it shelters under its acre and a half of green copper roofs takes psychical phenomena with any seriousness. For to the Peverils the appearance of a ghost is a matter of hardly greater significance than is the appearance of the post to those who live in more ordinary houses. It arrives, that is to say, practically every day, it knocks (or makes other noises), it is observed coming up the drive (or in other places). I myself, when staying there, have seen the present Mrs. Peveril, who is rather short-sighted, peer into the dusk, while we were taking our coffee on the terrace after dinner, and say to her daughter:

“My dear, was not that the Blue Lady who has just gone into the shrubbery. I hope she won’t frighten Flo. Whistle for Flo, dear.”

(Flo, it may be remarked, is the youngest and most precious of many dachshunds.)

Blanche Peveril gave a cursory whistle, and crunched the sugar left unmelted at the bottom of her coffee-cup between her very white teeth.

“Oh, darling, Flo isn’t so silly as to mind,” she said. “Poor blue Aunt Barbara is such a bore! Whenever I meet her she always looks as if she wanted to speak to me, but when I say, ‘What is it, Aunt Barbara?’ she never utters, but only points somewhere towards the house, which is so vague. I believe there was something she wanted to confess about two hundred years ago, but she has forgotten what it is.”

Here Flo gave two or three short pleased barks, and came out of the shrubbery wagging her tail, and capering round what appeared to me to be a perfectly empty space on the lawn.

“There! Flo has made friends with her,” said Mrs. Peveril. “I wonder why she – in that very stupid shade of blue.”

•  •  •

From this it may be gathered that even with regard to psychical phenomena there is some truth in the proverb that speaks of familiarity. But the Peverils do not exactly treat their ghosts with contempt, since most of that delightful family never despised anybody except such people as avowedly did not care for hunting or shooting, or golf or skating. And as all of their ghosts are of their family, it seems reasonable to suppose that they all, even the poor Blue Lady, excelled at one time in field-sports. So far, then, they harbour no such unkindness or contempt, but only pity. Of one Peveril, indeed, who broke his neck in vainly attempting to ride up the main staircase on a thoroughbred mare after some monstrous and violent deed in the back-garden, they are very fond, and Blanche comes downstairs in the morning with an eye unusually bright when she can announce that Master Anthony was “very loud” last night. He (apart from the fact of his having been so foul a ruffian) was a tremendous fellow across country, and they like these indications of the continuance of his superb vitality. In fact, it is supposed to be a compliment, when you go to stay at Church-Peveril, to be assigned a bedroom which is frequented by defunct members of the family. It means that you are worthy to look on the august and villainous dead, and you will find yourself shown into some vaulted or tapestried chamber, without benefit of electric light, and are told that great-great-grandmamma Bridget occasionally has vague business by the fireplace, but it is better not to talk to her, and that you will hear Master Anthony “awfully well” if he attempts the front staircase any time before morning. There you are left for your night’s repose, and, having quakingly undressed, begin reluctantly to put out your candles. It is draughty in these great chambers, and the solemn tapestry swings and billows and subsides, and the firelight dances on the forms of huntsmen and warriors and stern pursuits. Then you climb into your bed, a bed so huge that you feel as if the desert of Sahara was spread for you, and pray, like the mariners who sailed with St. Paul, for day. And, all the time, you are aware that Freddy and Harry and Blanche and possibly even Mrs. Peveril are quite capable of dressing up and making disquieting tappings outside your door, so that when you open it some inconjecturable horror fronts you. For myself, I stick steadily to the assertion that I have an obscure valvular disease of the heart, and so sleep undisturbed in the new wing of the house where Aunt Barbara, and great-great-grandmamma Bridget and Master Anthony never penetrate. I forget the details of great-great-grandmamma Bridget, but she certainly cut the throat of some distant relation before she disembowelled herself with the axe that had been used at Agincourt. Before that she had led a very sultry life, crammed with amazing incident.

•  •  •

But there is one ghost at Church-Peveril at which the family never laugh, in which they feel no friendly and amused interest, and of which they only speak just as much as is necessary for the safety of their guests. More properly it should be described as two ghosts, for the “haunt” in question is that of two very young children, who were twins. These, not without reason, the family take very seriously indeed. The story of them, as told me by Mrs. Peveril, is as follows:

In the year 1602, the same being the last of Queen Elizabeth’s reign, a certain Dick Peveril was greatly in favour at Court. He was brother to Master Joseph Peveril, then owner of the family house and lands, who two years previously, at the respectable age of seventy-four, became father of twin boys, first-born of his progeny. It is known that the royal and ancient virgin had said to handsome Dick, who was nearly forty years his brother’s junior, “’Tis pity that you are not master of Church-Peveril,” and these words probably suggested to him a sinister design. Be that as it may, handsome Dick, who very adequately sustained the family reputation for wickedness, set off to ride down to Yorkshire, and found that, very conveniently, his brother Joseph had just been seized with an apoplexy, which appeared to be the result of a continued spell of hot weather combined with the necessity of quenching his thirst with an augmented amount of sack, and had actually died while handsome Dick, with God knows what thoughts in his mind, was journeying northwards. Thus it came about that he arrived at Church-Peveril just in time for his brother’s funeral. It was with great propriety that he attended the obsequies, and returned to spend a sympathetic day or two of mourning with his widowed sister-in-law, who was but a faint-hearted dame, little fit to be mated with such hawks as these. On the second night of his stay, he did that which the Peverils regret to this day. He entered the room where the twins slept with their nurse, and quietly strangled the latter as she slept. Then he took the twins and put them into the fire which warms the long gallery. The weather, which up to the day of Joseph’s death had been so hot, had changed suddenly to bitter cold, and the fire was heaped high with burning logs and was exultant with flame. In the core of this conflagration he struck out a cremation-chamber, and into that he threw the two children, stamping them down with his riding-boots. They could just walk, but they could not walk out of that ardent place. It is said that he laughed as he added more logs. Thus he became master of Church-Peveril.

The crime was never brought home to him, but he lived no longer than a year in the enjoyment of his blood-stained inheritance. When he lay a-dying he made his confession to the priest who attended him, but his spirit struggled forth from its fleshly coil before Absolution could be given him. On that very night there began in Church-Peveril the haunting which to this day is but seldom spoken of by the family, and then only in low tones and with serious mien. For only an hour or two after handsome Dick’s death, one of the servants passing the door of the long gallery heard from within peals of the loud laughter so jovial and yet so sinister which he had thought would never be heard in the house again. In a moment of that cold courage which is so nearly akin to mortal terror he opened the door and entered, expecting to see he knew not what manifestation of him who lay dead in the room below. Instead he saw two little white-robed figures toddling towards him hand in hand across the moon-lit floor.

The watchers in the room below ran upstairs startled by the crash of his fallen body, and found him lying in the grip of some dread convulsion. Just before morning he regained consciousness and told his tale. Then pointing with trembling and ash-grey finger towards the door, he screamed aloud, and so fell back dead.

•  •  •

During the next fifty years this strange and terrible legend of the twin-babies became fixed and consolidated. Their appearance, luckily for those who inhabit the house, was exceedingly rare, and during these years they seem to have been seen four or five times only. On each occasion they appeared at night, between sunset and sunrise, always in the same long gallery, and always as two toddling children scarcely able to walk. And on each occasion the luckless individual who saw them died either speedily or terribly, or with both speed and terror, after the accursed vision had appeared to him. Sometimes he might live for a few months: he was lucky if he died, as did the servant who first saw them, in a few hours. Vastly more awful was the fate of a certain Mrs. Canning, who had the ill-luck to see them in the middle of the next century, or to be quite accurate, in the year 1760. By this time the hours and the place of their appearance were well known, and, as up till a year ago, visitors were warned not to go between sunset and sunrise into the long gallery.

But Mrs. Canning, a brilliantly clever and beautiful woman, admirer also and friend of the notorious sceptic M. Voltaire, wilfully went and sat night after night, in spite of all protestations, in the haunted place. For four evenings she saw nothing, but on the fifth she had her will, for the door in the middle of the gallery opened, and there came toddling towards her the ill-omened innocent little pair. It seemed that even then she was not frightened, but she thought it good, poor wretch, to mock at them, telling them it was time for them to get back into the fire. They gave no word in answer, but turned away from her crying and sobbing. Immediately after they disappeared from her vision and she rustled downstairs to where the family and guests in the house were waiting for her, with the triumphant announcement that she has seen them both, and must needs write to M. Voltaire, saying that she had spoken to spirits made manifest. It would make him laugh. But when some months later the whole news reached him he did not laugh at all.

Mrs. Canning was one of the great beauties of her day, and in the year 1760 she was at the height and zenith of her blossoming. The chief beauty, if it is possible to single out one point where all was so exquisite, lay in the dazzling colour and incomparable brilliance of her complexion. She was now just thirty years of age, but, in spite of the excesses of her life, retained the snow and roses of girlhood, and she courted the bright light of day which other women shunned, for it but showed to great advantage the splendour of her skin. In consequence she was very considerably dismayed one morning, about a fortnight after her strange experience in the long gallery, to observe on her left cheek, an inch or two below her turquoise-coloured eyes, a little greyish patch of skin, about as big as a threepenny piece. It was in vain that she applied her accustomed washes and unguents: vain, too, were the arts of her fardeuse and of her medical adviser. For a week she kept herself secluded, martyring herself with solitude and unaccustomed physics, and for result at the end of the week she had no amelioration to comfort herself with: instead this woeful grey patch had doubled itself in size. Thereafter the nameless disease, whatever it was, developed in new and terrible ways. From the centre of the discoloured place there sprouted forth little lichen-like tendrils of greenish-grey, and another patch appeared on her lower lip. This, too, soon vegetated, and one morning, on opening her eyes to the horror of a new day, she found that her vision was strangely blurred. She sprang to her looking-glass, and what she saw caused her to shriek aloud with horror. From under her upper eyelid a fresh growth had sprung up, mushroom-like, in the night, and its filaments extended downwards, screening the pupil of her eye. Soon after, her tongue and throat were attacked: the air passages became obstructed, and death by suffocation was merciful after such suffering.

More terrible yet was the case of a certain Colonel Blantyre who fired at the children with his revolver. What he went through is not to be recorded here.

•  •  •

It is this haunting, then, that the Peverils take quite seriously, and every guest on his arrival in the house is told that the long gallery must not be entered after nightfall on any pretext whatever. By day, however, it is a delightful room and intrinsically merits description, apart from the fact that the due understanding of its geography is necessary for the account that here follows. It is full eighty feet in length, and is lit by a row of six tall windows looking over the gardens at the back of the house. A door communicates with the landing at the top of the main staircase, and about half-way down the gallery in the wall facing the windows is another door communicating with the back staircase and servants’ quarters, and thus the gallery forms a constant place of passage for them in going to the rooms on the first landing. It was through this door that the baby-figures came when they appeared to Mrs. Canning, and on several other occasions they have been known to make their entry here, for the room out of which handsome Dick took them lies just beyond at the top of the back stairs. Further on again in the gallery is the fireplace into which he thrust them, and at the far end a large bow-window looks straight down the avenue. Above this fireplace there hangs with grim significance a portrait of handsome Dick, in the insolent beauty of early manhood, attributed to Holbein, and a dozen other portraits of great merit face the windows. During the day this is the most frequented sitting-room in the house, for its other visitors never appear there then, nor does it then ever resound with the harsh jovial laugh of handsome Dick, which sometimes, after dark has fallen, is heard by passers-by on the landing outside. But Blanche does not grow bright-eyed when she hears it: she shuts her ears and hastens to put a greater distance between her and the sound of that atrocious mirth.

But during the day the long gallery is frequented by many occupants, and much laughter in no wise sinister or saturnine resounds there. When summer lies hot over the land, those occupants lounge in the deep window seats, and when winter spreads his icy fingers and blows shrilly between his frozen palms, congregate round the fireplace at the far end, and perch, in companies of cheerful chatterers, upon sofa and chair, and chair-back and floor. Often have I sat there on long August evenings up till dressing-time, but never have I been there when anyone has seemed disposed to linger over-late without hearing the warning: “It is close on sunset: shall we go?” Later on in the shorter autumn days they often have tea laid there, and sometimes it has happened that, even while merriment was most uproarious, Mrs. Peveril has suddenly looked out of the window and said, “My dears, it is getting so late: let us finish our nonsense downstairs in the hall.” And then for a moment a curious hush always falls on loquacious family and guests alike, and as if some bad news had just been known, we all make our silent way out of the place.

But the spirits of the Peverils (of the living ones, that is to say) are the most mercurial imaginable, and the blight which the thought of handsome Dick and his doings casts over them passes away again with amazing rapidity.

•  •  •

A typical party, large, young, and peculiarly cheerful, was staying at Church-Peveril shortly after Christmas last year, and as usual on December 31, Mrs. Peveril was giving her annual New Year’s Eve ball. The house was quite full, and she had commandeered as well the greater part of the Peveril Arms to provide sleeping-quarters for the overflow from the house. For some days past a black and windless frost had stopped all hunting, but it is an ill windlessness that blows no good (if so mixed a metaphor may be forgiven), and the lake below the house had for the last day or two been covered with an adequate and admirable sheet of ice. Everyone in the house had been occupied all the morning of that day in performing swift and violent manoeuvres on the elusive surface, and as soon as lunch was over we all, with one exception, hurried out again. This one exception was Madge Dalrymple, who had had the misfortune to fall rather badly earlier in the day, but hoped, by resting her injured knee, instead of joining the skaters again, to be able to dance that evening. The hope, it is true, was the most sanguine sort, for she could but hobble ignobly back to the house, but with the breezy optimism which characterises the Peverils (she is Blanche’s first cousin), she remarked that it would be but tepid enjoyment that she could, in her present state, derive from further skating, and thus she sacrificed little, but might gain much.

Accordingly, after a rapid cup of coffee which was served in the long gallery, we left Madge comfortably reclined on the big sofa at right-angles to the fireplace, with an attractive book to beguile the tedium till tea. Being of the family, she knew all about handsome Dick and the babies, and the fate of Mrs. Canning and Colonel Blantyre, but as we went out I heard Blanche say to her, “Don’t run it too fine, dear,” and Madge had replied, “No; I’ll go away well before sunset.” And so we left her alone in the long gallery.

Madge read her attractive book for some minutes, but failing to get absorbed in it, put it down and limped across to the window. Though it was still but little after two, it was but a dim and uncertain light that entered, for the crystalline brightness of the morning had given place to a veiled obscurity produced by flocks of thick clouds which were coming sluggishly up from the north-east. Already the whole sky was overcast with them, and occasionally a few snowflakes fluttered waveringly down past the long windows. From the darkness and bitter cold of the afternoon, it seemed to her that there was like to be a heavy snowfall before long, and these outward signs were echoed inwardly in her by that muffled drowsiness of the brain, which to those who are sensitive to the pressures and lightness of weather portends storm. Madge was peculiarly the prey of such external influences: to her a brisk morning gave an ineffable brightness and briskness of spirit, and correspondingly the approach of heavy weather produced a somnolence in sensation that both drowsed and depressed her.

It was in such mood as this that she limped back again to the sofa beside the log-fire. The whole house was comfortably heated by water-pipes, and though the fire of logs and peat, an adorable mixture, had been allowed to burn low, the room was very warm. Idly she watched the dwindling flames, not opening her book again, but lying on the sofa with face towards the fireplace, intending drowsily and not immediately to go to her own room and spend the hours, until the return of the skaters made gaiety in the house again, in writing one or two neglected letters. Still drowsily she began thinking over what she had to communicate: one letter several days overdue should go to her mother, who was immensely interested in the psychical affairs of the family. She would tell her how Master Anthony had been prodigiously active on the staircase a night or two ago, and how the Blue Lady, regardless of the severity of the weather, had been seen by Mrs. Peveril that morning, strolling about. It was rather interesting: the Blue Lady had gone down the laurel walk and had been seen by her to enter the stables, where, at the moment, Freddy Peveril was inspecting the frost-bound hunters. Identically then, a sudden panic had spread through the stables, and the horses had whinnied and kicked, and shied, and sweated. Of the fatal twins nothing had been seen for many years past, but, as her mother knew, the Peverils never used the long gallery after dark.

Then for a moment she sat up, remembering that she was in the long gallery now. But it was still but a little after half-past two, and if she went to her room in half an hour, she would have ample time to write this and another letter before tea. Till then she would read her book. But she found she had left it on the windowsill, and it seemed scarcely worth while to get it. She felt exceedingly drowsy.

The sofa where she lay had been lately recovered, in a greyish green shade of velvet, somewhat the colour of lichen. It was of very thick soft texture, and she luxuriously stretched her arms out, one on each side of her body, and pressed her fingers into the nap. How horrible that story of Mrs. Canning was: the growth on her face was of the colour of lichen. And then without further transition or blurring of thought Madge fell asleep.

She dreamed. She dreamed that she awoke and found herself exactly where she had gone to sleep, and in exactly the same attitude. The flames from the logs had burned up again, and leaped on the walls, fitfully illuminating the picture of handsome Dick above the fireplace. In her dream she knew exactly what she had done today, and for what reason she was lying here now instead of being out with the rest of the skaters. She remembered also (still dreaming), that she was going to write a letter or two before tea, and prepared to get up in order to go to her room. As she half-rose she caught sight of her own arms lying out on each side of her on the grey velvet sofa.

But she could not see where her hands ended, and where the grey velvet began: her fingers seemed to have melted into the stuff. She could see her wrists quite clearly, and a blue vein on the backs of her hands, and here and there a knuckle. Then, in her dream, she remembered the last thought which had been in her mind before she fell asleep, namely the growth of the lichen-coloured vegetation on the face and the eyes and the throat of Mrs. Canning. At that thought the strangling terror of real nightmare began: she knew that she was being transformed into this grey stuff, and she was absolutely unable to move. Soon the grey would spread up her arms, and over her feet; when they came in from skating they would find here nothing but a huge misshapen cushion of lichen-coloured velvet, and that would be she. The horror grew more acute, and then by a violent effort she shook herself free of the clutches of this very evil dream, and she awoke.

For a minute or two she lay there, conscious only of the tremendous relief at finding herself awake. She felt again with her fingers the pleasant touch of the velvet, and drew them backwards and forwards, assuring herself that she was not, as her dream had suggested, melting into greyness and softness. But she was still, in spite of the violence of her awakening, very sleepy, and lay there till, looking down, she was aware that she could not see her hands at all. It was very nearly dark.

At that moment a sudden flicker of flame came from the dying fire, and a flare of burning gas from the peat flooded the room. The portrait of handsome Dick looked evilly down on her, and her hands were visible again. And then a panic worse than the panic of her dreams seized her. Daylight had altogether faded, and she knew that she was alone in the dark in the terrible gallery.

This panic was of the nature of nightmare, for she felt unable to move for terror. But it was worse than nightmare because she knew she was awake. And then the full cause of this frozen fear dawned on her; she knew with the certainty of absolute conviction that she was about to see the twin-babies.

She felt a sudden moisture break out on her face, and within her mouth her tongue and throat went suddenly dry, and she felt her tongue grate along the inner surface of her teeth. All power of movement had slipped from her limbs, leaving them dead and inert, and she stared with wide eyes into the blackness. The spurt of flame from the peat had burned itself out again, and darkness encompassed her.

Then on the wall opposite her, facing the windows, there grew a faint light of dusky crimson. For a moment she thought it but heralded the approach of the awful vision, then hope revived in her heart, and she remembered that thick clouds had overcast the sky before she went to sleep, and guessed that this light came from the sun not yet quite sunk and set. This sudden revival of hope gave her the necessary stimulus, and she sprang off the sofa where she lay. She looked out of the window and saw the dull glow on the horizon. But before she could take a step forward it was obscured again. A tiny sparkle of light came from the hearth which did no more than illuminate the tiles of the fireplace, and snow falling heavily tapped at the window panes. There was neither light nor sound except these.

But the courage that had come to her, giving her the power of movement, had not quite deserted her, and she began feeling her way down the gallery. And then she found that she was lost. She stumbled against a chair, and, recovering herself, stumbled against another. Then a table barred her way, and, turning swiftly aside, she found herself up against the back of a sofa.

Once more she turned and saw the dim gleam of the firelight on the side opposite to that on which she expected it. In her blind gropings she must have reversed her direction. But which way was she to go now. She seemed blocked in by furniture. And all the time insistent and imminent was the fact that the two innocent terrible ghosts were about to appear to her.

Then she began to pray. “Lighten our darkness, O Lord,” she said to herself. But she could not remember how the prayer continued, and she had sore need of it. There was something about the perils of the night. All this time she felt about her with groping, fluttering hands. The fire-glimmer which should have been on her left was on her right again; therefore she must turn herself round again. “Lighten our darkness,” she whispered, and then aloud she repeated, “Lighten our darkness.”

She stumbled up against a screen, and could not remember the existence of any such screen. Hastily she felt beside it with blind hands, and touched something soft and velvety. Was it the sofa on which she had lain? If so, where was the head of it. It had a head and a back and feet – it was like a person, all covered with grey lichen. Then she lost her head completely. All that remained to her was to pray; she was lost, lost in this awful place, where no one came in the dark except the babies that cried. And she heard her voice rising from whisper to speech, and speech to scream. She shrieked out the holy words, she yelled them as if blaspheming as she groped among tables and chairs and the pleasant things of ordinary life which had become so terrible.

•  •  •

Then came a sudden and an awful answer to her screamed prayer. Once more a pocket of inflammable gas in the peat on the hearth was reached by the smouldering embers, and the room started into light. She saw the evil eyes of handsome Dick, she saw the little ghostly snowflakes falling thickly outside. And she saw where she was, just opposite the door through which the terrible twins made their entrance. Then the flame went out again, and left her in blackness once more. But she had gained something, for she had her geography now. The centre of the room was bare of furniture, and one swift dart would take her to the door of the landing above the main staircase and into safety. In that gleam she had been able to see the handle of the door, bright-brassed, luminous like a star. She would go straight for it; it was but a matter of a few seconds now.

She took a long breath, partly of relief, partly to satisfy the demands of her galloping heart. But the breath was only half-taken when she was stricken once more into the immobility of nightmare.

There came a little whisper, it was no more than that, from the door opposite which she stood, and through which the twin-babies entered. It was not quite dark outside it, for she could see that the door was opening. And there stood in the opening two little white figures, side by side. They came towards her slowly, shufflingly. She could not see face or form at all distinctly, but the two little white figures were advancing. She knew them to be the ghosts of terror, innocent of the awful doom they were bound to bring, even as she was innocent. With the inconceivable rapidity of thought, she made up her mind what to do. She had not hurt them or laughed at them, and they, they were but babies when the wicked and bloody deed had sent them to their burning death. Surely the spirits of these children would not be inaccessible to the cry of one who was of the same blood as they, who had committed no fault that merited the doom they brought. If she entreated them they might have mercy, they might forebear to bring the curse on her, they might allow her to pass out of the place without blight, without the sentence of death, or the shadow of things worse than death upon her.

It was but for the space of a moment that she hesitated, then she sank down on to her knees, and stretched out her hands towards them.

“Oh, my dears,” she said, “I only fell asleep. I have done no more wrong than that—”

She paused a moment, and her tender girl’s heart thought no more of herself, but only of them, those little innocent spirits on whom so awful a doom was laid, that they should bring death where other children bring laughter, and doom for delight. But all those who had seen them before had dreaded and feared them, or had mocked at them.

Then, as the enlightenment of pity dawned on her, her fear fell from her like the wrinkled sheath that holds the sweet folded buds of Spring.

“Dears, I am so sorry for you,” she said. “It is not your fault that you must bring me what you must bring, but I am not afraid any longer. I am only sorry for you. God bless you, you poor darlings.”

She raised her head and looked at them. Though it was so dark, she could now see their faces, though all was dim and wavering, like the light of pale flames shaken by a draught. But the faces were not miserable or fierce – they smiled at her with shy little baby smiles. And as she looked they grew faint, fading slowly away like wreaths of vapour in frosty air.

•  •  •

Madge did not at once move when they had vanished, for instead of fear there was wrapped round her a wonderful sense of peace, so happy and serene that she would not willingly stir, and so perhaps disturb it. But before long she got up, and feeling her way, but without any sense of nightmare pressing her on, or frenzy of fear to spur her, she went out of the long gallery, to find Blanche just coming upstairs whistling and swinging her skates.

“How’s the leg, dear,” she asked. “You’re not limping any more.”

Till that moment Madge had not thought of it.

“I think it must be all right,” she said; “I had forgotten it, anyhow. Blanche, dear, you won’t be frightened for me, will you, but – but I have seen the twins.”

For a moment Blanche’s face whitened with terror.

“What?” she said in a whisper.

“Yes, I saw them just now. But they were kind, they smiled at me, and I was so sorry for them. And somehow I am sure I have nothing to fear.”

•  •  •

It seems that Madge was right, for nothing has come to touch her. Something, her attitude to them, we must suppose, her pity, her sympathy, touched and dissolved and annihilated the curse.

Indeed, I was at Church-Peveril only last week, arriving there after dark. Just as I passed the gallery door, Blanche came out.

“Ah, there you are,” she said: “I’ve just been seeing the twins. They looked too sweet and stopped nearly ten minutes. Let us have tea at once.”

“The Windsor Magazine”, Dec. 1911

The Room in the Tower
and Other Stories (1912)

THE ETERNITY OF FORMS

Jack London

1916

A strange life has come to an end in the death of Mr. Sedley Crayden, of Crayden Hill.

Mild, harmless, he was the victim of a strange delusion that kept him pinned, night and day, in his chair for the last two years of his life. The mysterious death, or, rather, disappearance, of his elder brother, James Crayden, seems to have preyed upon his mind, for it was shortly after that event that his delusion began to manifest itself.

Mr. Crayden never vouchsafed any explanation of his strange conduct. There was nothing the matter with him physically; and, mentally, the alienists found him normal in every way save for his one remarkable idiosyncrasy. His remaining in his chair was purely voluntary, an act of his own will. And now he is dead, and the mystery remains unsolved.

– Extract from the
Newton Courier-Times.

Briefly, I was Mr. Sedley Crayden’s confidential servant and valet for the last eight months of his life. During that time he wrote a great deal in a manuscript that he kept always beside him, except when he drowsed or slept, at which times he invariably locked it in a desk drawer close to his hand.

I was curious to read what the old gentleman wrote, but he was too cautious and cunning. I never got a peep at the manuscript. If he were engaged upon it when I attended on him, he covered the top sheet with a large blotter. It was I who found him dead in his chair, and it was then that I took the liberty of abstracting the manuscript. I was very curious to read it, and I have no excuses to offer.

After retaining it in my secret possession for several years, and after ascertaining that Mr. Crayden left no surviving relatives, I have decided to make the nature of the manuscript known. It is very long, and I have omitted nearly all of it, giving only the more lucid fragments. It bears all the earmarks of a disordered mind, and various experiences are repeated over and over, while much is so vague and incoherent as to defy comprehension. Nevertheless, from reading it myself, I venture to predict that if an excavation is made in the main basement, somewhere in the vicinity of the foundation of the great chimney, a collection of bones will be found which should very closely resemble those which James Crayden once clothed in mortal flesh.

– Statement of
Rudolph Heckler.

Here follows the excerpts from the manuscript, made and arranged by Rudolph Heckler:

I never killed my brother. Let this be my first word and my last. Why should I kill him? We lived together in unbroken harmony for twenty years. We were old men, and the fires and tempers of youth had long since burned out. We never disagreed even over the most trivial things. Never was there such amity as ours. We were scholars. We cared nothing for the outside world. Our companionship and our books were all-satisfying. Never were there such talks as we held. Many a night we have sat up till two and three in the morning, conversing, weighing opinions and judgments, referring to authorities – in short, we lived at high and friendly intellectual altitudes.

•

He disappeared. I suffered a great shock. Why should he have disappeared? Where could he have gone? It was very strange. I was stunned. They say I was very sick for weeks. It was brain fever. This was caused by his inexplicable disappearance. It was at the beginning of the experience I hope here to relate, that he disappeared.

How I have endeavoured to find him. I am not an excessively rich man, yet have I offered continually increasing rewards. I have advertised in all the papers, and sought the aid of all the detective bureaus. At the present moment, the rewards I have out aggregate over fifty thousand dollars.

•

They say he was murdered. They also say murder will out. Then I say, why does not his murder come out? Who did it? Where is he? Where is Jim? My Jim?

•

We were so happy together. He had a remarkable mind, a most remarkable mind, so firmly founded, so widely informed, so rigidly logical, that it was not at all strange that we agreed in all things. Dissension was unknown between us. Jim was the most truthful man I have ever met. In this, too, we were similar, as we were similar in our intellectual honesty. We never sacrificed truth to make a point. We had no points to make, we so thoroughly agreed. It is absurd to think that we could disagree on anything under the sun.

•

I wish he would come back. Why did he go? Who can ever explain it? I am lonely now, and depressed with grave forebodings – frightened by terrors that are of the mind and that put at naught all that my mind has ever conceived. Form is mutable. This is the last word of positive science. The dead do not come back. This is incontrovertible. The dead are dead, and that is the end of it, and of them. And yet I have had experiences here – here, in this very room, at this very desk, that – But wait. Let me put it down in black and white, in words simple and unmistakable. Let me ask some questions. Who mislays my pen? That is what I desire to know. Who uses up my ink so rapidly? Not I. And yet the ink goes.

The answer to these questions would settle all the enigmas of the universe. I know the answer. I am not a fool. And someday, if I am plagued too desperately, I shall give the answer myself. I shall give the name of him who mislays my pen and uses up my ink. It is so silly to think that I could use such a quantity of ink. The servant lies. I know.

•

I have got me a fountain pen. I have always disliked the device, but my old stub had to go. I burned it in the fireplace. The ink I keep under lock and key. I shall see if I cannot put a stop to these lies that are being written about me. And I have other plans. It is not true that I have recanted. I still believe that I live in a mechanical universe. It has not been proved otherwise to me, for all that I have peered over his shoulder and read his malicious statement to the contrary. He gives me credit for no less than average stupidity. He thinks I think he is real. How silly. I know he is a brain-figment, nothing more.

There are such things as hallucinations. Even as I looked over his shoulder and read, I knew that this was such a thing. If I were only well it would be interesting. All my life I have wanted to experience such phenomena. And now it has come to me. I shall make the most of it. What is imagination? It can make something where there is nothing. How can anything be something where there is nothing? How can anything be something and nothing at the same time? I leave it for the metaphysicians to ponder. I know better. No scholastics for me. This is a real world, and everything in it is real. What is not real, is not. Therefore he is not. Yet he tries to fool me into believing that he is…. when all the time I know he has no existence outside of my own brain cells.

•

I saw him today, seated at the desk, writing. It gave me quite a shock, because I had thought he was quite dispelled. Nevertheless, on looking steadily, I found that he was not there – the old familiar trick of the brain. I have dwelt too long on what has happened. I am becoming morbid, and my old indigestion is hinting and muttering. I shall take exercise. Each day I shall walk for two hours.

•

It is impossible. I cannot exercise. Each time I return from my walk, he is sitting in my chair at the desk. It grows more difficult to drive him away. It is my chair. Upon this I insist. It was his, but he is dead and it is no longer his. How one can be befooled by the phantoms of his own imagining! There is nothing real in this apparition. I know it. I am firmly grounded with my fifty years of study. The dead are dead.

•

And yet, explain one thing. Today, before going for my walk, I carefully put the fountain pen in my pocket before leaving the room. I remember it distinctly. I looked at the clock at the time. It was twenty minutes past ten. Yet on my return there was the pen lying on the desk. Someone had been using it. There was very little ink left. I wish he would not write so much. It is disconcerting.

•

There was one thing upon which Jim and I were not quite agreed. He believed in the eternity of the forms of things. Therefore, entered in immediately the consequent belief in immortality, and all the other notions of the metaphysical philosophers. I had little patience with him in this. Painstakingly I have traced to him the evolution of his belief in the eternity of forms, showing him how it has arisen out of his early infatuation with logic and mathematics. Of course, from that warped, squinting, abstract view-point, it is very easy to believe in the eternity of forms.

I laughed at the unseen world. Only the real was real, I contended, and what one did not perceive, was not, could not be. I believed in a mechanical universe. Chemistry and physics explained everything. “Can no being be?” he demanded in reply. I said that his question was but the major promise of a fallacious Christian Science syllogism. Oh, believe me, I know my logic, too. But he was very stubborn. I never had any patience with philosophic idealists.

•

Once, I made to him my confession of faith. It was simple, brief, unanswerable. Even as I write it now I know that it is unanswerable. Here it is. I told him: “I assert, with Hobbes, that it is impossible to separate thought from matter that thinks. I assert, with Bacon, that all human understanding arises from the world of sensations. I assert, with Locke, that all human ideas are due to the functions of the senses. I assert, with Kant, the mechanical origin of the universe, and that creation is a natural and historical process. I assert, with Laplace, that there is no need of the hypothesis of a creator. And, finally, I assert, because of all the foregoing, that form is ephemeral. Form passes. Therefore we pass.”

I repeat, it was unanswerable. Yet did he answer with Paley’s notorious fallacy of the watch. Also, he talked about radium, and all but asserted that the very existence of matter had been exploded by these later-day laboratory researches. It was childish. I had not dreamed he could be so immature.

How could one argue with such a man? I then asserted the reasonableness of all that is. To this he agreed, reserving, however, one exception. He looked at me, as he said it, in a way I could not mistake. The inference was obvious. That he should be guilty of so cheap a quip in the midst of a serious discussion, astounded me.

•

The eternity of forms. It is ridiculous. Yet is there a strange magic in the words. If it be true, then has he not ceased to exist. Then does he exist. This is impossible.

•

I have ceased exercising. As long as I remain in the room, the hallucination does not bother me. But when I return to the room after an absence, he is always there, sitting at the desk, writing. Yet I dare not confide in a physician. I must fight this out by myself.

•

He grows more importunate. Today, consulting a book on the shelf, I turned and found him again in the chair. This is the first time he has dared do this in my presence. Nevertheless, by looking at him steadily and sternly for several minutes, I compelled him to vanish. This proves my contention. He does not exist. If he were an eternal form I could not make him vanish by a mere effort of my will.

•

This is getting damnable. Today I gazed at him for an entire hour before I could make him leave. Yet it is so simple. What I see is a memory picture. For twenty years I was accustomed to seeing him there at the desk. The present phenomenon is merely a recrudescence of that memory picture – a picture which was impressed countless times on my consciousness.

•

I gave up today. He exhausted me, and still he would not go. I sat and watched him hour after hour. He takes no notice of me, but continually writes. I know what he writes, for I read it over his shoulder. It is not true. He is taking an unfair advantage.

•

Query: He is a product of my consciousness; is it possible, then, that entities may be created by consciousness?

•

We did not quarrel. To this day I do not know how it happened. Let me tell you. Then you will see. We sat up late that never-to-be-forgotten last night of his existence. It was the old, old discussion – the eternity of forms. How many hours and how many nights we had consumed over it!

On this night he had been particularly irritating, and all my nerves were screaming. He had been maintaining that the human soul was itself a form, an eternal form, and that the light within his brain would go on forever and always. I took up the poker.

“Suppose,” I said, “I should strike you dead with this?”

“I would go on,” he answered.

“As a conscious entity?” I demanded.

“Yes, as a conscious entity,” was his reply. “I should go on, from plane to plane of higher existence, remembering my earth-life, you, this very argument – ay, and continuing the argument with you.”

It was only argument. [*] I swear it was only argument. I never lifted a hand. How could I? He was my brother, my elder brother, Jim.

[*]  Forcible – ha!  ha! – comment of Rudolph Heckler on margin.

I cannot remember. I was very exasperated. He had always been so obstinate in this metaphysical belief of his. The next I knew, he was lying on the hearth. Blood was running. It was terrible. He did not speak. He did not move. He must have fallen in a fit and struck his head. I noticed there was blood on the poker. In falling he must have struck upon it with his head. And yet I fail to see how this can be, for I held it in my hand all the time. I was still holding it in my hand as I looked at it.

•

It is an hallucination. That is a conclusion of common sense. I have watched the growth of it. At first it was only in the dimmest light that I could see him sitting in the chair. But as the time passed, and the hallucination, by repetition, strengthened, he was able to appear in the chair under the strongest lights. That is the explanation. It is quite satisfactory.

•

I shall never forget the first time I saw it. I had dined alone downstairs. I never drink wine, so that what happened was eminently normal. It was in the summer twilight that I returned to the study. I glanced at the desk. There he was, sitting. So natural was it, that before I knew I cried out “Jim!” Then I remembered all that had happened. Of course it was an hallucination. I knew that. I took the poker and went over to it. He did not move nor vanish. The poker cleaved through the non-existent substance of the thing and struck the back of the chair. Fabric of fancy, that is all it was. The mark is there on the chair now where the poker struck. I pause from my writing and turn and look at it – press the tips of my fingers into the indentation.

•

He did continue the argument. I stole up today and looked over his shoulder. He was writing the history of our discussion. It was the same old nonsense about the eternity of forms. But as I continued to read, he wrote down the practical test I had made with the poker. Now this is unfair and untrue. I made no test. In falling he struck his head on the poker.

•

Someday, somebody will find and read what he writes. This will be terrible. I am suspicious of the servant, who is always peeping and peering, trying to see what I write. I must do something. Every servant I have had is curious about what I write.

•

Fabric of fancy. That is all it is. There is no Jim who sits in the chair. I know that. Last night, when the house was asleep, I went down into the cellar and looked carefully at the soil around the chimney. It was untampered with. The dead do not rise up.

•

Yesterday morning, when I entered the study, there he was in the chair. When I had dispelled him, I sat in the chair myself all day. I had my meals brought to me. And thus I escaped the sight of him for many hours, for he appears only in the chair. I was weary, but I sat late, until eleven o’clock. Yet, when I stood up to go to bed, I looked around, and there he was. He had slipped into the chair on the instant. Being only fabric of fancy, all day he had resided in my brain. The moment it was unoccupied, he took up his residence in the chair. Are these his boasted higher planes of existence – his brother’s brain and a chair? After all, was he not right? Has his eternal form become so attenuated as to be an hallucination? Are hallucinations real entities? Why not? There is food for thought here. Someday I shall come to a conclusion upon it.

•

He was very much disturbed today. He could not write, for I had made the servant carry the pen out of the room in his pocket But neither could I write.

•

The servant never sees him. This is strange. Have I developed a keener sight for the unseen? Or rather does it not prove the phantom to be what it is – a product of my own morbid consciousness?

•

He has stolen my pen again. Hallucinations cannot steal pens. This is unanswerable. And yet I cannot keep the pen always out of the room. I want to write myself.

•

I have had three different servants since my trouble came upon me, and not one has seen him. Is the verdict of their senses right? And is that of mine wrong? Nevertheless, the ink goes too rapidly. I fill my pen more often than is necessary. And furthermore, only today I found my pen out of order. I did not break it.

•

I have spoken to him many times, but he never answers. I sat and watched him all morning. Frequently he looked at me, and it was patent that he knew me.

•

By striking the side of my head violently with the heel of my hand, I can shake the vision of him out of my eyes. Then I can get into the chair; but I have learned that I must move very quickly in order to accomplish this. Often he fools me and is back again before I can sit down.

•

It is getting unbearable. He is a jack-in-the-box the way he pops into the chair. He does not assume form slowly. He pops. That is the only way to describe it. I cannot stand looking at him much more. That way lies madness, for it compels me almost to believe in the reality of what I know is not. Besides, hallucinations do not pop.

•

Thank God he only manifests himself in the chair. As long as I occupy the chair I am quit of him.

•

My device for dislodging him from the chair by striking my head, is failing. I have to hit much more violently, and I do not succeed perhaps more than once in a dozen trials. My head is quite sore where I have so repeatedly struck it. I must use the other hand.

•

My brother was right. There is an unseen world. Do I not see it? Am I not cursed with the seeing of it all the time? Call it a thought, an idea, anything you will, still it is there. It is unescapable. Thoughts are entities. We create with every act of thinking. I have created this phantom that sits in my chair and uses my ink. Because I have created him is no reason that he is any the less real. He is an idea; he is an entity: ergo, ideas are entities, and an entity is a reality.

•

Query: If a man, with the whole historical process behind him, can create an entity, a real thing, then is not the hypothesis of a Creator made substantial? If the stuff of life can create, then it is fair to assume that there can be a He who created the stuff of life. It is merely a difference of degree. I have not yet made a mountain nor a solar system, but I have made a something that sits in my chair. This being so, may I not someday be able to make a mountain or a solar system?

•

All his days, down to today, man has lived in a maze. He has never seen the light. I am convinced that I am beginning to see the light – not as my brother saw it, by stumbling upon it accidentally, but deliberately and rationally. My brother is dead. He has ceased. There is no doubt about it, for I have made another journey down into the cellar to see. The ground was untouched. I broke it myself to make sure, and I saw what made me sure. My brother has ceased, yet have I recreated him. This is not my old brother, yet it is something as nearly resembling him as I could fashion it. I am unlike other men. I am a god. I have created.

•

Whenever I leave the room to go to bed, I look back, and there is my brother sitting in the chair. And then I cannot sleep because of thinking of him sitting through all the long night-hours. And in the morning, when I open the study door, there he is, and I know he has sat there the night long.

•

I am becoming desperate from lack of sleep. I wish I could confide in a physician.

•

Blessed sleep! I have won to it at last. Let me tell you. Last night I was so worn that I found myself dozing in my chair. I rang for the servant and ordered him to bring blankets. I slept. All night was he banished from my thoughts as he was banished from my chair. I shall remain in it all day. It is a wonderful relief.

•

It is uncomfortable to sleep in a chair. But it is more uncomfortable to lie in bed, hour after hour, and not sleep, and to know that he is sitting there in the cold darkness.

•

It is no use. I shall never be able to sleep in a bed again. I have tried it now, numerous times, and every such night is a horror. If I could but only persuade him to go to bed! But no. He sits there, and sits there – I know he does – while I stare and stare up into the blackness and think and think, continually think, of him sitting there. I wish I had never heard of the eternity of forms.

•

The servants think I am crazy. That is but to be expected, and it is why I have never called in a physician.

•

I am resolved. Henceforth this hallucination ceases. From now on I shall remain in the chair. I shall never leave it. I shall remain in it night and day and always.

•

I have succeeded. For two weeks I have not seen him. Nor shall I ever see him again. I have at last attained the equanimity of mind necessary for philosophic thought. I wrote a complete chapter today.

•

It is very wearisome, sitting in a chair. The weeks pass, the months come and go, the seasons change, the servants replace each other, while I remain. I only remain. It is a strange life I lead, but at least I am at peace.

•

He comes no more. There is no eternity of forms. I have proved it. For nearly two years now, I have remained in this chair, and I have not seen him once. True, I was severely tried for a time. But it is clear that what I thought I saw was merely hallucination. He never was. Yet I do not leave the chair. I am afraid to leave the chair.

“The Red Book Magazine”, Mar. 1911

The Turtles of Tasman (1916)

THE JADE BRACELET

Mary E. Wilkins-Freeman

1918

Lawrence Evarts was on his way home from his law-office in Somerset when he caught sight of the inexplicable circle in the snow. The snow was hard and smooth, and the circle immediately arrested his attention. It was just outside the compact snow of the sidewalk, in what would have been the gutter had there been any gutters in Somerset.

Lawrence carried a neatly-folded umbrella. He was exceedingly punctilious in all his personal habits. It had threatened snow earlier in the day, although now the sky was brilliantly clear, and the stars were shining out, one by one, in the ineffable rose, violet and yellow tints of the horizon.

Lawrence poked with the steel point of his umbrella at the circle, and struck something hard. He endeavored to lift whatever it was with the umbrella-point, but was unable to do so. Then, frowning a little, he removed his English glove, plunged his hand into the snow and drew it up again with the jade bracelet. It was beautiful, cabbage-green jade, cut out of the solid stone and very large – a man’s bracelet, and rather large for his own hand. Evarts had a small hand.

He stood staring at it. He immediately remembered having seen somewhere, in a Chinese laundry, a Chinaman wearing a bracelet of a similar design. But there was no Chinese laundry in Somerset; he could not remember that there was one in Lloyds, which was the only other village for miles large enough to support a laundry.

Once a Chinaman had penetrated to Somerset, but the hoodlum element, which was large and flourishing, had routed him out. He had disappeared, presumably for more peaceable fields of cleanliness, although there had been dark rumors which had died away, both for lack of substantiation, and of interest in the uncanny heathen – as most of the citizens adjudged him.

Lawrence stood gazing at the thing with wonder; then obeying some unaccountable impulse, he slipped it over his right hand, the one from which he had removed the glove. Immediately the horror was upon him. He realized, although fighting hard against the realization, that there was another hand beside his own in the jade bracelet. He gave his hand a sharp jerk to rid himself of the sensation, but it remained. He could feel the other hand and wrist, although he could see absolutely nothing. Only his sense of touch was reached, and one other, his sense of smell. Overpowering the clear, frosty atmosphere came the strange pungency of opium and sandalwood. But worse than the uncanny assailing of the senses – far worse – was something else. Into his clear Western mind, trained from infancy to logical inferences, Christian belief, and right estimates of things, stole something foreign and antagonistic. Strange memories, strange outlooks, seemed misting over his own familiar ones, as smoke mists a window.

Evarts snatched the bracelet from his wrist and gave it a fling back into the snow. Then something worse happened. He still had the feel of the thing on his wrist, but the pull of the other hand and wrist became stronger, he fairly choked with the opium smoke, and the strange cloud dimmed his own personality with greater force. He drew on his glove, but unmistakably it would not go on over the invisible bracelet.

“What the devil!” Evarts said quite aloud. He could see in the snow the clearly-cut circle where the bracelet had fallen. He withdrew his glove, picked up the thing again, put it on and walked along, shaking the snow from his hand. It was unmistakably better on than off. The strange sensations were not so pronounced. Still, it was bad enough, in all conscience.

Presently, as he walked along, Evarts met a friend, who stared at him after he had said good-evening.

“What is the matter? Are you ill?” he asked, turning back.

“No,” replied Evarts shortly.

“You look like the deuce,” his friend remarked wonderingly. Evarts was conscious that the man stood still a moment staring at him, but he did not turn. He walked on, feeling as if he were in handcuffs with the devil. It became more and more horrible.

When he reached his boarding-house he went straight to his room, and did not go down to dinner. No one came to ask why he did not. He had not any intimates in the house, and, indeed, was one who was apt to keep himself to himself, regulate his own actions and resent questions concerning them.

He turned on his electric light and tried to write a letter. He was able to do that, as far as the mere mechanical action was concerned. The other hand moved in accordance with his. But what he wrote! Evarts stared incredulously at the end of the first page. What he had written was in a language unfamiliar to him, both in words and characters, and yet the meaning was horribly clear. He could not conceive of the possibility of his writing things of such hideous significance, and, moreover, of a significance hitherto unknown to him.

He tore up the sheet and threw it into the waste-paper basket; then he lit his pipe and tried to smoke, but the scent of opium came in his nostrils instead of tobacco. He flung his pipe aside and took up the evening paper, but to his horror he read in a twofold fashion, as one may see double. There were horrors enough, as usual, but there were horrors besides, which dimmed them.

He tossed the paper to the floor, and sat for a few moments looking about him. He had rather luxurious apartments: a large sitting-room, bedroom and bath; and he had gathered together some choice things in the way of furniture and bric-a-brac. He had rather a leaning to Oriental treasures, and there were some good things in the way of Persian rugs and hangings. Just before his chair was a fine prayer-rug, with its graceful triangle which should point toward the Holy City.

Suddenly he seemed to see, kneeling there, not a Moslem but a small figure in a richly-wrought robe, with a long slimy braid, and before it sat a squat, grinning bronze god. That was too much.

“Good God!” Evarts muttered to himself, and sprang up. He got his coat and hat, put them on hurriedly and rushed out of the room and the house, all the time with that never-ceasing sensation of the other hand and wrist in the jade bracelet. He hurried down the street until he reached the office of a physician, a friend of his, perhaps the closest he had in Somerset. There was a light in the office, and Evarts entered without ceremony.

Dr. Van Brunt was alone. He had just finished his dinner and was having his usual smoke, leaning back luxuriously in a very old Morris chair, well-worn to all the needs of his figure. He was a short man, heavily blond-bearded.

“Thank God, I smell tobacco instead of that cursed other thing!” was Evarts’ first salutation. Van Brunt looked at him, then he jumped up with heavy alacrity. “For Heaven’s sake, what’s to pay, old man?” he said.

“The devil, I rather guess,” answered Evarts, settling himself in a forlorn hunch on the nearest chair.

Dr. Van Brunt remained standing, looking at him with consternation.

“You look like the devil,” he remarked finally.

“I feel like him, I reckon,” responded Evarts gloomily. Now that he was there, he shrank from confidence. He felt a decided tug at his wrist, and hardly seemed to realize himself at all, because of the cloud of another personality before his mental vision.

Dr. Van Brunt stood before him, scowling with perplexity, his fuming pipe in hand. Then he said suddenly: “What in thunder is that thing you’ve got on your wrist?”

“Some token from hell, I begin to think,” answered Evarts.

“Where did you get it?”

“I found it in the snow near the corner of State Street, and I was fool enough to put the infernal thing on.”

“Why on earth don’t you take it off, if it bothers you?”

“I have tried it, and the second state is worse than the first. Look here—”

“What is it?”

“You know I never drink, except an occasional glass of wine at a dinner, and an occasional pint of beer, mostly to keep you company.”

“Of course I do. What—?”

“You know I am not in any sense a drinking man.”

“Of course I know it. Why?”

“Why?” Evarts faced him fiercely. “Why, then, do I see things that nobody, except men who have sold their souls and wits for drink, see?”

“You don’t.”

“Yes, I do. I must be mad. For God’s sake, Van Brunt, tell me if I am mad, and do something for me if you can!”

Van Brunt sat down again in his chair and took a whiff of his pipe, but he did not remove his great blue eyes from Evarts.

“Mad, nothing!” he said. “Don’t you suppose I know a maniac when I see him? What on earth are you ranting about, anyway? And what is it about that green thing on your arm, and why don’t you take it off?”

“I tell you I am in the innermost circles of hell when it is off!” cried Evarts.

“What made you put the thing on, anyway?”

“I don’t know. My evil angel, I reckon.”

Dr. Van Brunt leaned forward and looked closely at the jade bracelet. “It is a fine specimen,” he said. “I have never seen anything like it, except—” he hesitated a moment, and was evidently endeavoring to recall something. “I know where I saw one like it,” he said suddenly. “That poor devil of a Chinaman who started a laundry here five years ago, and was routed out of town, had its facsimile. I remember noticing it one day, just before he was run out. Don’t you remember?”

“I don’t know what I remember,” replied Evarts. He jerked the bracelet angrily as he spoke, then gave a great start of horror, for the invisible thing which he felt had seemed to come closer at the jerk.

“Why on earth don’t you take that thing off?” asked Van Brunt again. He continued to smoke and to watch his friend closely.

“Didn’t I tell you it was worse off than on? Then he gets so close, ugh!”

“He? Who?”

“Don’t ask me. How do I know? The devil, I think, or one of his friends.”

“Rot!”

“It’s so.”

“Sit down, Evarts, and have a pipe, and put that nonsense out of your head.”

“Put it out of my head?” repeated Evarts bitterly. Suddenly a thought struck him. “See here; you don’t believe that I am talking rationally,” he said.

“I think something has happened to upset you,” replied Van Brunt guardedly.

“I see. Well, try the thing yourself.”

Evarts as he spoke withdrew the bracelet with a jerk. He paled perceptibly as he did so, and set his mouth hard, as if with pain or disgust. He extended the shining green circle toward Van Brunt, who took it, laughing, although there was an anxious gleam in his eyes.

Van Brunt, oddly enough, since he was a large man, had small hands. The bracelet slipped on his wrist as easily as it had done on Evarts’. He sat quite still for a second. He gave one more puff at his pipe, then he laid it on the table. His great blond face changed. He looked at Evarts.

“What is this infernal thing, anyhow?” he said.

“Don’t ask me. I am as wise as yourself. But now you know what torment I am in.” Evarts spoke with a feeble triumph.

“You don’t mean you feel it without the bracelet?”

“Try it.”

Van Brunt took off the bracelet and laid it on the table beside his pipe. His face contracted. “My God!” he ejaculated.

“Now you know.”

“Good Lord! I am remembering devilish things which never happened. I am going backward like a crab.”

Evarts nodded.

“You mean you feel the same thing?”

“Don’t I?”

“As if some infernal thing was handcuffed to you?”

Evarts nodded.

“Well,” said Van Brunt slowly. “I did not think I believed in much of anything, but now I believe in the devil.” He took up the bracelet. Evarts made a sudden gesture of remonstrance. “For the love of God! let me have it on again,” he said hoarsely. “I don’t think I can stand this much longer.”

Van Brunt gave the bracelet to Evarts, who slipped it over his hand; immediately an expression of something like relief came over his face.

“You don’t feel quite so – with it on?” asked Van Brunt.

“No, but it is bad enough anyway. And you?”

Van Brunt grimaced. “As for me, I am handcuffed to a fiend,” he said.

Evarts sat down, with the bracelet still on his wrist. “Van Brunt, what does it mean?” he asked helplessly.

“Ask me what is on the other side of the moon.”

“You honestly don’t know?”

“I can’t diagnose the case, or cases, unless you are crazy and the microbe has hit me, too, for I am as crazy as you are.”

Evarts looked down at the shining green circle on his wrist.

“I wish I’d let the thing alone,” said he.

“So do I.”

Suddenly Van Brunt arose. He was a man of a less sensitive nervous organization than the other, and his mouth was set hard, and even his hands clenched, as for a fight. “See here, old fellow,” he said, “we’ve had enough of this. It is time to put a stop to it. Have you had any dinner?”

“Do you think—?” began Evarts.

“Well, you’ve got to eat dinner, whether you want to or not. This is nonsense!”

Van Brunt struck the call-bell on his table violently and his man entered. A look of surprise overspread his face as he looked at his master and Evarts, but he said nothing.

“Tell Hannah, if there was any soup left over from dinner to warm it immediately, and send up whatever else was left. Mr. Evarts has not dined. Tell her to be as quick as possible.”

“Yes, sir,” replied the man.

“And, Thomas.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Get a bottle of that old port, and open it.”

“Yes, sir.”

After the man had gone Evarts and Van Brunt sat in a moody silence. Both were pale, and both had expressions of suffering and disgust, as if from the contact of some loathsome thing, but Van Brunt still kept his mouth set hard. He even resumed his pipe.

It was not long before dinner was announced and he sprang to his feet, and laid his hand on Evarts’ shoulder. “Now, come, old man,” he said. “When you’ve got some good roast beef and old port in your stomach the mists will leave your brain.”

“The mists are on your brain, and you have the good roast beef in your stomach,” returned Evarts bitterly, but he arose.

“But I haven’t the old port,” said Van Brunt with an attempt at jocularity, as the two men entered the dining-room. Van Brunt kept bachelor’s hall, and a neat maid was in attendance. Her master saw her quick glance of amazement at their altered faces.

“You may go, Katie,” said Van Brunt. “Mr. Evarts and I will wait upon ourselves.”

After the maid had left Evarts leaned his elbows on the table and bent his head forward with a despairing gesture. “I can’t eat,” he almost moaned.

“You can and will!” replied Van Brunt, and ladled out the smoking soup. Evarts did eat mechanically, and both men drank of the old port. They sat side by side at the table, for the greater convenience of serving.

After Evarts had finished his dinner, and the two men had despatched the wine, they looked at each other. Evarts gave a glance of horror at the green thing on his wrist. “Well?” he said, with a kind of interrogative bitterness.

Van Brunt tried to laugh. “Take that confounded thing off and put it out of your mind,” he said.

“You want to wear it yourself,” Evarts returned almost savagely.

Van Brunt laughed. “No, I don’t. I can stand it,” he said, “but I’ll be hanged if I believe I could suffer much more in hell. The devilish thing is converting me, paradoxically.”

“What does it mean?” asked Evarts again.

“Don’t know. If it keeps up much longer I’ll try a narcotic for both of us.”

“Not—” Evarts shuddered.

“No, not opium, if I know myself.”

As he spoke, Van Brunt had his eyes fixed upon a spot directly in front of the fireplace, and Evarts knew that he saw what he himself saw – the horrible, prostrate figure covered with embroideries, and the grinning idol.

“You see?” he gasped.

“Yes, I do see, confound it! I’ll do something before long.”

“You feel as if—”

“Yes.”

– “there is something between us?”

“Yes. Don’t talk about it. I’ll do something soon, if it keeps up.”

Evarts made a quick gesture. He grasped the table knife beside him.

“I’ll do something now!” he cried, and made a thrust.

Van Brunt’s face whitened. Almost simultaneously he grasped another knife and did the same thing. Then the two men drew long breaths and looked at each other.

“It’s gone,” said Evarts, and he almost sobbed.

Van Brunt was still pale, but he recovered his equilibrium more quickly.

“What was it?” gasped Evarts. “Oh! what was it? Am I going mad?”

“Going mad? No.”

“There’s a reason why I ask. It concerns someone very dear to me. I have not said much about Agnes Leeds to you; in fact, I have not said much to her; but sometimes I think that she – I have thought that I – when my practice was a little better. Good God! Van Brunt, I am not mad, am I? That would make marriage impossible for us.”

“You are no more mad than I am,” said Van Brunt. He gazed at his friend scrutinizingly. “What case have you on hand now?” he asked.

“The Day girl’s; the murder case, you know.”

Van Brunt nodded. “Just so. You have had that horrible murder thing on your mind, and – say, old fellow, your collar looks somewhat the worse for wear—”

“Yes, my laundress failed me this week, and I have been so horribly busy today that I have not had time to buy some fresh ones before the stores closed.”

“Just so. And you wished that there was a Chinese laundry here, I’ll be bound!”

“I don’t know but I did,” admitted Evarts, with a dawning expression of relief. Then his face fell again. “But what of the jade bracelet?” he said. He glanced at his wrist and gave a great start, “Good God! it’s gone,” he cried.

“Of course it is gone,” said Van Brunt coolly. “It never was there.”

“But you – saw it?”

“Thought I saw it. My dear fellow, the whole thing is a clear case of hypnotism; something for the Psychical Research. You were all overwrought with your work, nerves in a devil of a state, and you hypnotized yourself, and then – you hypnotized me.”

Evarts sat staring at Van Brunt, with the look of one who is trying to turn a corner of mentality. Then the door was flung open violently, and Van Brunt’s man rushed in, pale and breathless.

“Doctor!” he gasped.

“What is it?”

“Oh, Dr. Van Brunt, there’s a Chinaman dead right out in front of the office door, and he’s got two stabs in his side, and he’s got a green bracelet on his wrist!”

Dr. Van Brunt turned ashy white. “Nonsense!” he said.

“It’s so, doctor.”

“Well, I’ll come,” said Van Brunt in a voice which he kept steady. “You run and get the police, Thomas. Maybe he isn’t dead. I’ll come.”

“He’s stone dead!” said the man in a shocked voice as he hurried out.

“Oh, my God!” said Evarts. “If we – if I – killed him, what about Agnes?”

“I can tell quickly enough which of us killed him,” said Van Brunt rising. Both men hurried out of the room.

There was already a crowd around the ghastly thing, and police uniforms glittered among them. The fact that the dead Chinaman happened to be in front of his office had no significance for anybody present. There was no question of suspicion for either himself or Evarts. Some men held lanterns while Van Brunt examined the dead Chinaman. It was soon done, and the body was carried away in an undertaker’s wagon, with the crowd in tow.

Then Van Brunt and Evarts entered the office. Evarts looked at his friend, and he was as white as the dead man himself.

“Well?” he stammered.

Van Brunt laughed, and clasped him on the shoulder. “It’s all right, old man,” he said. “My knife did the deed.”

“But—” stammered Evarts, “I was on the heart side.”

“What if you were? Your knife went nowhere near the heart. Mine cut the heart clean. I lunged around to the front of the thing. Don’t you remember?”

“Are you sure?”

“I know it. You can rest easy now.”

“But – you?” said Evarts in a voice from which, for very shame, he tried to suppress the joy.

Van Brunt laughed again. “It was a poisonous thing,” he said. “Did you see his face?” he shuddered in spite of himself. “Men kill snakes of a right,” he added.

“But how do you explain—?”

“I don’t explain. All you have to consider is that you did not do it; and all I have to consider is that I have set my heel on something which would have bruised it.”

As he spoke he was preparing a powder, which he presently handed to Evarts. “Now, go home, old man,” he said. “Take a warm bath, and this, and go to bed and dream of Agnes Leeds.”

After Evarts was gone Van Brunt stood still for a moment. His face had suddenly turned ghastly, and all the assumed lightness had vanished. He struck the bell and told his man to bring up another bottle of the old port. When it came he poured out a glass for himself and gave one to the man. “You’ve got a turn, too, Thomas,” he said.

The man, who was shivering from head to foot, looked at his master.

“Did you see its face, sir?” he whispered.

“Better put it out of your mind.”

“He looked like a fiend. I doubt if I can ever stop seeing him,” said the man. Then he swallowed the wine and went out.

Van Brunt settled himself again in his old Morris chair, and lit his pipe. He gave a few whiffs, then stopped and gazed straight ahead of him with horror. The face of the dead Chinaman was vividly before his eyes again.

“Thank God, he does not know he did it!” he whispered, and a good smile came over his great blond face.

“The Forum”, Apr. 1918

THE VOICE IN THE NIGHT

W. J. Wintle

1921

John Barron was frankly puzzled. He could not make it out at all. He had lived in the place all his life – save for the few years spent at Rugby and Oxford – and nothing of the sort had happened to him before. His people had occupied the estate for generations past; and there was neither record nor tradition of anything of the kind. He did not like it at all. It seemed like an intrusion upon the respectability of his family. And John Barron had a very good opinion of his family.

Certainly he was entitled to have a good opinion of it. He came from a good stock: his ancestry was one to be proud of: his coat of arms had quarterings that few could display: and his immediate forbears had kept up the reputation of their ancestors. He himself could boast a career without reproach: the short time he had spent at the bar was marked by considerable success and still more promise – a promise cut short by the death of his father and his recall to Bannerton to take up the duties of squire, magistrate and county magnate.

In the eyes of his friends and of people generally, he was a man to be envied. He had an ample fortune, a delightful house and estate, hosts of friends, and the best of health. What could a man wish for more? The ladies of the neighbourhood said that he lacked only one thing, and that was a wife. But it may be that they were not entirely unprejudiced judges – the unmarried ones, at any rate. But up till the time of our story John Barron had shown no sign of marrying. He used to boast that he was neither married, nor engaged, nor courting, nor had he his eye on anyone.

And now this annoyance had come to trouble and puzzle him! What had he done to deserve it? True, he might take the comfort to his soul that it was no immediate concern of his. The affair had not happened to any member of his family or household. Why then should he not mind his own business? But he felt that it was his business. It had happened within the bounds of his manor and almost within sight of his windows. If anything tangible could be connected with it, he was the magistrate whose duty it would be to investigate the matter. But up till the present there was nothing tangible for him to deal with.

The whole business was a mystery: and John Barron disapproved of mysteries. Mysteries savoured of detectives and the police court. When unravelled they usually proved to be sordid and undesirable; and when not unravelled they brought with them a vague sense of discomfort and of danger. As a lawyer he held that mysteries had no right to exist. That they should continue to exist was a sort of reflection on the profession, as well as upon the public intelligence.

And yet here was the parish of Bannerton in the hands of a mystery of the first water. As a magistrate, John Barron had officially looked into the matter; and, as a lawyer, he had spent some hours in carefully considering it; but entirely without any practical result. The mystery was not merely unsolved: it had even thickened!

This was the history with which he was faced. A fortnight before, the occupants of a cottage on the outskirts of the village – a gardener and his wife – had left their little daughter of three years old in the house while they went on an errand. The child was soundly asleep in its cot; and they locked the door as they went out. They were absent about twenty minutes; and were nearing the house when they heard the screams of a child. The father rushed forward, unlocked the door, and the two parents entered together.

The child’s cot was in the living room into which the front door opened. As they went in, the screams ceased and a terrible gasping sound took their place. Then they saw that the cot was hidden by some dark body that seemed to be lying on it. This they hardly saw, though they were quite clear that it was there, for it seemed to melt away like a mist when they rushed into the room. Certainly it was nothing solid, for it completely disappeared without a sound. It could not have dashed out through the door, for the parents were hardly clear of the door when it vanished.

They had returned only just in time to save the life of the child. At first it was doubtful if they were in time, for the doctor held out little hope. But after a day or two, the child took a turn for the better, and was now out of danger. It had evidently been attacked by some kind of savage animal, which had torn at its throat and had only just failed to sever the arteries of the neck. In the opinion of the doctor and of John Barron himself, the wounds suggested that the assailant had been a very large dog. But it was strange that a dog on such size had not done far worse damage. One might have expected that it would have killed the child with a single bite.

But was it a dog? If so, how did it enter the house? The door in front was locked, as we have seen; that at the back was bolted; and all the windows were shut and fastened. There was no apparent way by which it could possibly have got into the house. And we have already seen that its way of going was equally mysterious.

The most careful examination of the room and of the premises generally failed to yield the smallest clue. Nothing had been disturbed or damaged, and there were no footprints. The only thing at all unusual was the presence of an earthy or mouldy odour which was noticed by the doctor when he entered the room and also by some other persons who were on the scene soon afterwards. John Barron had the same impression when he went to the cottage some hours later, but the odour was then so faint that he could not be at all sure about its existence.

By way of embroidery to the story came two or three items of local gossip of the usual sort. An old woman near by said that she was looking out of her window to see the state of the weather a little earlier in the evening, when she saw a huge black dog run across the lane and go in the direction of the cottage. According to her tale, the dog limped as if lame or very much tired.

Three people said they had been disturbed for two or three nights previous by the howling of a dog in the distance; and a farmer in the parish complained that his sheep had apparently been chased about the field during the night by some wandering dog. He loudly vowed vengeance on dogs in general; but, as none of the sheep had been worried, nobody took much notice. All these tales came to the ears of John Barron; but to a man accustomed to weigh evidence they were negligible.

But he attached much more importance to another piece of evidence, if such it might be called. As the injured child began to get better, and was able to talk, an attempt was made to find out if it could give any information about the attack. As it had been asleep when attacked, it did not see the arrival of its assailant; and the only thing it could tell was,

“Nasty, ugly lady bit me!”

This seemed absurd; but, when asked about the dog, it persisted in saying, “No dog. Nasty ugly lady!”

The parents were inclined to laugh at what they thought a mere childish fancy; but the trained lawyer was considerably impressed by it. To him there were three facts available. The wounds seemed to have been caused by a large dog: the child said she had been bitten by an ugly lady: and the parents had actually seen the form of the assailant. Unfortunately it had disappeared before they could make out any details; but they said it was about the size of a very large dog, and was dark in colour.

The local gossip was of small importance and was such as might be expected under the circumstances. But, for what it was worth, it all pointed to a dog or dog-like animal. But how could it have entered the closed house; how did it get away; and why did the child persist in her story of an ugly lady? The only theory that would at all fit the case was that supplied by the old Norse legends of the werewolf. But who believes such stories now?

So it was not to be wondered at that John Barron was puzzled. He was rather annoyed too. Bannerton had its average amount of crime; but it was in a small way and could generally be disposed of at the petty sessions. It was not often that a case had to be sent to the assizes, and the newspapers seldom got any sensational copy from the quiet little place. He reflected with some small satisfaction that it was lucky the child had not died; for in that case there must have been an inquest and the inevitable publicity. If his suspicions were well founded, the case would have yielded something far more sensational than generally falls to the lot of the local reporter.

But a day or two later he had more to ponder over. Things had developed – and in a way that he did not like. The farmer had again complained that his sheep had been chased about the field during the night; and this time more damage had been done. Two of the sheep had died; but the strange thing was that they had hardly been bitten at all. Their wounds were so slight that their death could only be attributed to fright and exhaustion. It was very curious that the dog – if dog it was – had not mauled them worse and made a meal of them. The suggestion that it was some very small dog was negatived by the fact that what wounds there were must have been made by a large animal. It really looked as if the animal had not sufficient strength to finish its evil work.

But John Barron had another item of evidence which he was keeping to himself for the present. During each of the two past nights he had woke up without any apparent reason soon after midnight. And each time he had heard the Cry in the Night. It was a voice borne on the night air which he never expected to hear in England; and least of all in Bannerton. The voice came from the moor that stood above the little hamlet; and it rose and fell on the silence like the cry of a spirit in distress. It began with a low wail of unspeakable sadness; then rose and fell in lamentable ululations; and then died away into sobs and silence.

The voice came at intervals for more than an hour: and the second night it was stronger and seemed nearer than the first. John Barron had no difficulty in recognising that long-drawn cry. He had heard it before when travelling in the wilder parts of Russia. It was the howling of a wolf!

But there are no wolves in England. True, it might have been an escaped animal from some travelling menagerie; but such an animal would have made worse havoc of the sheep. And if this was the assailant of the little child, how did it get in; how did it get away; and why did the child still persist in saying that it was not a dog but a lady who bit her?

The next few days saw the plot thicken. Other people heard the voice in the night, and put it down to a stray dog out on the moor. Another farmer’s sheep were worried, and this time one of them was partly eaten. So a chase was arranged, and all the local farmers and many other people banded together to hunt the sheep-killer. For two days the moor was scoured, and the adjacent woods thoroughly beaten, but without coming across any signs of the miscreant.

But John Barron heard a story from one of the farmers that set him thinking. He noticed that this man seemed to avoid a little thicket beside the moor, suggesting that there was a better path at some distance from it; and after some pressing he explained the real reason for this. But he was careful to add that of course he was not himself superstitious, but his wife had queer notions and had begged him to avoid the place.

It seemed that not long before, some wandering gipsies who from time to time camped on the moor, had secretly buried an old woman in the thicket and had never returned to the moor since. Of course there were the inevitable additions to a tale of this sort. The old lady was alleged to have been the queen of the gipsy tribe; and she was also said to have been a witch of the most malignant kind; and these were supposed to have been the reasons for her secret burial in this lonely spot. It did not seem to occur to the farmer that the gipsies thus saved the expense of a regular funeral. Very few people knew the story, and they thought it well to hold their peace. It was not worth while to make enemies of the gipsies, who could so easily have their revenge by robbing hen-roosts or even by driving cattle; to say nothing of the more mysterious doings with which they were credited.

John Barron began to put things together. The whole business had a distinct resemblance to the tales of the werewolf in the Scandinavian literature of the Middle Ages. Here we had a woman of suspicious reputation buried in a lonely place without Christian rites; and soon afterwards a mysterious wolf roams the district in search of blood – just like the werewolf. But who believes such stories now, except a few ghost-ridden cranks with shattered nerves and unbalanced minds? The whole thing is absurd.

Still, the mystery had to be cleared up; for John Barron had not the slightest intention of letting it simply slide into the refuse heap of unsolved problems. He kept his own counsel; but he meant to get to the bottom of it. Perhaps if he had realised the horror that lay at the bottom of it, he would have let it alone.

In the meantime the farmers had taken their own steps to deal with the sheep-worrying nuisance. Tempting morsels, judiciously seasoned with poison, were laid about; but with the sole result of causing the untimely death of a valued sheepdog. Night after night the younger men, armed with guns, sat up and watched; but without success. Nothing happened, the sheep were undisturbed, and it really seemed as if the invader had left the neighbourhood. But John Barron knew that once a dog has taken to worrying sheep, it can never be cured. If the mysterious visitor was a dog, he would most certainly return if still alive and able to travel: if it was not a dog – well, anything might happen. So he continued to watch even after the general hunt for the dog had ceased.

Soon he had his reward. One very dark and stormy night, he again heard the distant voice in the night. It came very faintly rising and falling on the air, for the breeze was strong and the sound had to travel against the wind. Then he left the house, carrying his gun, and took up his post on rising ground that commanded the road that led from the moor.

Presently the cry came nearer, and then nearer still, till it was evident that the wolf had left the moor and was approaching the farms. Several dogs barked; but they were not the barks of challenge and defiance, but rather the timid yelps of fear. Then the howling came from a turn in the road so close at hand that John Barron, who was by no means a timid or nervous man, could hardly resist a shudder.

He silently cocked his gun, crept softly from behind the hedge into the road, and waited. Then a small, shrivelled old woman came into sight, walking with the aid of a stick. She hobbled along with surprising briskness for so old a woman until a turn in the road brought her suddenly face to face with him. And then something happened.

He was not a man addicted to fancies; nor was he at all lacking in powers of description as a rule; but he could never state quite clearly what it was that really happened. Probably it was because he did not quite know. He could only speak of an impression rather than of certain experience. According to him, the old woman gave him one glance of unspeakable malignancy; and then he seemed to become dazed or semi-conscious for a moment. It could have been only a matter of a second or two: but during that short space of time the old woman vanished. John Barron pulled himself together just in time to see a large wolf disappear round the turn of the road.

Naturally enough, he was somewhat confused by his startling experience. But there was no doubt about the presence of the wolf. He only just saw it; but he saw it quite clearly for about a second of time. Whether the wolf accompanied the old woman, or the old woman turned into a wolf, he neither saw nor could know. But each supposition was open to many obvious objections.

John Barron spent some time next day in thinking the thing out; and then it suddenly occurred to him to visit the thicket by the moorside and see the grave of the gipsy. He did not expect that there would be anything to see; but still it might be worth while to take a look at the place.

So he strolled in that direction early in the afternoon.

The thicket occupied a kind of little dell lying under the edge of the moor and was densely filled with small trees and undergrowth. But a scarcely visible path led into it; and, pushing his way through, he found that there was a small open space in the middle. Evidently this was the site of the gipsy grave.

And there he found it: but he found more than he expected. Not only was the grave there, but it lay open! The loose earth was heaped up on either side, and had the appearance of having been scraped out by some animal. And, sure enough, the footprints of a very large dog or wolf were to be seen in several places.

John Barron was simply horrified to find that the grave had been thus desecrated – and apparently in a manner that suggested an even worse horror. But, after a moment of hesitation, he stepped to the edge of the grave and looked in. What he saw was less appalling than he feared. There lay the coffin, exposed to view; but there was no sign that it had been opened or tampered with in any way.

There was evidently only one thing to be done, and that was to cover up the coffin decently and fill in the grave again. He would borrow a spade at the nearest cottage on some pretence and get the job done. He turned away to do this; but as he went through the thicket he could have sworn that he heard a sound like muffled laughter! And he could not get away from the notion that the laughter had some quality closely resembling the howling of a wolf. He called himself a fool for thinking such a thing – but he thought it all the same.

He borrowed the spade and filled the grave, beating the earth down as hard as he could; and again, as he turned away after completing the task, he heard that muffled laugh. But this time it was even less distinct than before, and somehow it sounded underground. He was rather glad to get away.

It may well be imagined that he had plenty to occupy his thoughts for the rest of the day; and even when he sought to sleep he could not. He lay tossing uneasily, thinking all the time of the mysterious grave and the events that certainly seemed now to be connected with it. Then, soon after midnight, he heard the voice in the night again. The wolf howled a long way off at first; then came a long interval of silence; and then the voice sounded so close to the house that Barron started up in alarm and he heard his dog give a cry of fear. Then the silence fell again; and some time later the howling was again heard in the distance.

Next morning he found his favourite dog lying dead beside his kennel; and it was only too evident how he had met his end. His neck was almost severed by one fearful bite; but the strange thing was that there was very little blood to be seen. A closer examination showed that the dog had bled to death; but where was the blood? Natural wolves tear their prey and devour it. They do not suck its blood. What kind of a wolf could this be?

John Barron found the answer next day. He was walking in the direction of the moor late in the afternoon, as it grew towards dusk, when he heard shrieks of terror coming from a little side lane.

He ran to the rescue, and there he saw a little child of the village lying on the ground, with a huge wolf in the act of tearing at its throat.

Fortunately he had his gun with him; and, as the wolf sprang off its victim when he shouted, he fired. The range was a short one, and the beast got the full force of the charge. It bounded into the air and fell in a heap. But it got up again, and went off in a limping gallop in the way that wolves will often do even when mortally wounded. It made for the moor.

John Barron saw that it had received its death wound, and so gave it no further attention for the moment. Some men came running up at his shouts, and with their assistance he took the wounded child to the local doctor. Happily he had been in time to save its life.

Then he reloaded his gun, took a man with him, and followed the track of the wolf. It was not difficult to follow, for blood-stains on the road at frequent intervals showed plainly enough that it was severely wounded. As Barron expected, the track led straight to the thicket and entered it.

The two men followed cautiously; but they found no wolf. In the midst of the thicket lay the grave once more uncovered. And there beside it lay the body of a little old woman, drenched with blood. She was quite dead, and the terrible gunshot wound in her side told its own story. And the two men noticed that her canine teeth projected slightly beyond her lips on each side – like those of a snarling wolf – and they were blood-stained.

Ghost Gleams (1921)

THE WHITE CAT

Sir Hugh Walpole

1936

Very strange things happen to very ordinary people. This is an account of one of them. It would have been difficult, perhaps, to find in the whole of America a more ordinary man than Mr. Thornton Busk. He did not himself think that he was anything at all unusual, and yet he had always had a very pretty pride in himself and considered, as most of us do, that it was quite essential for the happy continuance of the history of the world that he should live and be well fed and have a happy and prosperous time.

He came to Hollywood from New York partly because of the climate, partly because he thought he might do a little writing for the films, partly because a very lovely girl whom he knew had gone to try her own fortune there. He’d been in Hollywood five years and it may be said of him that during that time he was happy rather than successful. He had a very cheerful nature. He was good-looking in a quite ordinary way, dark and slim and always correctly dressed. He was useful to women who did not know what to do with their time, and he never had an original idea about anything.

He discovered to his mild surprise that he was not needed by anybody to write for the films, and soon had, as everyone has in Hollywood, a personal story about how near he’d come to achieving this, and by what an unlucky chance he’d just missed that, and how So-and-so, the director of one of the best films of the decade, was his very best friend, and would have given him so much to do if it hadn’t happened that there were so many people already engaged in doing it.

He did not really feel himself ill-used. There are so many parties of so many kinds in Hollywood that you can go out somewhere all the time wherever you are. And there is always a chance that someone quite world-famous will be sitting next to you at the Vendome or dancing quite close to you at the Trocadero. His five years were entertaining and even exciting, and it seemed to him that he had plenty of friends. At the end of the five years what he hadn’t got was plenty of money. He discovered with a shock that his capital was almost gone and that although millions of dollars were rolling about the Hollywood streets, none of them seemed to roll in his direction.

It was then that he began to think seriously of a charming English lady, Mrs. Grace Ferguson. Mrs. Ferguson was a rich widow who had a pretty house on Rodeo Drive, and entertained a great deal in a quiet, ladylike fashion. She was one of the English who, coming to California on a short visit, are entrapped by the sun and never again escape. Her husband, a kind elderly man, who was on the London Stock Exchange, had been dead some ten years. She was quite alone in the world. Except for her large white cat, Penelope, she had apparently no near friends. She had, of course, plenty of acquaintances, and as it is the practice of every American to be charming at the actual moment of contact, all her acquaintances seemed to her to be friends. It is quite possible for an English man or woman to make very real and beautiful friendships in America, lasting ones and sincere, but it is often very difficult for the English to distinguish clearly between friendships and acquaintances. The dividing line is so very clear in their own more cautious country.

There were horrible times when Mrs. Ferguson felt very lonely indeed, and wondered if she had any friends. At such horrible moments she would feel a great wave of homesickness for the long white moors of Northumberland, the rocky bays of Cornwall, and the deep violet-scented lanes of Devonshire. She found that it was then that she wrote long letters to friends in England, saying that she would very shortly be home, recalling the many happy days they’d spent together, and hoping a little wistfully that they had not all entirely forgotten her. Then quickly again would come the delightful excitements of her social world. A concert in the Bowl under the stars (the seats were very damp and it was necessary to wear quite heavy Arctic clothing), an eventful première at Grauman’s Chinese Theatre, a lovely trip in somebody’s yacht to Catalina, a most interesting lecture given by a yogi from India. It seemed to her on such occasions that she was surrounded by friends, warm-hearted, enchanted to see her, hating to be parted from her, ready to do anything in the world to make her happy.

Thornton Busk was one of these. A very, very charming man, always smiling, always at your service, full of jokes, a little flirtatious (but not to any dangerous extent), good-hearted and unselfish. She liked him very much indeed. She told him that he would always be welcome at any of her parties. When Thornton began to consider her seriously, he was surprised at himself for not having considered her seriously before. She had, he understood, so much money that she really did not know what to do with it all, and in these days that was most unusual. Moreover, she was not like so many ladies with money, vulgar and unprepossessing. She had the rather aesthetic charm of the delicate English lady. Someone with whom you’d never consider being passionate. Someone with whom you would never be bored.

But when he began to consider her more seriously, he found that passion was not so difficult to conceive. It was unquestioned that she had never been awakened. He knew, he had been told it often enough, how stolid and unimaginative were most elderly English husbands. There had been no scandal about her in Hollywood. She liked men, but kept them at a distance. It would be amusing to awaken her. He flattered himself that it would not really be difficult. Here, indeed, was a splendid way out of all his troubles. He began to pay her very definite court. He noticed that as soon as he began to take a deeper interest in Grace Ferguson, her house and its surroundings also became more personally alive to him.

It was a pretty place in the English style, with cosy rooms and a charming garden at the back with a small pool, a badminton court, some large banana trees and fine mimosa bushes. Her drawing-room and dining-room were in white with some good etchings. Everything was in admirable taste, but a little like herself, quietly aesthetic, rather without personality, gently hospitable. On a certain afternoon he found himself sitting at the end of the dark-blue sofa, very close to her, as she asked him whether he would have tea or a highball. When he said a highball, she asked whether he preferred Scotch or Bourbon. It was all very restful, very friendly, almost intimate.

“Say, do you know what I’ve been thinking?” And he leaned over the end of the sofa and with one hand touched her arm.

“No, what?”

“Wouldn’t it be a grand idea to go down to San Diego for a night or two? There’s the Fair, and we’d get one or two more – Barney, the Thwaites and Lucille. We’d have a grand time.”

“Yes, I think I should like that,” she said in her quiet English way. “The Fair ought to be amusing. I loved them at home when I was a child.” He looked on her face so steadily that she glanced up and looked back at him, questioningly, as though she would say: “Aren’t you a little different today? What’s happened?” And he felt different. He thought for the first time since he had known her that he would like to take her in his arms and kiss her. He wondered why he had never wanted to do this before. He did not know that once a plan begins to work in your brain, it gathers about it aid, assistance. It amuses itself with cheating you a little.

“We’ve been grand friends,” he said, “a long time now. I heard an Englishman say the other day that Americans were superficial, but I don’t think so, do you?” And he touched her hand for a brief instant; almost stroked it, and then sat back on the sofa, turning away from her a little. She looked at him with her mild blue eyes, smiling gently, a little maternally. She was thinking:

“He’s a nice boy. I like him better today than ever before.” She said, “Yes, I think you are superficial, most of you. English people take friendship very seriously. When they have a friend it’s for life.”

“That’s the matter with the English,” he answered. “They’re altogether too serious. They can’t have a good time and then forget about it.” He turned and looked at her very gravely indeed.

“But you’re not like that with me, Grace. You mean a hell of a lot to me, you do, indeed. I like you being quiet, cautious. American girls aren’t quiet any more.”

“I’m glad our friendship means something to you,” she said gently. “I’ve never quite known.”

“Well, you know now,” he answered. “You’re just about the best friend I’ve got.”

He finished his highball reflectively. What would she do if he should kiss her? English women are so strange. They lead you on and then pretend that they know nothing about it.

And the trouble is that they really are surprised. They complain bitterly that you’ve ruined a beautiful friendship, and very often they really do value the friendship more than the passion.

What would Grace be like if she should surrender? And would he be feeling the same about her if she hadn’t a penny? Yes, he believed he would. He felt quite a holy feeling stealing over him, and he asked for another highball. All the same, it was pleasant to think that she was so wonderfully wealthy. And then he noticed the cat. He had never really thought of it before, except that it had occurred to him once and again that women without husbands, lovers or children were apt to waste a great deal of emotion on animals. If he had thought about the cat at all, he’d have been aware of its odd devotion to Grace. Odd, he thought, because cats are always aloof. They lived their own lives and despised human beings.

But this cat, a very large and pure white Persian (or was it a Persian? He’d never seen a Persian so large and so white. He must ask her, sometime, its breed) – this cat, Penelope, seemed really to be devoted to Grace. He had noticed that, when Grace left the room, the cat sank into a kind of cold neutrality. He had sometimes attempted to win it over, not because he liked cats, but because he believed in that old adage that animals and children were fond of only good men. Any little proof that he was good, he eagerly accepted. But Penelope would never have anything to do with him at all. It wasn’t that she disliked him, it was rather that he did not exist. And he had felt on one or two occasions, when he was waiting in the drawing-room for Grace, that under the icy grey stare Penelope caused him to sink into nothing.

This afternoon, however, was the first occasion on which he was aware that the cat quite definitely regarded him. As he touched Grace’s hand for that brief instant, the cat, that had been lying in a great white mass near the window, raised itself ever so slightly. The big handsome head turned in his direction.

“That’s the best-looking cat I’ve ever seen,” he said. “How old is it? Have you had it always?”

“Yes, from a tiny kitten. How old is it? Oh, I don’t know – eight or nine years, perhaps.”

“Seems damn fond of you.”

“Yes, it is.”

“That’s strange. One gets to thinking that cats have no feelings for anyone but themselves.”

Grace Ferguson smiled. “Oh, that’s quite untrue. Come here, Penelope.”

The cat raised itself at once, and, with great delicacy for so large an animal, softly crossed the floor. It stood with its back arched a little against Grace’s leg. It purred very gently. Then for a moment the purr ceased. It raised its head and looked at Thornton.

“You know,” he said, laughing, “I don’t think that cat likes me.”

“Perhaps it doesn’t,” she replied. “Penelope can be jealous.”

“Jealous?” This was altogether a new idea to him. “I don’t think,” he said, “that cats care that much. They think only of themselves.”

“It’s very easy,” she answered, “to explain affection by love of personal comfort. I suppose cats are selfish, but Penelope isn’t an ordinary cat.”

•   •   •

It was after this little conversation that Thornton began to be involved in strange personal experiences. We all know what it is to enter on a certain day into a new atmosphere. We pass into a world where everything seems to go perversely. Letters that we need do not arrive, appointments are broken, a fog, especially on this Californian coast, comes up and obscures the sun, the ground seems to quiver right beneath our feet. It was so now with Thornton. In the first place he had a strange sense of urgency – as though someone whispered to him, “Lose no time over this or it will be too late.”

Hollywood is a nervous, hysterical place. Nothing is sure from day to day for anyone. Even the principal stars, who are supposed to live in such settled glory, do not know from picture to picture how their reputation may be affected. And this uncertainty spreads outside the actual studios into the surrounding world. While Thornton had money in the bank he could defy the sudden unexpected demands on his purse. There is a kind of careless extravagance in the air and with it forgetfulness, so that one is constantly exposed to expenses that one cannot pay. And because everyone else is suffering from the same economic uncertainty, emotional explosions are quite common. The air seems thinner here and nerves more frequently exasperated.

Thornton’s rooms were the upper part of a strange, rather desolate little wooden building on Sunset Boulevard, the lower half of which was occupied by a lady who evidenced each night in brilliant electric lights that she gave psychic readings. These rooms had seemed smart and elegant when he first occupied them, but everything becomes easily shabby and worn in Hollywood because of the brilliant sunshine, unless it is carefully looked after. He had decorated his rooms in Mexican fashion… Mexican rugs and hangings of very bright colours, and then, contrary to these, a roll-top desk at which he had hoped to write for the films, a modern armchair that swirled round when you sat on it in a surprisingly disconcerting fashion, a settee of brown plush, which clung to you as though in a bad temper when you wanted to leave it. He had photographs of film stars in silver frames and hoped that his friends would consider them intimate gifts. But he did not care for the silver. The sudden sense that his surroundings were shabby and ominous was one thing that made him want to hasten into Mrs. Ferguson’s arms. The sooner that he was in her beautiful house the better.

He developed a kind of obsession, not so much for herself as for her possessions. And yet, he thought himself that he loved her; that he couldn’t have conceived such tenderness for her simply because she was wealthy. This was in all probability true. He looked forward to seeing her, and when he saw her he at once imagined her in his arms, and a sense of comfort and affection stole about him. For the first time he began to pity himself and to wonder why it was that, with such good brains, he had not gone further. Some guys have all the breaks, he told himself. But now perhaps, with her at his side always encouraging him, showing him what it was that he could do best, he would astonish the world with his gifts.

So the afternoon came, a foggy, cold afternoon, with a mist that seemed gloomily alive; to have arms and tentacles and a sort of weeping dreariness like a tiresome friend who must always insist on being comforted. Her drawing-room was cheerful, a log fire was blazing, and he noticed again, as of late he had so often done, how brilliant and fresh her pictures and curtains and furniture were. When he entered the room, the white cat was asleep in front of the fire. The Chinese manservant said that his mistress would be down in a few minutes. He was alone with Penelope.

He sat down, picked up a copy of Time, wondered how those boys could be so brilliant week after week and also so unkind to practically everybody, tried to think of world politics and to believe himself a man of affairs, but was aware that his heart was beating with such an agitation that he was unable to think of anything but himself.

That was because within another half-hour he would propose to Grace Ferguson, and would, in all probability, be as good as married before he left that room. He had no doubt but that she would accept him.

But was it only that?

Looking about him he felt that something in the room was discomforting, and then was conscious, to his own extreme surprise, that he hated to be alone with the cat. The animal had not moved, and then quite suddenly it stretched out a lazy paw and scratched the carpet. The sound made him shiver.

“Don’t do that!” he said aloud, as though he were speaking to a living person. The cat very slowly turned its head. He noticed then for the first time how intense were its large grey eyes. And even as he looked at them, the heavy lids obscured them. It was as though the cat were looking at him with twice the intensity through that blinded vision. Nothing in the room moved, and yet it seemed to him that the cat had come closer and grown larger. The whole room was filled with a sort of warm furry odour, almost as though he would soon be stifled with it.

Grace came in and he gave a little sigh of relief. He had his highball and she had her tea. Then he said, his voice shaking a little: “Grace, I want to tell you… I’ve been wanting to for weeks. I’m in love with you.” She turned and looked at him with so kindly a maternal expression that he felt for a moment like a little boy who had asked to be taken to the circus.

“That’s very sweet of you,” she said softly, “dear Thornton. But you can’t be in love with an old woman like me.”

“Old!” he laughed. “Why, Grace, you’re wonderful! You’re no age – you’re every age. You’re the woman I love and I want you to marry me.” At the same time he put out his hand and caught hers. She said nothing and he began to be uneasy.

“We are neither of us children,” he said. “I’m not much. I haven’t anything to offer, except devotion and loyalty. I’ll be as good to you as I know how.” (He had a ridiculous notion that he was quoting something from a story in a magazine.) She did not take her hand away, she even pressed his a little.

“I’ve been married once, you know,” she said. She laughed. “There are two kinds of widows: those who believe in marriage and those who don’t. It depends, I suppose, on what their experience has been.”

“Well?” he asked, drawing his chair a little nearer to hers.

“Well – I don’t know. I was very happy with Egbert. The only thing I had against him really was his name. I like you very much, Thornton. I think we would get on very well together. I’ll confess to you that I’m often very lonely. I can’t think of anyone I’d be better friends with, but – ”

“But?” he said eagerly.

“I’ve got accustomed to my life as it is. It isn’t perfect. Nobody’s life is. But on the whole, it’s safe. And I’m not quite alone. There’s Penelope.”

“Penelope!” he said mockingly.

“Oh, you don’t know. You’d be surprised if you did.”

“Now come.” He put his arm around her gently, but he spoke with a sudden masterful decision. “You can’t pretend you won’t marry me because of a cat. I could do more for you than a cat can. I love you, and that’s what you haven’t got in your life.”

“Yes.” He noticed that she didn’t move away from him, that she came, if possible, a little closer.

“I know.” She looked at him. “I like you so much.”

He thought that the moment had come. He drew her to him and kissed her, as he hoped, passionately. Still she did not withdraw. She returned his kiss, but a little as though he were her boy who had just told her that he had won a prize at school. Well, after all, did he want passion? He thought that on the whole he did not.

“Marry me, marry me!” he said urgently, kissing her eyes. “You’ll be so happy, Grace. I’ll see that you are. I can’t live without you.” He coughed suddenly. He felt as though his mouth were full of fur. He choked. “I’m so sorry. Wait a moment.” He drank a little of his highball. “Something in my throat.”

Then he turned to her, his whole being urgent with the necessity of her submitting. “Listen, say yes. I don’t know what I should do without you now. You can save me – make something of me. I’ll serve you so faithfully.”

He actually fell on his knees beside her, put his arms round her just as he had so often seen people do in the theatre. He felt her response. For a moment it was as though she were going to yield to him completely. Then she drew back.

“Let me think it over, Thornton. Leave me to myself for a day or two.” She looked at him again, curiously, anxiously. “Do you think Anglo-American marriages ever work? Isn’t there something both so friendly and antagonistic between the two countries that we can never really be comfortable together? And I’m not very interesting. I’m terribly ordinary. One of the millions of middle-aged Englishwomen who have to content themselves with the little things. I’m afraid you might find me very dull.”

“You dull!” he cried. And now he was entirely sincere. “Why, we’ve never had a dull moment together; you know that’s true. It’s because we’ve been such companions. We like so many of the same things, and I want to guard you, protect you. I feel that you’re so defenceless.”

It was then that he saw the cat rise very slowly from its place in front of the fire and walk across the room. It was a strange thing, but both of them turned and stared at it. It walked as though it saw neither of them, and yet Thornton felt that it enclosed him; tightened the air about his nose and throat and mouth. All that Thornton knew was that, for this moment at least, the scene was ended. He got up.

“All right, I’ll give you your day or two, but don’t refuse me. For God’s sake be kind.” And with a splendid masterful action, he strode from the room.

Three days later she said that she would marry him. “After all,” she admitted, her cheek pressed against his, “it’s only Penelope who’ll object.”

“That damn cat,” he said, drawing away from her ever so little; “you’re always mentioning it.”

“Well, you see, it’s been the important thing in my life for so long. She’s not an ordinary cat. She’s done such strange things. There was Mr. Mangan, for instance – ” She hesitated.

“Well?” asked Thornton, feeling, from he knew not where, a strange tremor down his spine.

“Percy Mangan. It wasn’t anything really, only he flirted a little, you know – and next morning he wrote me such a strange letter. He was going back to New York, because of a nightmare, he said. I never saw him again, but I know it was something to do with Penelope.”

“Listen, darling.” He took her face firmly between his hands and was a little annoyed with himself that he should be thinking of her money rather than of her proximity. “You’re not to have exaggerated notions about this cat. That’s one of the things I’m going to stop when we’re married.”

Grace shook her head. “Yes, I know. All the same, Penelope can’t bear that anyone should be fond of me. She scratched Benjie Cooper’s face once so that he couldn’t go about in public for weeks.”

Thornton felt a chill in the room. He looked about him, but the cat was not there. “This is all nonsense,” he said. “Rather than have that cat make our lives miserable, I’ll have it chloroformed.”

She gave him then such a strange, clear look. “I don’t think you could,” she said. “Penelope’s an extraordinary cat. If she didn’t want to be chloroformed, she wouldn’t be, whatever you might do.”

In fact, he went away from the house that evening less happy than he should be. He did not know what was the matter with him. He ought to be radiant. He was not in love with Grace, but he was very fond of her. They were excellent companions. Financially, he was safe for life.

•   •   •

It was one of those lovely evenings when the sunlit air bathes all the strange little bungalows and untidy lots and oil-pumps and new petrol stations and temporary homes of the ventriloquists or psychic readers, psychology interpreters and soul-healers, and transmutes them all into a lovely film-like iridescence. So much more unreal, so much more exhilarating and depressing at the same time, than true sunlight. He went home. He opened his door, entered his sitting-room. There, staring at him, was the white cat. He looked again. It was not there. “Now this is absurd,” he told himself. “That cat is beginning to get on my nerves. There is no cat there.” But he felt in his nostrils a warm, furry, stifling sensation. He went and had a shower and changed his clothes.

He telephoned Grace. “Just to know whether you’re happy, darling.”

“Of course I’m happy.”

“Thinking about me?”

“Yes, of course.”

“Is Penelope there sitting in front of the fire?”

“Yes. As a matter of fact, she’s on my lap.” He had an absurd instinct to scream through the telephone: “Put her down! Put her down! Don’t touch her!” But he wished Grace a loving good-night, turned from the telephone and saw the cat walking from his sitting-room into his bedroom. He went into his bedroom. There was no cat there. That night he had a dream. Somebody warned him, he couldn’t in the morning remember who, that he’d better not marry Grace Ferguson. Suspended on a little cloud between heaven and earth, he enquired why. “It’s not safe,” said the angel or the devil or whoever it might be. On about the third day from this, driving Grace up to one of the Bowl concerts, he said to her, “Darling, I haven’t been drinking. I don’t know what’s the matter with me.”

“Why?” she asked him, laying her little hand on his.

“I’m always seeing your cat. At least, I don’t know whether I see it or don’t. It seems to be there; and then it isn’t.”

She pressed his hand. “Penelope has been rather strange the last few days,” she said. “I felt a little frightened of her myself, as though I were doing something wrong. You do love me, Thornton, don’t you?”

“Love you,” he breathed.

“Because if you didn’t, if you were marrying me for some other reason, I can imagine Penelope doing something terrible. She isn’t an ordinary cat. You say you fancy you’ve seen her. Well, so did I once. I was at Palm Springs for a week or two and I left her at home with the servants. You’ll think me ridiculous, I know, but she came every evening just as the sun was fading behind the mountains. She would be there, she would rub herself against my leg.”

For the first time since his friendship with her, Thornton was irritable.

“Oh, don’t, Grace! This is ridiculous. We’re both ridiculous.”

They got out, gave the car to a parking attendant and walked slowly up the hill without speaking.

•   •   •

Two nights later, he awoke suddenly and thought that he was choking to death. He sat up gasping, beating the air with his hands. As he sat there, his heart hammering, his whole body trembling, staring into the darkness, something again whispered to him: “Give this marriage up. You’re in danger.”

Next day he felt so unwell that he consulted a doctor. There was, it seemed, nothing actually the matter with him, but his friends all noticed the change. He was pale and he looked as though he hadn’t slept. His manner was nervous and irritable. For three days he did not see Grace, and during that time quite seriously considered “whether he would not run away. Something was driving him. He would write to her when he got to New York. He would borrow some money from someone there and go to Europe. He would fly to New York. He nearly did.

And then his pride and his real affection for Grace, his thought, too, of the economic comforts waiting for him, these were all too much for him. He stayed. He spent the long afternoon in Grace’s drawing-room, tempting her to comfort him. When she knew that he suffered, she was distraught and distressed; her affection for him grew into love, because the real basis of her nature was maternal. She loved him that afternoon. Penelope sat without moving in a square of sunlight and never looked at either of them.

•   •   •

On that same evening, he went to bed early. He had no appetite. His whole body was weary, as though he were beginning some kind of attack. Was it influenza? He took several aspirins and a strong highball.

He awoke quite suddenly with a start of apprehension. He switched on the electric light and saw from his clock that it was a quarter to three in the morning. Then he looked around the room and saw the white cat lying up against the wall opposite the bed. He knew then such fear as he had never before experienced. The cat this time did not vanish as he looked at it. It seemed to grow larger, and there was something quite horrible about its watching, emotionless impassivity. While he sat there and stared, he told himself of his own foolishness. All that he had to do was to get out of bed and walk out of the door.

He moved and felt that he was caught, as one sometimes is, by the bedclothes. He pushed against them and got one bare foot to the floor. At the same moment the cat moved, not its head, but rather its back, which seemed to arch and shiver very slightly as though it were shaking itself.

He got the other foot to the floor, and then, his hands gripping the bedclothes, he watched the animal. It slowly rose, stretched first one leg, then the other, then very softly came towards him. When it was half-way across the floor it crouched, watching him with its large grey eyes; the great white body seemed to be instinct with power. It looked as though it might spring with a tiger’s action.

He screamed hysterically, “Get out! Get out!” and then, drawing himself back into bed again, let himself drop on the other side away from the door.

The cat moved towards the bed, and now it was so close to him that he could feel the hot foetid jungle air of its breath, and in its deep grey eyes he saw an intensity of malevolence. But the stupor of a few moments ago had left him. He felt now all activity. Could he but reach the door and escape, all would be well. But as he turned his head, the cat gave a soundless leap and to his horror was crouching there on the top of the bed quite close to him.

He made a movement and the cat, drawing itself on its belly, came to the very edge of the bed, its eyes with a steady burning intensity fixed on him.

He fell on his knees. The air, now close against his eyes, nostrils and mouth, was of so sickening a stench that he could not breathe.

He looked up. His mouth opened for a scream of terror, but no sound came.

The cat leapt. He felt its claws on his cheek. He was stifled with the press of warm fur….

•   •   •

When next morning Grace Ferguson read that Mr. Thornton Busk was found in his apartment, clad in his pyjamas, on the floor of his bedroom, dead, she burst into a storm of tears. It seemed that he had died of heart failure. Feeling unwell, he had crawled out of bed to get assistance and had died there on the floor. On each cheek there was a tiny scratch for which there was no accounting.

She cried her heart out. She had been so very fond of Thornton. She felt at the same time a strange relief. She had been free for so long, and now she was free again. Poor Thornton! The excitement of these last few days had been too much for him. The Chinese boy brought in the saucer of milk that Penelope enjoyed always at a settled time. Grace Ferguson blew her nose, dried her eyes, and, her voice a little broken with her crying, said:

“Come, Penelope. Here’s your milk, darling.” The cat got up, walked across to the saucer, began happily to lap. It purred its hearty contentment.

“Nash’s – Pall Mall Magazine”, May 1936

Mr. Huffam And Other Stories (1948)