Chiara C. Rizzarda's Blog, page 19

Winter Tales: “How Fear Departed from the Long Gallery”

Edward Frederic Benson, known as E.F. Benson, was an English novelist, biographer, and memoirist born on July 24, 1867, in Wellington College, Berkshire. He passed away on February 29, 1940, in London. Benson is best remembered for his satirical novels and his humorous depictions of Edwardian society, particularly through his acclaimed Mapp and Lucia series. He also wrote short stories, particularly ghost stories, and he is considered one of the significant practitioners of the classic English genre. His works often begin in tranquil, upper-class settings, such as country houses or fishing lodges, where the horror gradually unfolds, and features themes such as sinister female characters. Trigger warnings for misogyny and ableism, as many of his villains are presented with physical disabilities.

“How Fear Departed from the Long Gallery” was first published in his 1912 collection The Room in the Tower.

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 bellows 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 eye-lid 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 snow-flakes 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 window-sill, 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 to-day, 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 snow-flakes 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.”

Winter Tales: “The Stalls of Barchester Cathedral”

Montague Rhodes James, known as M.R. James, was a prominent English author and scholar born on August 1, 1862, in Goodnestone Parsonage, Kent. He is best known for his ghost stories, which have earned him a reputation as one of the finest writers in the genre. Most of his best work is collected in two volumes: Ghost Stories of an Antiquary (1904) and More Ghost Stories of an Antiquary (1911), featuring this splendid cover. The story featured today is one of the best known. Enjoy.

This matter began, as far as I am concerned, with the reading of a notice in the obituary section of the Gentleman’s Magazine for an early year in the nineteenth century:—

“On February 26th, at his residence in the Cathedral Close of Barchester, the Venerable John Benwell Haynes, D.D., aged 57, Arch-deacon of Sowerbridge and Rector of Pickhill and Candley. He was of ——— College, Cambridge, and where, by talent and assiduity, he commanded the esteem of his seniors; when, at the usual time, he took his first degree, his name stood high in the list of wranglers. These academical honours procured for him within a short time a Fellowship of his College. In the year 17838 he received Holy Orders, and was shortly afterwards presented to the perpetual Curacy of Ranxton-sub-Ashe by his friend and patron the late truly venerable Bishop of Lichfield. . . . His speedy preferments, first to a Prebend, and subsequently to the dignity of Precentor in the Cathedral of Barchester, form an eloquent testimony to the respect in which he was held and to his eminent qualifications. He succeeded to the Archdeaconry upon the sudden decease of Archdeacon Pulteney in 1810. His sermons, ever conformable to the principles of the religion and Church which he adorned, displayed in no ordinary degree, without the least trace of enthusiasm, the refinement of the scholar united with the graces of the Christian. Free from sectarian violence, and informed by the spirit of the truest charity, they will long dwell in the memories of his hearers. (Here a further omission.) The productions of his pen include an able defence of Episcopacy, which, though often perused by the author of this tribute to his memory, afford but one additional instance of the want of liberality and enterprise which is a too common characteristic of the publishers of our generation. His published works are, indeed, confined to a spirited and elegant version of the Argonautica of Valerius Flaccus, a volume of Discourses upon the Several Events in the Life of Joshua, delivered in his Cathedral, and a number of the charges which he pronounced at various visitations to the clergy of his Arch-deaconry. These are distinguished by etc., etc. The urbanity and hospitality of the subject of these lines will not readily be forgotten by those who enjoyed his acquaintance. His interest in the venerable and awful pile under whose hoary vault he was so punctual an attendant, and particularly in the musical portion of its rites, might be termed filial, and formed a strong and delightful contrast to the polite indifference displayed by too many of our Cathedral dignitaries at the present time.”

The final paragraph, after informing us that Dr. Haynes died a bachelor, says:—

“It might have been augured that an existence so placid and benevolent would have been terminated in a ripe old age by a dissolution equally gradual and calm. But how unsearchable are the workings of Providence! The peaceful and retired seclusion amid which the honoured evening of Dr. Haynes’ life was mellowing to its close was destined to be disturbed, nay, shattered, by a tragedy as appalling as it was unexpected. The morning of the 26th of February-”

But perhaps I shall do better to keep back the remainder of the narrative until I have told the circumstances which led up to it. These, as far as they are now accessible, I have derived from another source.

I had read the obituary notice which I have been quoting, quite by chance, along with a great many others of the same period. It had excited some little speculation in my mind, but, beyond thinking that, if I ever had an opportunity of examining the local records of the period indicated, I would try to remember Dr. Haynes, I made no effort to pursue his case.

Quite lately I was cataloguing the manuscripts in the library of the college to which he belonged. I had reached the end of the numbered volumes on the shelves, and I proceeded to ask the librarian whether there were any more books which he thought I ought to include in my description. “I don’t think there are,” he said, “but we had better come and look at the manuscript class and make sure. Have you time to do that now?” I had time. We went to the library, checked off the manuscripts, and, at the end of our survey, arrived at a shelf of which I had seen nothing. Its contents consisted for the most part of sermons, bundles of fragmentary papers, college exercises, Cyrus, an epic poem in several cantos, the product of a country clergyman’s leisure, mathematical tracts by a deceased professor, and other similar material of a kind with which I am only too familiar. I took brief notes of these. Lastly, there was a tin box, which was pulled out and dusted. Its label, much faded, was thus inscribed: “Papers of the Ven. Archdeacon Haynes. Bequeathed in 1834 by his sister, Miss Letitia Haynes.” I knew at once that the name was one which I had somewhere encountered, and could very soon locate it. “That must be the Archdeacon Haynes who came to a very. odd end at Barchester. I’ve read his obituary in the Gentleman’s Magazine. May I take the box home? Do you know if there is anything interesting in it?”

The librarian was very willing that I should take the box and examine it at leisure. “I never looked inside it myself,” he said, “but I’ve always been meaning to. I am pretty sure that is the box which our old Master once said ought never to have been accepted by the college. He said that to Martin years ago; and he said also that as long as he had control over the library it should never be opened. Martin told me about it, and said that he wanted terribly to know what was in it; but the Master was librarian, and always kept the box in the lodge, so there was no getting at it in his time, and when he died it was taken away by mistake by his heirs, and only returned a few years ago. I can’t think why I haven’t opened it; but, as I have to go away from Cambridge this afternoon, you had better have first go at it. I think I can trust you not to publish anything undesirable in our catalogue.”

I took the box home and examined its contents, and thereafter consulted the librarian as to what should be done about publication, and, since I have his leave to make a story out of it, provided I disguise the identity of the people concerned, I will try what can be done.

The materials are, of course, mainly journals and letters. How much I shall quote and how much epitomise must be determined by considerations of space. The proper understanding of the situation has necessitated a little—not very arduous—research, which has been greatly facilitated by the excellent illustrations and text of the Barchester volume in Bell’s Cathedral Series.

When you enter the choir of Barchester Cathedral now, you pass through a screen of metal and coloured marbles, designed by Sir Gilbert Scott, and find yourself in what I must call a very bare and odiously furnished place. The stalls are modern, without canopies. The places of the dignitaries and the names of the prebends have fortunately been allowed to survive, and are inscribed on small brass plates affixed to the stalls. The organ is in the triforium, and what is seen of the case is Gothic. The reredos and its surroundings are like every other.

Careful engravings of a hundred years ago show & very different state of things. The organ is on a massive classical screen. The stalls are also classical and very massive. There is a baldacchino of wood over the altar, with urns upon its corners. Further east is a solid altar screen, classical in design, of wood, with a pediment, in which is a triangle surrounded by rays, enclosing certain Hebrew letters in gold. Cherubs contemplate these. There is a pulpit with a great sounding-board at the eastern end of the stalls on the north side, and there is a black and white marble pavement. Two ladies and a gentleman are admiring the general effect. From other sources I gather that the archdeacon’s stall then, as now, was next to the bishop’s throne at the south-eastern end of the stalls. His house almost faces the western part of the church, and is a fine red-brick building of William the Third’s time.

Here Dr. Haynes, already a mature man, took up his abode with his sister in the year 1810. The dignity had long been the object of his wishes, but his predecessor refused to depart until he had attained the age of ninety-two. About a week after he had held a modest festival in celebration of that ninety-second birthday, there came a morning, late in the year, when Dr. Haynes, hurrying cheerfully into his breakfast-room, rubbing his hands and humming a tune, was greeted, and checked in his genial flow of spirits, by the sight of his sister, seated, indeed, in her usual place behind the tea-urn, but bowed forward and sobbing unrestrainedly into her handkerchief. “What—what is the matter? What bad news?” he began. “Oh, Johnny, you’ve not heard? The poor dear archdeacon !” “The archdeacon, yes? What is it—ill, is he?” “No, no; they found him on the staircase this morning; it is so shocking.” “Is it possible! Dear, dear, poor Pulteney! Had there been any seizure?” “They dont think so, and that is almost the worst thing about it. It seems to have been all the fault of that stupid maid of theirs, Jane.” Dr. Haynes paused. “I don’t quite understand, Letitia. How was the maid at fault?” “Why, as far as I can make out, there was a stair-rod missing, and she never mentioned it, and the poor archdeacon set his foot quite on the edge of the step—you know how slippery that oak is—and it seems he must have fallen almost the whole flight and broken his neck. It is so sad for poor Miss Pulteney. Of course, they will get rid of the girl at once. I never liked her.” Miss Haynes’s grief resumed its sway, but eventually relaxed so far as to permit of her taking some breakfast. Not so her brother, who, after standing in silence before the window for some minutes, left the room, and did not appear again that morning.

I need only add that the careless maid-servant was dismissed forthwith, but that the missing stair-rod was very shortly afterwards found under the stair-carpet—an additional proof, if any were needed, of extreme stupidity and carelessness on her part.

For a good many years Dr. Haynes had been marked out by his ability, which seems to have been really considerable, as the likely successor of Archdeacon Pulteney, and no disappointment was in store for him. He was duly installed, and entered with zeal upon the discharge of those functions which are appropriate to one in his position. A considerable space in his journals is occupied with exclamations upon the confusion in which Archdeacon Pulteney had left the business of his office and the documents appertaining to it. Dues upon Wringham and Barnswood have been uncollected for something like twelve years, and are largely irrecoverable; no visitation has been held for seven years; four chancels are almost past mending. The persons deputised by the arch-deacon have been nearly as incapable as himself. It was almost a matter for thankfulness that this state of things had not been permitted to continue, and a letter from a friend confirms this view. “ὁ κατέχων,” it says (in rather cruel allusion to the Second Epistle to the Thessalonians), “is removed at last. My poor friend! Upon what a scene of confusion will you be entering! I give you my word that, on the last occasion of my crossing his threshold, there was no single paper that he could lay hands upon, no syllable of mine that he could hear, and no fact in connection with my business that he could remember. But now, thanks to a negligent maid and a loose stair-carpet, there is some prospect that necessary business will be transacted without a complete loss alike of voice and temper.” This letter was tucked into a pocket in the cover of one of the diaries.

There can be no doubt of the new archdeacon’s zeal and enthusiasm. “Give me but time to reduce to some semblance of order the innumerable errors and complications with which I am confronted, and I shall gladly and sincerely join with the aged Israelite in the canticle which too many, I fear, pronounce but with their lips.” This reflection I find, not in a diary, but a letter; the doctor’s friends seem to have returned his correspondence to his surviving sister. He does not confine himself, however, to reflections. His investigation of the rights and duties of his office are very searching and business-like, and there is a calculation in one place that a period of three years will just suffice to set the business of the Archdeaconry upon a proper footing. The estimate appears to have been an exact one. For just three years he is occupied in reforms; but I look in vain at the end of that time for the promised Nunc dimitiis. He has now found a new sphere of activity. Hitherto his duties have precluded him from more than an occasional attendance at the Cathedral services. Now he begins to take an interest in the fabric and the music. Upon his struggles with the organist, an old gentleman who had been in office since 1786, I have no time to dwell; they were not attended with any marked success. More to the purpose is his sudden growth of enthusiasm for the Cathedral itself and its furniture. There is a draft of a letter to Sylvanus Urban (which I do not think was ever sent) describing the stalls in the choir. As I have said, these were of fairly late date—of about the year 1700, in fact.

“The archdeacon’s stall, situated at the south-east end, west of the episcopal throne (now so worthily occupied by the truly excellent prelate who adorns the See of Barchester), is distinguished by some curious ornamentation. In addition to the arms of Dean West, by whose efforts the whole of the internal furniture of the choir was completed, the prayer-desk is terminated at the eastern extremity by three small but remarkable statuettes in the grotesque manner. One is an exquisitely modelled figure of a cat, whose crouching posture suggests with admirable spirit the suppleness, vigilance, and craft of the redoubted adversary of the genus Mus. Opposite to this is a figure seated upon a throne and invested with the attributes of royalty; but it is no earthly monarch whom the carver has sought to portray. His feet are studiously concealed by the long robe in which he is draped: but neither the crown nor the cap which he wears suffice to hide the prick-ears and curving horns which betray his Tartarean origin; and the hand which rests upon his knee is armed with talons of horrifying length and sharpness. Between these two figures stands a shape muffled in a long mantle. This might at first sight be mistaken for a monk or “friar of orders gray,” for the head is cowled and a knotted cord depends from somewhere about the waist. A slight inspection, however, will lead to a very different conclusion. The knotted cord is quickly seen to be a halter, held by a hand all but concealed within the draperies; while the sunken features and, horrid to relate, the rent flesh upon the cheek-bones, proclaim the King of Terrors. These figures are evidently the production of no unskilled chisel; and should it chance that any of your correspondents are able to throw light upon their origin and significance, my obligations to your valuable miscellany will be largely increased.”

There is more description in the paper, and, seeing that the woodwork in question has now disappeared, it has a considerable interest. A paragraph at the end is worth quoting:—

“Some late researches among the Chapter accounts have shown me that the carving of the stalls was not, as was very usually reported, the work of Dutch artists, but was executed by a native of this city or district named Austin. The timber was procured from an oak copse in the vicinity, the property of the Dean and Chapter, known as Holywood. Upon a recent visit to the parish within whose boundaries it is situated, I learned from the aged and truly respectable incumbent that traditions still lingered amongst the inhabitants of the great size and age of the oaks employed to furnish the materials of the stately structure which has been, however imperfectly, described in the above lines. Of one in particular, which stood near the centre of the grove, it is remembered that it was known as the Hanging Oak. The propriety of that title is confirmed by the fact that a quantity of human bones was found in the soil about its roots, and that at certain times of the year it was the custom for those who wished to secure a successful issue to their affairs, whether of love or the ordinary business of life, to suspend from its boughs small images or puppets rudely fashioned of straw, twigs, or the like rustic materials.”

So much for the archdeacon’s archæological investigations. To return to his career as it is to be gathered from his diaries. Those of his first three years of hard and careful work show him throughout in high spirits, and, doubtless, during this time, that reputation for hospitality and urbanity which is mentioned in his obituary notice was well deserved. After that, as time goes on, I see a shadow coming over him—destined to develop into utter blackness—which I cannot but think must have been reflected in his outward demeanour. He commits a good deal of his fears and troubles to his diary; there was no other outlet for them. He was unmarried, and his sister was not always with him. But I am much mistaken if he has told all that he might have told. A series of extracts shall be given:—

“Aug. 30, 1816.—The days begin to draw in more perceptibly than ever. Now that the Archdeaconry papers are reduced to order, I must find some further employment for the evening hours of autumn and winter. It is a great blow that Letitia’s health will not allow her to stay through these months. Why not go on with my Defence of Episcopacy? It may be useful.

“Sept. 15.—Letitia has left me for Brighton.

“Oct. 11.—Candles lit in the choir for the first time at evening prayers. It came as a shock: I find that I absolutely shrink from the dark season.

“Nov. 17.—Much struck by the character of the carving on my desk : I do not know that I had ever carefully noticed it before. My attention was called to it by an accident. During the Magnificat I was, I regret to gay, almost overcome with sleep. My hand was resting on the back of the carved figure of a cat which is the nearest to me of the three figures on the end of my stall. I was not aware of this, for I was not looking in that direction, until I was startled by what seemed a softness, a feeling as of rather rough and coarse fur, and a sudden movement, as if the creature were twisting round its head to bite me. I regained complete consciousness in an instant, and I have some idea that I must have uttered a suppressed exclamation, for I noticed that Mr. Treasurer turned his head quickly in my direction. The impression of the unpleasant feeling was so strong that I found myself rubbing my hand upon my surplice. This accident led me to examine the figures after prayers more carefully than I had done before, and I realised for the first time with what skill they are executed.

“Dec. 6.—I do indeed miss Letitia’s company. The evenings, after I have worked as long as I can at my Defence, are very trying. The house is too large for a lonely man, and visitors of any kind are too rare. I get an uncomfortable impression when going to my room that there is company of some kind. The fact is (I may as well formulate it to myself) that I hear voices. This, I am well aware, is a common symptom of incipient decay of the brain—and I believe that I should be less disquieted than I am if I had any suspicion that this was the cause. I have none—none whatever, nor is there anything in my family history to give colour to such an idea. Work, diligent work, and a punctual attention to the duties which fall to me is my best remedy, and I have little doubt that it will prove efficacious.

Jan. 1.—My trouble is, I must confess it, increasing upon me. Last night, upon my return after midnight from the Deanery, I lit my candle to go upstairs. I was nearly at the top when something whispered to me, ‘Let me wish you a happy New Year,’ I could not be mistaken: it spoke distinctly and with a peculiar emphasis. Had I dropped my candle, as I all but did, I tremble to think what the consequences must have been. As it was, I managed to get up the last flight, and was quickly in my room with the door locked, and experienced no other disturbance.

“Jan. 15.—I had occasion to come downstairs last night to my workroom for my watch, which I had inadvertently left on my table when I went up to bed. I think I was at the top of the last flight when I had a sudden impression of a sharp whisper in my ear “Take care.” I clutched the balusters and naturally looked round at once. Of course, there was nothing. After a moment I went on—it was no good turning back—but I had as nearly as possible fallen: a cat—a large one by the feel of it—slipped between my feet, but again, of course, I saw nothing. It may have been the kitchen cat, but I do not think it was.

“Feb. 27.—A curious thing last night, which I should like to forget. Perhaps if I put it down here I may see it in its true proportion. I worked in the library from about 9 to 10. The hall and staircase seemed to be unusually full of what I can only call movement without sound: by this I mean that there seemed to be continuous going and coming, and that whenever I ceased writing to listen, or looked out into the hall, the stillness was absolutely unbroken. Nor, in going to my room at an earlier hour than usual—about half-past ten—was I conscious of anything that I could call a noise. It so happened that I had told John to come to my room for the letter to the bishop which I wished to have delivered early in the morning at the Palace. He was to sit up, therefore, and come for it when he heard me retire. This I had for the moment forgotten, though I had remembered to carry the letter with me to my room. But when, as I was winding up my watch, I heard a light tap at the door, and a low voice saying, ‘May I come in?’ (which I most undoubtedly did hear), I recollected the fact, and took up the letter from my dressing-table, saying, ‘Certainly: come in.’ No one, however, answered my summons, and it was now that, as I strongly suspect, I committed an error: for I opened the door and held the letter out. There was certainly no one at that moment in the passage, but, in the instant of my standing there, the door at the end opened and John appeared carrying a candle. I asked him whether he had come to the door earlier; but am satisfied that he had not. I do not like the situation; but although my senses were very much on the alert, and though it was some time before I could sleep, I must allow that I perceived nothing further of an untoward character.”

With the return of spring, when his sister came to live with him for some months, Dr. Haynes’ entries become more cheerful, and, indeed, no symptom of depression is discernible until the early part of September, when he was again left alone. And now, indeed, there is evidence that he was incommoded again, and that more pressingly. To this matter I will return in a moment, but I digress to put in a document which, rightly or wrongly, I believe to have a bearing on the thread of the story.

The account-books of Dr. Haynes, preserved along with his other papers, show, from a date but little later than that of his institution as archdeacon, a quarterly payment of £25 to J.L. Nothing could have been made of this, had it stood by itself. But I connect with it a very dirty and ill-written letter, which, like another that I have quoted, was in a pocket in the cover of a diary. Of date or postmark there is no vestige, and the decipherment was not easy. It appears to run:—

“Dr Sr.

“I have bin expctin to her off you theis last wicks,and not Haveing done so must supose you have not got mine witch was saying how me and my man had met in with bad times this season all seems to go cross with us on the farm and which way to look for the rent we have no knowledge of it this been the sad case with us if you would have the great [liberality probably, but the exact spelling defies reproduction] to send fourty pounds otherwise steps will have to be took which I should not wish. Has you was the Means of me losing my place with Dr. Pulteney I think it is only just what I am asking and you know best what I could say if I was Put to it but I do not wish anything of that unpleasant Nature being one that always wish to have everything Pleasant about me.

“Your obedt Servt,

“Jane Lee.”

About the time at which I suppose this letter to have been written there is, in fact, a payment of £40 to JL.

We return to the diary :—

“Oct. 22.—At evening prayers, during the Psalms, I had that same experience which I recollect from last year. I was resting my hand on one of the carved figures, as before (I usually avoid that of the cat now), and—I was going to have said—a change came over it, but that seems attributing too much importance to what must, after all, be due to some physical affection in myself: at any rate, the wood seemed to become chilly and soft as if made of wet linen. I can assign the moment at which I became sensible of this. The choir were singing the words (Set thou an ungodly man to be ruler over him and) let Satan stand at his right hand.

“’The whispering in my house was more persistent tonight. I seemed not to be rid of it in my room. I have not noticed this before. A nervous man, which I am not, and hope I am not becoming, would have been much annoyed, if not alarmed, by it. The cat was on the stairs to-night. I think it sits there always. There is no kitchen cat.

“Nov. 15.—Here again I must note a matter I do not understand. I am much troubled in sleep. No definite image presented itself, but I was pursued by the very vivid impression that wet lips were whispering into my ear with great rapidity and emphasis for some time together. After this, I suppose, I fell asleep, but was awakened with a start by a feeling as if a hand were laid on my shoulder. To my intense alarm I found myself standing at the top of the lowest flight of the first staircase. The moon was shinng brightly enough through the large window to let me see that there was a large cat on the second or third step. I can make no comment. I ~crept up to bed again, I do not know how. Yes, mine is a heavy burden. [Then follows a line or two which has been scratched out. I fancy I read something like ‘acted for the best.’]”

Not long after this it is evident to me that the archdeacon’s firmness began to give way under the pressure of these phenomena. I omit as unnecessarily painful and distressing the ejaculations and prayers which, in the months of December and January, appear for the first time and become increasingly frequent. Throughout this time, however, he is obstinate in clinging to his post. Why he did not plead ill-health and take refuge at Bath or Brighton I cannot tell; my impression is that it would have done him no good; that he was a man who, if he had confessed himself beaten by the annoyances, would have succumbed at once, and that he was conscious of this. He did seek to palliate them by inviting visitors to his house, The result he has noted in this fashion :—

“Jan. 7.—I have prevailed on my cousin Allen to give me a few days, and he is to occupy the chamber next to mine.

“Jan. 8.—A still night. Allen slept well, but complained of the wind. My own experiences were as before: still whispering and whispering: what is it that he wants to say?

“Jan. 9.—Allen thinks this a very noisy house. He thinks, too, that my cat is an unusually large and fine specimen, but very wild.

“Jan. 10.—Allen and I in the library until 11. He left me twice to see what the maids were doing in the hall: returning the second time he told me he had seen one of them passing through the door at the end of the passage, and said if his wife were here she would soon get them into better order. I asked him what coloured dress the maid wore; he said grey or white. I supposed it would be so.

“Jan. 11.—Allen left me to-day. I must be firm.”

These words, I must be firm, occur again and again on subsequent days; sometimes they are the only entry. In these cases they are in an unusually large hand, and dug into the paper in a way which must have broken the pen that wrote them.

Apparently the archdeacon’s friends did not remark any change in his behaviour, and this gives me a high idea of his courage and determination. The diary tells us nothing more than I have indicated of the last days of his life. The end of it all must be told in the polished language of the obituary notice:—

“The morning of the 26th of February was cold and tempestuous. At an early hour the servants had occasion to go into the front hall of the residence occupied by the lamented subject of these lines. What was their horror upon observing the form of their beloved and respected master lying upon the landing of the principal staircase in an attitude which inspired the gravest fears. Assistance was procured, and an universal consternation was experienced upon the discovery that he had been the object of a brutal and a murderous attack. The vertebral column was fractured in more than one place. This might have been the result of a fall: it appeared that the stair-carpet was loosened at one point. But, in addition to this, there were injuries inflicted upon the eyes, nose and mouth, as if by the agency of some savage animal, which, dreadful to relate, rendered those features unrecognisable. The vital spark was, it is needless to add, completely extinct, and had been so, upon the testimony of respectable medical authorities, for several hours. The author or authors of this mysterious outrage are alike buried in mystery, and the most active conjecture has hitherto failed to suggest a solution of the melancholy problem afforded by this appalling occurrence.”

The writer goes on to reflect upon the probability that the writings of Mr. Shelley, Lord Byron, and M. Voltaire may have been instrumental in bringing about the disaster, and concludes by hoping, somewhat vaguely, that this event may “operate as an example to the rising generation”; but this portion of his remarks need not be quoted in full.

I had already formed the conclusion that Dr. Haynes was responsible for the death of Dr. Pulteney. But the incident connected with the carved figure of death upon the archdeacon’s stall was a very perplexing feature. The conjecture that it had been cut out of the wood of the Hanging Oak was not difficult, but seemed impossible to substantiate. However, I paid a visit to Barchester, partly with the view of finding out whether there were any relics of the woodwork to be heard of. I was introduced by one of the canons to the curator of the local museum, who was, my friend said, more likely to be able to give me information on the point than any one else. I told this gentleman of the description of certain carved figures and arms formerly on the stalls, and asked whether any had survived. He was able to show me the arms of Dean West and some other fragments. These, he said, had been got from an old resident, who had also once owned a figure—perhaps one of those which I was inquiring for. There was a very odd thing about that figure, he said. “The old man who had it told me that he picked it up in a wood-yard, whence he had obtained the still extant pieces, and had taken it home for his children. On the way home he was fiddling about with it and it came in two in his hands, and a bit of paper dropped out. This he picked up and, just noticing that there was writing on it, put it into his pocket, and subsequently into a vase on his mantelpiece. I was at his house not very long ago, and hap-pened to pick up the vase and turn it over to see whether there were any marks on it, and the paper fell into my hand. The old man, on my handing it to him, told me the story I have told you, and said I might keep the paper. It was crumpled and rather torn, so I have mounted it on a card, which I have here. If you can tell me what it means I shall be very glad, and also, I may say, a good deal surprised.”

He gave me the card. The paper was quite legibly inscribed in an old hand, and this is what was on it:—

“When I grew in the Wood
I was water’d w’th Blood
Now in the Church I stand
Who that touches me with his Hand
If a Bloody hand he bear
I councell him to be ware
Lest he be fetcht away
Whether by night or day,
But chiefly when the wind blows high
In a night of February.”

“This I drempt, 26 Febr. AO 1699, John Austin.”

“I suppose it is a charm or a spell: wouldn’t you call it something of that kind?” said the curator.

“Yes,” I said, “I suppose one might. What became of the figure in which it was concealed?”

“Oh, I forgot,” said he. “The old man told me it was so ugly and frightened his children so much that he burnt it.”

Winter Tales: “Smee”

Alfred McLelland Burrage, commonly known as A.M. Burrage, was a British writer born on July 1, 1889, in Hillingdon, Middlesex, England. He is best remembered for his ghost stories and supernatural fiction, though he began his career writing children’s literature under the pseudonym Frank Lelland. His notable works include a popular series called “Tufty” aimed at young readers. Burrage’s literary output was extensive, including historical fiction and romance, but he gained lasting fame for his ghost stories. His works often appeared in anthologies and were adapted for radio and television. “Smee” is one of his most famous stories, and it’s today’s feature while we crawl through the 12 Days of Christmas. Did you get your six geese a-laying, today?

‘No,’ said Jackson, with a deprecatory smile, ‘I’m sorry. I don’t want to upset your game. I shan’t be doing that because you’ll have plenty without me. But I’m not playing any games of hide-and-seek.’
It was Christmas Eve, and we were a party of fourteen with just the proper leavening of youth. We had dined well; it was the season for childish games, and we were all in the mood for playing them—all, that is, except Jackson. When somebody suggested hide-and-seek there was rapturous and almost unanimous approval. His was the one dissentient voice.
It was not like Jackson to spoil sport or refuse to do as others wanted. Somebody asked him if he were feeling seedy.
‘No,’ he answered, ‘I feel perfectly fit, thanks. But,’ he added with a smile which softened without retracting the flat refusal, ‘I’m not playing hide-and-seek.’
One of us asked him why not. He hesitated for some seconds before replying.
‘I sometimes go and stay at a house where a girl was killed through playing hide-and-seek in the dark. She didn’t know the house very well. There was a servants’ staircase with a door to it. When she was pursued she opened the door and jumped into what she must have thought was one of the bedrooms—and she broke her neck at the bottom of the stairs.’
We all looked concerned, and Mrs Fernley said:
‘How awful! And you were there when it happened?’
Jackson shook his head very gravely. ‘No,’ he said, ‘but I was there when something else happened. Something worse.’
‘I shouldn’t have thought anything could be worse.’
‘This was,’ said Jackson, and shuddered visibly. ‘Or so it seemed to me.’
I think he wanted to tell the story and was angling for encouragement. A few requests which may have seemed to him to lack urgency, he affected to ignore and went off at a tangent.
‘I wonder if any of you have played a game called “Smee”. It’s a great improvement on the ordinary game of hide-and-seek. The name derives from the ungrammatical colloquialism, “It’s me.” You might care to play if you’re going to play a game of that sort. Let me tell you the rules.
‘Every player is presented with a sheet of paper. All the sheets are blank except one, on which is written “Smee”. Nobody knows who is “Smee” except “Smee” himself—or herself, as the case may be. The lights are then turned out and “Smee” slips from the room and goes off to hide, and after an interval the other players go off in search, without knowing whom they are actually in search of. One player meeting another challenges with the word “Smee” and the other player, if not the one concerned, answers “Smee.”
‘The real “Smee” makes no answer when challenged, and the second player remains quietly by him.
Presently they will be discovered by a third player, who, having challenged and received no answer, will link up with the first two. This goes on until all the players have formed a chain, and the last to join is marked down for a forfeit. It’s a good noisy, romping game, and in a big house it often takes a long time to complete the chain. You might care to try it; and I’ll pay my forfeit and smoke one of Tim’s excellent cigars here by the fire until you get tired of it.’
I remarked that it sounded a good game and asked Jackson if he had played it himself. ‘Yes,’ he answered; ‘I played it in the house I was telling you about.’
‘And she was there? The girl who broke—‘
‘No, no,’ Mrs Fernley interrupted. ‘He told us he wasn’t there when it happened.’
Jackson considered. ‘I don’t know if she was there or not. I’m afraid she was. I know that there were thirteen of us and there ought only to have been twelve. And I’ll swear that I didn’t know her name, or I think I should have gone clean off my head when I heard that whisper in the dark. No, you don’t catch me playing that game, or any other like it, any more. It spoiled my nerve quite a while, and I can’t afford to take long holidays. Besides, it saves a lot of trouble and inconvenience to own up at once to being a coward.’
Tim Vouce, the best of hosts, smiled around at us, and in that smile there was a meaning which is sometimes vulgarly expressed by the slow closing of an eye. ‘There’s a story coming,’ he announced.
‘There’s certainly a story of sorts,’ said Jackson, ‘but whether it’s coming or not—‘ He paused and shrugged his shoulders.
‘Well, you’re going to pay a forfeit instead of playing?’
‘Please. But have a heart and let me down lightly. It’s not just a sheer cussedness on my part.’
‘Payment in advance,’ said Tim, ‘insures honesty and promotes good feeling. You are therefore sentenced to tell the story here and now.’
And here follows Jackson’s story, unrevised by me and passed on without comment to a wider public: Some of you, I know, have run across the Sangstons. Christopher Sangston and his wife, I mean.
They’re distant connections of mine—at least, Violet Sangston is. About eight years ago they bought a house between the North and South Downs on the Surrey and Sussex border, and five years ago they invited me to come and spend Christmas with them.
It was a fairly old house—I couldn’t say exactly of what period—and it certainly deserved the epithet ‘rambling.’ It wasn’t a particularly big house, but the original architect, whoever he may have been, had not concerned himself with economising in space, and at first you could get lost in it quite easily.
Well, I went down for that Christmas, assured by Violet’s letter that I knew most of my fellow-guests and that the two or three who might be strangers to me were all ‘lambs.’ Unfortunately, I’m one of the world’s workers, and couldn’t get away until Christmas Eve, although the other members of the party had assembled on the preceding day. Even then I had to cut it rather fine to be there for dinner on my first night. They were all dressing when I arrived and I had to go straight to my room and waste no time. I may even have kept dinner waiting a bit, for I was last down, and it was announced within a minute of my entering the drawing-room. There was just time to say ‘hullo’ to everybody I knew, to be briefly introduced to the two or three I didn’t know, and then I had to give my arm to Mrs Gorman.
I mention this as the reason why I didn’t catch the name of a tall, dark, handsome girl I hadn’t met before. Everything was rather hurried and I am always bad at catching people’s names. She looked cold and clever and rather forbidding, the sort of girl who gives the impression of knowing all about men and the more she knows of them the less she likes them. I felt that I wasn’t going to hit it off with this particular ‘lamb’ of Violet’s, but she looked interesting all the same, and I wondered who she was.
I didn’t ask, because I was pretty sure of hearing somebody address her by name before very long.
Unluckily, though, I was a long way off her at table, and as Mrs Gorman was at the top of her form that night I soon forgot to worry about who she might be. Mrs Gorman is one of the most amusing women I know, an outrageous but quite innocent flirt, with a very sprightly wit which isn’t always unkind. She can think half a dozen moves ahead in conversation just as an expert can in a game of chess. We were soon sparring, or, rather, I was ‘covering’ against the ropes, and I quite forgot to ask her in an undertone the name of the cold, proud beauty. The lady on the other side of me was a stranger, or had been until a few minutes since, and I didn’t think of seeking information in that quarter.
There was a round dozen of us, including the Sangstons themselves, and we were all young or trying to be. The Sangstons themselves were the oldest members of the party and their son Reggie, in his last year at Marlborough, must have been the youngest. When there was talk of playing games after dinner it was he who suggested ‘Smee.’ He told us how to play it just as I’ve described it to you.
His father chipped in as soon as we all understood what was going to be required of us. ‘If there are any games of that sort going on in the house,’ he said, ‘for goodness’ sake be careful of the back stairs on the first-floor landing. There’s a door to them and I’ve often meant to take it down. In the dark anybody who doesn’t know the house very well might think they were walking into a room. A girl actually did break her neck on those stairs about ten years ago when the Ainsties lived here.’
I asked how it happened.
‘Oh,’ said Sangston, ‘there was a party here one Christmas time and they were playing hide-and-seek as you propose doing. This girl was one of the hiders. She heard somebody coming, ran along the passage to get away, and opened the door of what she thought was a bedroom, evidently with the intention of hiding behind it while her pursuer went past. Unfortunately it was the door leading to the back stairs, and that staircase is as straight and almost as steep as the shaft of a pit. She was dead when they picked her up.’
We all promised for our own sakes to be careful. Mrs Gorman said that she was sure nothing could happen to her, since she was insured by three different firms, and her next-of-kin was a brother
whose consistent ill-luck was a byword in the family. You see, none of us had known the unfortunate girl, and as the tragedy was ten years old there was no need to pull long faces about it.
Well, we started the game almost immediately after dinner. The men allowed themselves only five minutes before joining the ladies, and then young Reggie Sangston went round and assured himself that the lights were out all over the house except in the servants’ quarters and in the drawing-room where we were assembled. We then got busy with twelve sheets of paper which he twisted into pellets and shook up between his hands before passing them round. Eleven of them were blank, and ‘Smee’ was written on the twelfth. The person drawing the latter was the one who had to hide. I looked and saw that mine was a blank. A moment later out went the electric lights, and in the darkness I heard somebody get up and creep to the door.
After a minute or so somebody gave a signal and we made a rush for the door. I for one hadn’t the least idea which of the party was ‘Smee.’ For five or ten minutes we were all rushing up and down
passages and in and out rooms challenging one another and answering, ‘Smee?—Smee!’
After a bit the alarums and excursions died down, and I guessed that ‘Smee’ was found. Eventually I found a chain of people all sitting still and holding their breath on some narrow stairs leading up to a row of attics. I hastily joined it, having challenged and been answered with silence, and presently two more stragglers arrived, each racing the other to avoid being last. Sangston was one of them, indeed it was he who was marked down for a forfeit, and after a little while he remarked in an undertone, ‘I think we’re all here now, aren’t we?’
He struck a match, looked up the shaft of the staircase, and began to count. It wasn’t hard, although we just about filled the staircase, for we were sitting each a step or two above the next, and all our heads were visible.
‘…nine, ten, eleven, twelve—thirteen‘ he concluded, and then laughed. ‘Dash it all, that’s one too many!’
The match had burned out and he struck another and began to count. He got as far as twelve, and then uttered an exclamation.
‘There are thirteen people here!’ he exclaimed. ‘I haven’t counted myself yet.’
‘Oh, nonsense!’ I laughed. ‘You probably began with yourself, and now you want to count yourself twice.’
Out came his son’s electric torch, giving a brighter and steadier light and we all began to count. Of course we numbered twelve.
Sangston laughed.
‘Well,’ he said, ‘I could have sworn I counted thirteen twice.’
From halfway up the stairs came Violet Sangston’s voice with a little nervous trill in it. ‘I thought there was somebody sitting two steps above me. Have you moved up, Captain Ransome?’
Ransome said that he hadn’t: he also said that he thought there was somebody sitting between Violet and himself. Just for a moment there was an uncomfortable Something in the air, a little cold ripple which touched us all. For that little moment it seemed to all of us, I think, that something odd and unpleasant had happened and was liable to happen again. Then we laughed at ourselves and at one another and were comfortable once more. There were only twelve of us, and there could only have been twelve of us, and there was no argument about it. Still laughing we trooped back to the drawingroom to begin again.
This time I was ‘Smee,’ and Violet Sangston ran me to earth while I was still looking for a hidingplace. That round didn’t last long, and we were a chain of twelve within two or three minutes.
Afterwards there was a short interval. Violet wanted a wrap fetched for her, and her husband went up to get it from her room. He was no sooner gone than Reggie pulled me by the sleeve. I saw that he was looking pale and sick.
‘Quick!’ he whispered, ‘while father’s out of the way. Take me into the smoke room and give me a brandy or a whisky or something.’
Outside the room I asked him what was the matter, but he didn’t answer at first, and I thought it better to dose him first and question him afterward. So I mixed him a pretty dark-complexioned brandy and soda which he drank at a gulp and then began to puff as if he had been running.
‘I’ve had rather a turn,’ he said to me with a sheepish grin.
‘What’s the matter?’
‘I don’t know. You were “Smee” just now, weren’t you? Well, of course I didn’t know who “Smee” was, and while mother and the others ran into the west wing and found you, I turned east. There’s a deep clothes cupboard in my bedroom — I’d marked it down as a good place to hide when it was my turn, and I had an idea that “Smee” might be there. I opened the door in the dark, felt round, and touched somebody’s hand. “Smee?” I whispered, and not getting any answer I thought I had found “Smee.”’
‘Well, I don’t know how it was, but an odd creepy feeling came over me, I can’t describe it, but I felt that something was wrong. So I turned on my electric torch and there was nobody there. Now, I
swear I touched a hand, and I was filling up the doorway of the cupboard at the time, so nobody could get out and past me.’ He puffed again. ‘What do you make of it?’ he asked.
‘You imagined that you had touched a hand,’ I answered, naturally enough.
He uttered a short laugh. ‘Of course I knew you were going to say that,’ he said. ‘I must have imagined it, mustn’t I?’ He paused and swallowed. ‘I mean, it couldn’t have been anything else but
imagination, could it?’
I assured him that it couldn’t, meaning what I said, and he accepted this, but rather with the philosophy of one who knows he is right but doesn’t expect to be believed. We returned together to the drawing-room where, by that time, they were all waiting for us and ready to start again.
It may have been my imagination—although I’m almost sure it wasn’t—but it seemed to me that all enthusiasm for the game had suddenly melted like a white frost in strong sunlight. If anybody had suggested another game I’m sure we should all have been grateful and abandoned ‘Smee.’ Only nobody did. Nobody seemed to like to. I for one, and I can speak for some of the others too, was oppressed with the feeling that there was something wrong. I couldn’t have said what I thought was wrong, indeed I didn’t think about it at all, but somehow all the sparkle had gone out of the fun, and hovering over my mind like a shadow was the warning of some sixth sense which told me that there was an influence in the house which was neither sane, sound nor healthy. Why did I feel like that?
Because Sangston had counted thirteen of us instead of twelve, and his son had thought he had touched somebody in an empty cupboard. No, there was more in it than just that. One would have laughed at such things in the ordinary way, and it was just that feeling of something being wrong which stopped me from laughing.
Well, we started again, and when we went in pursuit of the unknown ‘Smee,’ we were as noisy as ever, but it seemed to me that most of us were acting. Frankly, for no reason other than the one I’ve given you, we’d stopped enjoying the game. I had an instinct to hunt with the main pack, but after a few minutes, during which no ‘Smee’ had been found, my instinct to play winning games and be first if possible, set me searching on my own account. And on the first floor of the west wing following the wall which was actually the shell of the house, I blundered against a pair of human knees.
I put out my hand and touched a soft, heavy curtain. Then I knew where I was. There were tall, deeply-recessed windows with seats along the landing, and curtains over the recesses to the ground.
Somebody was sitting in a corner of this window-seat behind the curtain. Aha, I had caught ‘Smee’! So I drew the curtain aside, stepped in, and touched the bare arm of a woman.
It was a dark night outside, and, moreover, the window was not only curtained but a blind hung down to where the bottom panes joined up with the frame. Between the curtain and the window it was as dark as the plague of Egypt. I could not have seen my hand held six inches before my face, much less the woman sitting in the corner.
‘Smee?’ I whispered.
I had no answer. ‘Smee’ when challenged does not answer. So I sat beside her, first in the field, to await the others. Then, having settled myself I leaned over to her and whispered:
‘Who is it? What’s your name, “Smee”?’
And out of the darkness beside me the whisper came back: ‘Brenda Ford.’
I didn’t know the name, but because I didn’t know it I guessed at once who she was. The tall, pale, dark girl was the only person in the house I didn’t know by name. Ergo my companion was the tall, pale, dark girl. It seemed rather intriguing to be there with her, shut in between a heavy curtain and a window, and I rather wondered whether she was enjoying the game we were all playing. Somehow she hadn’t seemed to me to be one of the romping sort. I muttered one or two commonplace questions to her and had no answer.
‘Smee’ is a game of silence. ‘Smee’ and the person or persons who have found ‘Smee’ are supposed to keep quiet to make it hard for the others. But there was nobody else about, and it occurred to me that she was playing the game a little too much to the letter. I spoke again and got no answer, and then I began to be annoyed. She was of that cold, ‘superior’ type which affects to despise men; she didn’t like me; and she was sheltering behind the rules of a game for children to be dis-courteous.
Well, if she didn’t like sitting there with me, I certainly didn’t want to be sitting there with her! I half turned from her and began to hope that we should both be discovered without much more delay.
Having discovered that I didn’t like being there alone with her, it was queer how soon I found myself hating it, and that for a reason very different from the one which had at first whetted my annoyance.
The girl I had met for the first time before dinner, and seen diagonally across the table, had a sort of cold charm about her which had attracted while it had half angered me. For the girl who was with me, imprisoned in the opaque darkness between the curtain and the window, I felt no attraction at all. It was so very much the reverse that I should have wondered at myself if, after the first shock of the discovery that she had suddenly become repellent to me, I had had room in my mind for anything besides the consciousness that her close presence was an increasing horror to me.
It came upon me just as quickly as I’ve uttered the words. My flesh suddenly shrank from her as you see a strip of gelatine shrink and wither before the heat of a fire. That feeling of something being wrong had come back to me, but multiplied to an extent which turned foreboding into actual terror. I firmly believe that I should have got up and run if I had not felt that at my first movement she would have divined my intention and compelled me to stay, by some means of which I could not bear to think. The memory of having touched her bare arm made me wince and draw in my lips. I prayed that somebody else would come along soon.
My prayer was answered. Light footfalls sounded on the landing. Somebody on the other side of the curtain brushed against my knees. The curtain was drawn aside and a woman’s hand, fumbling in the darkness, presently rested on my shoulder. ‘Smee?’ whispered a voice which I instantly recognised as Mrs Gorman’s.
Of course she received no answer. She came and settled down beside me with a rustle, and I can’t describe the sense of relief she brought me.
‘It’s Tony, isn’t it?’ she whispered.
‘Yes,’ I whispered back.
‘You’re not “Smee” are you?’
‘No, she’s on my other side.’
She reached a hand across me, and I heard one of her nails scratch the surface of a woman’s silk gown.
‘Hullo, “Smee”! How are you? Who are you? Oh, is it against the rules to talk? Never mind, Tony, we’ll break the rules. Do you know, Tony, this game is beginning to irk me a little. I hope they’re not going to run it to death by playing it all the evening. I’d like to play some game where we can all be together in the same room with a nice bright fire.’
‘Same here,’ I agreed fervently.
‘Can’t you suggest something when we go down? There’s something rather uncanny in this particular amusement. I can’t quite shed the delusion that there’s somebody in this game who oughtn’t to be in at all.’
That was just how I had been feeling, but I didn’t say so. But for my part the worst of my qualms were now gone; the arrival of Mrs Gorman had dissipated them. We sat on talking, wondering from time to time when the rest of the party would arrive.
I don’t know how long elapsed before we heard a clatter of feet on the landing and young Reggie’s voice shouting, ‘Hullo! Hullo, there! Anybody there?’
‘Yes,’ I answered.
‘Mrs Gorman with you?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, you’re a nice pair! You’ve both forfeited. We’ve all been waiting you for hours.’
‘Why, you haven’t found “Smee” yet,’ I objected.
‘You haven’t, you mean. I happen to have been “Smee” myself.’
‘But “Smee’s” here with us,’ I cried.
‘Yes,’ agreed Mrs Gorman.
The curtain was stripped aside and in a moment we were blinking into the eye of Reggie’s electric torch. I looked at Mrs Gorman and then on my other side. Between me and the wall there was an empty space on the window seat. I stood up at once and wished I hadn’t, for I found myself sick and dizzy.
‘There was somebody there,’ I maintained, ‘because I touched her.’
‘So did I,’ said Mrs Gorman in a voice which had lost its steadiness. ‘And I don’t see how she could have got up and gone without our knowing it.’
Reggie uttered a queer, shaken laugh. He, too, had had an unpleasant experience that evening.
‘Somebody’s been playing the goat,’ he remarked. ‘Coming down?’
We were not very popular when we arrived in the drawing-room. Reggie rather tactlessly gave it out that he had found us sitting on a window-seat behind the curtain. I taxed the tall, dark girl with having pretended to be ‘Smee’ and afterwards slipping away. She denied it. After which we settled down and played other games. ‘Smee’ was done with for the evening, and I for one was glad of it.
Some long while later, during an interval, Sangston told me, if I wanted a drink, to go into the smoke room and help myself. I went, and he presently followed me. I could see that he was rather peeved with me, and the reason came out during the following minute or two. It seemed that, in his opinion, if I must sit out and flirt with Mrs Gorman—in circumstances which would have been considered highly compromising in his young days—I needn’t do it during a round game and keep everybody waiting for us.
‘But there was somebody else there,’ I protested, ‘somebody pretending to be “Smee.” I believe it was that tall, dark girl. Miss Ford, although she denied it. She even whispered her name to me.’
Sangston stared at me and nearly dropped his glass.
‘Miss Who? he shouted.
‘Brenda Ford—she told me her name was.’
Sangston put down his glass and laid a hand on my shoulder.
‘Look here, old man,’ he said, ‘I don’t mind a joke, but don’t let it go too far. We don’t want all the women in the house getting hysterical. Brenda Ford is the name of the girl who broke her neck on the stairs playing hide-and-seek here ten years ago.’

Winter Tales: “A Deadly Voyage” (4)

Fourth and last part of a Christmas ghost story by James Hume Nisbet. First part here. Second part here. Third part here.

Chapter IV. The End of the Voyage

The skipper of the Nancy Jane was a splendid hero, in spite of appearances being sadly against him. He was a little man, and about as broad as he was long, with an ignoble nose and small, red-rimmed blue eyes and uncouth hair and beard thickly grizzled with white. A rough “sea-dog” he was, with a hoarse pipe and a blasphemous tongue, who took his rum ashore with little water in it, and puffed almost incessantly at his blackly coloured meerschaum.

He had been cast away three times in his voyages, and once at least had tasted the flesh of his fellows when starvation had forced them to cast lots; he did not like to talk of that time, and always turned the conversation with a volley of oaths when reminded of it. But to his owners he was staunch as a bull-dog, and excused the sorry crew they gave him as far as a man given to hasty bursts of temper could.

His mates were pretty much of the same mould, fiery and faithful, and given to kicking the ignorant and incompetent wretches who made up their watch and left them all the responsibility and half of the serious work to do, yet they never reviled the guilty owners, because they had been trained to obedience; they took it out of the ignorant crew whom they had been forced to ship.

A sailor will love his vessel as he would his wife, if she is not a regular dead load, but no true-born seaman could entertain a moment’s respect, far less affection, for the kind of vessels which cross the Atlantic in search of timber; they are all labour without a point about them to admire, rotten to the core, full of leaks and discomfort, only fit to go—as they so often do—to the bottom, therefore, they—the men—feel no compunction when the charterer loads her ten or twenty feet above the deck and makes her look like the swampy tub that she is.

It is the custom of some sailors who have any articles they specially value to send them home by other ships before leaving port with their cargo, and then commending their souls to Providence; if they escape that voyage it has been more than they expected; yet such is their dog-like fidelity that they never blame their owners.

Richard Harris had a thought of running away from the Nancy Jane when he got to Halifax, only that the appearance of that country was not sufficiently tempting; besides, his friend Jeff had told him on the voyage out about the glories of South America, and the chances a man might have in Australia, so that he concluded to risk the voyage home and take another voyage in some southward bound vessel to a climate more genial.

When the Nancy Jane left Halifax, she was certainly more like a Noah’s Ark than a modern brigantine, with the wood piled on her deck ten feet above the bulwarks and the water almost flush with the deck; of course, he did not know the danger as the captain and mates did; it was only the outlandish appearance of the craft which struck him with dismay.

There seemed nothing ominous to his unprofessional eye in the way she leaned over as she got into the quiet waters; it was a greater discomfort than on the outward bound passage to find the decks so crammed up, which forced him to climb over the deals and made the forecastle dark and choking; it had been pretty bad before in that way, but now it was unendurable; the pumps also had to be started before they lifted the anchors, and this is not exactly the kind of exercise which even a lover of athletic sports likes to take constantly—it is decidedly monotonous as well as wearing.

However, the weather was calm and genial as they left port, with a clear sky overhead and a bright blue sea beyond. He would sleep on deck as much as possible during the passage, although, as Jeff remarked ruefully, there would not be many watches below for any of them, as one of the short-handed crew had deserted without his place being supplied.

He had written one letter home to Mary, telling her where to send her answer, so that he was looking forward to getting it when he reached Cardiff before his next voyage southward.

For five days the weather continued calm, with a fair light breeze which sent them along at a moderate rate and opened the seams of the hull terribly; and as the skipper saw the water rush out of the pump without diminishing the quantity in the hold, he swore and bullied the men and mates more than ever.

On the sixth day the wind freshened so that they had to reduce sail, and all hands were sent aloft for this purpose. Not being practical sailors, this operation was clumsily and slowly performed, for the men, besides being inexperienced, were completely worn out with their unremitting spells at the pumps, and weak with the horrible food served out to them.

When, with much stamping and bellowing, the sails were at last made right and the men could return to the pumps, the water had gained so much headway that the deck was about three inches covered, and with all their efforts they were not able to get it clear again. Then, all at once, the captain left off cursing, and became quite lamb-like in his behaviour, serving out to each of them a large tot of rum from his own cabin.

Before night the wind changed, and became a moderate gale; then they began to find out what that deck-load could do in the shape of damage, for while the timbers below rolled and groaned and cracked, the wood above broke from its moorings and smashed bulwarks and supports all to pieces. So darkness fell upon them, with an ocean rearing up in great breakers and washing over the loosened battens, which the men caught at despairingly, even although in the clinging two of them were crushed.

The skipper and mates gave no more orders; the hurricane took the management of that water-logged brigantine entirely in hand, and did its work dexterously and thoroughly; with a report like thunder the first mast snapped with all its gearing, and a few moments more the other followed suit, leaving a mass of wreckage hanging to the sides and half-submerged bow; it was the easiest-made wreck that one could have imagined, something like the breaking of a leper’s fingers.

Luckily for Richard Harris and his faithful chum, Jeff, they were together and hanging on to some battens, which kept their lashings and did not roll. The skipper was hanging on to the same mass, and he consoled them during the breathing pauses, after the waves had receded, by shouting cheerily but hoarsely:
“Keep up your hearts, my lads, and hang on. The old hulk won’t sink any further to-night; she’s got her belly filled, and the wood will keep her floating for a spell.”

It was an awful night for all that, but only the prelude to greater horrors. In a properly manned and properly loaded water-tight vessel, the storm was nothing to have alarmed any seaman, for they had good sea room, and the wind was only a stiff one, but upon this water-logged, rotten hulk, which ought to have been broken up before Dick was born, but which had been sent to sea voyage after voyage with only the most superficial patching, it was the same as if they had been clinging to a lead-weighted log; the waves had their free fling, and rushed over this impediment in their career with resistless force.

So on it raged all through the long hours of darkness, the wind shrieking through and tossing the wreckage about, until they whistled and cracked like whipcord; the loose deals rolling about as the ship swayed before each swamping mass of water which rushed on and washed over them every few minutes, while beneath them they could feel the hull shaking and the supports parting as the water sludged and sobbed about them, without a ray of light to cheer them.

Dick knew that his darky friend was with him, though they could not see each other, for as each wave swept over, he felt his strong wet arm holding on, and when again the heavy brine went over him and choked him, that consciousness of friendship kept some of the heat in his heart.

At last daylight broke, and they could look round upon their disaster, for the wind had lulled a bit and the waves were more settled.

What they saw was a wide ocean, slate-tinted and covered with foam-flecks, with a cold grey sky bulging with spent and lank-looking clouds all torn to tatters as they trailed their dirty rags in front of the gathering light.

The captain and second mate, with a Swede sailor, were all that remained of the crew, with the exception of Dick and his friend Jeff. One man lay under a mass of fallen battens, with his body crushed and only his head and shoulders showing out; the others had been washed overboard.

The vessel herself was under water, with only the moorings of the deck-loading keeping them to her, that and the wreckage of the two masts which still floated by the lee-side.

There was no getting below for provisions, for the timber blocked up the way completely; they were prisoners on a water-logged wreck, without the prospect of a meal, a drink, or even a smoke, for the matches and tobacco which they had in their pockets were saturated.

“This reminds me of the time I was aboard the Caledonia, and about the same parts, I reckon,” gasped the captain weakly, as he crawled on his knees and looked round. They were all weak with the cruel buffeting they had received during the night, and could not have raised one of those loose battens even by their united efforts, far less the mass which lay between them and the submerged timbers.

“We were nineteen days on that blessed wreck without grub, and only two of us were picked up alive. Ah! no, this blooming wreck will float most likely for the next six weeks, long enough to make mummies of the whole bilin’ of us.”

“Ye had grub that trip, old man,” answered the second mate, with an ugly short laugh of despair.

“Shut up, Jack Williams; stow your jaw about them times,” growled the captain harshly.

“What’s the good? Wasn’t I in the Francis Speight on her last voyage?” answered the mate, burying his face in his hands, with a dismal groan. “That’s what we must all come to sooner or later in this accursed trade.”

Richard Harris could not comprehend these dark words, but he shuddered as he heard them, with even greater disgust than he had done at the broaching of the first cask of pickled provisions.

Days passed over their heads in this horrible circumscribed prison, and never a sail or wreath of smoke broke the even line of that distant horizon, while they grew weaker and more helpless each day, until at last they all were waiting for death, past even the desire to keep a watch.

Several times had the captain and second mate made a motion as if to get down to that deal-crushed sailor, but with a frightened glance at each other and a shiver of disgust, they sank again upon their backs and looked blankly at the sky.

Fortunately for them, beyond a couple of rainy days, the weather was fine if cold; they lay and let the rain soak into them and felt the better for it, although after it was clear again the most acute of agonies racked their bones.

On the eighth day Jeff Johnson fell to kissing the passive Richard, under the fancy that it was a sweetheart he was with. Jeff’s delirium was an amiable one, for, although extravagant in his language and flowery, he was chivalrous and respectful in the extreme; the Swede yelled out a chantry in his own Norse tongue, while the captain and mate held independent conversations which no one listened to. Then Dick began to dream that he was once more at home, the owner of a fortune, with Mary Gray still waiting for him. Even starvation on the wreck of an over-loaded timber ship has its intervals of exquisite surcease and pleasure, as the victims of the Inquisition had when Nature gave way.

*****

When Dick woke up next he found himself in a comfortable second-class bunk on board of a Cunard steam-packet, with his faithful friend Jeff sitting beside him; they had been rescued just in time.

Being young, and naturally strong, he was very quickly able to take his place at the table, and soon, with the others, became the centre of attraction on deck.

Of course, the first questions asked were their individual names, and when Dick had given his, a grey-bearded, sun-dried passenger stepped over to him and said:

“I knew a man once out in Australia called Richard Harris—was he any friend of yours, young fellow?”

“My father’s name was Richard Harris, and he was a squatter in Australia,” answered Dick quietly.
“What part?”
“Waratah was the name of his station, on the Murrumbidgee River.”
“But I don’t understand why you are in this plight, for your father died a wealthy man—of that I am certain, for I was a neighbour of his out there at the time of his death.”

Richard told his new friend his story from beginning to end, how he had been sent to an English school when quite young and afterwards consigned to Mr. John Dagget.

When the ex-squatter, who was returning from America, where he had bought an estate, heard of the doings of the accomplished John Dagget, he swore a mighty bush oath that he would see the son of his old friend righted if there was law to be had in England.

“It isn’t hard-up sailors and broken hearted widows this shipowner has to deal with now, but a man who can plank down dollar for dollar with him. Keep up your pecker, my son, you’ll get both your own money back and your Mary.”

And he was as good as his word; for when they reached England he set to work with that energy which marks Australians when they are after money, and makes them so much alike to Americans. John Dagget fought bravely for his land as long as he could and held out doggedly to the last, but on the eve of the trial he disgorged, with a virtuous air, and so quashed exposure and sadly disappointed his opponent, who, being on the war-trail, wanted to have it out to the bitter end.

Mary Gray, through unguardedly expressing sympathy in the cause of Dick, got her instant and ignominious dismissal from Federation Hall, another false step of the shipowner, because it brought her not only to the arms of her fortunate lover, but also to his friend the squatter, who no sooner heard her story than he went on the new scent and never rested until her poor uncle had restored fortune number two.

Then this combative Australian took up the cause of the widows of drowned seamen and harried the repose of the owner of Federation Hall so much, that Father Time soon laid his flour bag over his head, leaving visible white traces on that magnificent black beard and wavy tresses.

There was no pleasure in sailing ships with a spy like this hovering about, looking after the provisions and forcing honest ship-owners to pay up full wages, so that finally Mr. John Dagget disposed of his lucrative business and retired to that paradise of the good Americans—Paris, where I believe he still resides, as amiable and bland as of yore.

I don’t know if he dreams any more as he did on that Christmas Eve after his good dinner; I know that Richard Harris does, in fact his whole life is a dream—the continuation of that starvation dream on board of the Nancy Jane—and the best I wish him is that he may never waken from it.

That ebon-skinned Jeff Johnson is in the dream also, and when anyone speaks about the ocean he says, with a broad grin:
“No, boys, nebber to sea no more for this chile, while I have Master Dick’s hosses to look after.”

Happy New Year!

Winter Tales: “A Deadly Voyage” (3)

Third part of a Christmas ghost story by James Hume Nisbet. First part here. Second part here.

Chapter III. To Halifax, Nova Scotia

The misanthrope, who has a limited income and an indifferent digestion—for both these causes tend towards making a Timon of a man—may fly to the country and solitude, but when a man is gifted with youth, and the digestive faculties of a goat, without the wherewithal to gratify it, it is not the country he makes for, but the crowded streets of some city where at least he may have company, if nothing else.

Richard Harris on the 17th of January found himself within sight of the lights of Cardiff in the midst of a snow-storm, penniless, shirtless, and famishing.

He had asserted his manhood on that Christmas Eve, and greatly surprised as well as disappointed his magnificent patron, the consequence being that, as the church bells announced the anniversary of the birthday of the Saviour of Mankind, their joyous pealing rang out on the frosty air and greeted him as a wanderer and an outcast.

His refusal to corroborate his patron’s statement did not benefit the widows in the slightest degree, nor did Mr. John Dagget lose his self-possession or depart from his customary urbanity of manner; he merely held up his shapely, well-trimmed hand as a signal of silence to the rash young man before anything very criminating could be uttered, touched the bell, and when James appeared asked him politely to show Mr. Richard Harris to the outer door, and never to admit him again on any pretext whatever; then without another glance either at the unfortunate object who had been so promptly dismissed, or at the black-draped women who stood before him, he turned once more courteously to the clergyman, and repeated his false statements in an impressive and upright manner, which would have completely convinced his Reverence had not the proffered donation to the cause of charity done so already.

The six widows having no appeal except by the expensive process of law, and no moral support, now that the church had “gone over” to the enemy, took the pound apiece, which John Dagget offered as a Christmas gift, and their departure, shortly after Richard had taken his, leaving Mr. Penwiper to discuss the matter more at length with his gentlemanly host, over a cigar and a glass of wine.

Young Dick Harris managed to get, along with his overcoat, a parting interview with Mary Gray; what they said or did during that interview has no business with the present stage of this story; the effect of it, however, was that for the first few miles of his tramp, he felt warm and hopeful, and did not mind the icy air in the least.

When morning dawned, however, he found himself on a country road, rather cold and miserable, for he had walked all night, and also extremely hungry. Then he looked at his purse and discovered there thirty-five shillings, which for a moment he meditated upon throwing away, but afterwards thought better of it, which was a good thing for him as it carried him on until New Year’s Day.

This sum might have lasted him longer, only that, as yet, he was strange to the ways of catering for himself, and having always gone to good hotels, when travelling with the shipowner, he now went quite naturally to those places when he wanted anything, thereby paying the highest price and getting the smallest equivalent in return.

His watch and chain he parted with to the landlord of one of these village inns for a pound, a supper and a night’s lodging; he might have pawned them easily for ten or twelve pounds, but there were no pawn-shops near at the time, and he would have been ashamed to have entered such a place at this stage of his journey, therefore he accepted what was offered to him.

He tried his hardest as he went along to get work to do, but no one wanted an extra hand; indeed, he saw that the whole country was swarming with tradesmen and labourers out of work, as well as with professional tramps who pretended to want employment.

So the days passed over him, his pound melting to coppers, and then these also dissolved, after which he learnt, from stray acquaintances, picked up as he went along, how to raise money on his clothes.

His overcoat went, then his shirt, vest and underclothing, for the hunger was harder to stand than the cold. His boots also, with coat and trousers, the last left, seemed to wear out and look shabby with magical quickness; they had been a gentlemanly suit when he quitted Federation Hall, for he had taken time to change himself into his ordinary morning costume before leaving, but now they were out at elbows and down at heel, while the hat looked as if it had been worn for years with the rough weather he had gone through, and the sleeping in all sorts of odd places; he looked at last like a tramp, and hard necessity was swiftly tearing from him his high-flown notions and morbid shyness.

He had some vague idea of making his way to London, but outside of Monmouth town he fell in with a negro, also on the tramp, who was working his way on the chance of getting a ship at Cardiff, he having been paid off at Liverpool, and after spending his money there had been forced to take to the road.

Jeff Johnson was the name on this coloured man’s discharge papers, where he had been entered as a fireman, and when Richard met him they were both at a par as regards habiliments and funds, but Jeff was a cheerful and a mendicant negro who did not permit many chances to go by either to beg, borrow, or steal, and as he took it into his head to patronize this impecunious young man, it was by his advice that Richard also turned his thoughts towards Cardiff, and the getting of a ship to take him out of England.

He told Dick that if he wanted a ship, he must pretend to be a Dutchman, or what was better, said he would introduce him to a crimp-house that he knew, where the landlord would find them lodgings and a ship for a good discount from their advance wages.

Jeff Johnson proved a good, if darkly-coloured, angel to him, for he had pawned the last article of wearing apparel which he could spare, and spent the proceeds the day before, and as he did not yet know how to beg, he must perforce have starved but for his companion.

Jeff begged that first night for them both, and the next day taught him one or two choruses of sea-songs, so that whenever they came to a village, they sang their way through it, and generally managed to get enough to house them for the night, with something to eat.

At Newport they stayed a couple of days, and did fairly well in their new profession, while under the cheerful influence of this happy son of Africa, the miles seemed to shorten and the cold grow less intense. Richard Harris had fairly turned his back on the refinements of civilization as represented at Federation Hall, while his shame fell from him like filthy rags, and he was now pretty well prepared to do anything, except rob widows, for the sake of a square meal. Mary would not have recognised her chivalrous lover had she seen this grimy-looking beggar with his black mate singing for their bread through the streets of Newport.

The snowstorm was at its wildest as the pair of starving, thinly-clad wretches crept into Cardiff, and only for Jeff’s kindly help the youth would have lain down amongst the drifts a dozen of times during the last half-dozen miles, but Jeff was strong of limb, with plenty of warm blood in him, despite all the privations he had gone through, and so he urged Richard along, with his sable arms round the lad’s waist, part of the way, and an oath now and again breaking from his thick blue lips by way of comfort; that last half-dozen miles of beating together through the driving snow, made the oddly-joined pair chums for life.

Down by the wharf Jeff found his friend, the Dutch lodging-housekeeper, tout and crimp, and after a little aside talk, introduced Richard as his mate. After this, they had supper and lodgings on the credit system, their landlord promising to get them both a ship as soon as possible.

There was a strike going on at the time amongst the legitimate firemen and seamen, so that their chances were fairly good to be supplied soon, provided they were not Union men, and were willing to go at a reduced rate, this to Dick’s inexperienced mind seemed fair enough considering that he had never been to sea before; he was too hungry and cold to take anything into consideration except his supper that night, and the next morning he was too far in the power of the landlord to be able to object to whatever he liked to propose.

The next forenoon, the landlord brought two seamen’s rig-outs to them, of the roughest and cheapest description, and which he marked down to their debit at the highest rates; a pair of trousers, monkey-jacket and two coarse flannel shirts, also a cap; this was the complete outfit for the voyage, but as beggars could not be choosers, Richard was grateful enough to have them even at the price. The landlord also informed them that there were two vessels ready for loading, one a timber ship bound for Halifax, and the other a steamer bound for Quebec. Jeff could ship if he liked as fireman on board the steamer, or as A.B. on board the other, where there was an opening for Dick as ordinary hand.

Without a pause, Jeff decided to ship along with his lately found friend, even although by doing so, he was taking a post for which he was not qualified, as well as going for less wages. The A.B. certificates, this convenient landlord provided along with the suit of clothes, as well as one for Richard Harris, who now discovered that his sailing name was to be James Thompson, while Jeff was transformed into one Eric Van Dorn, foreigners having a much more likely chance than Englishmen to get a ship, although the owners did not object so strictly to the nationality of boys or ordinary hands.

A couple of hours afterwards, they were entered on the books of the Nancy Jane, outward bound with coal to Halifax, with a return load of timber to Cardiff, and while the landlord pocketed the greater part of their allowance notes for debts contracted, they were sent off to help in the loading, men being short at the wharfs.

Richard with his stalwart negro friend and several other half-starved scare-crows, had to battle their passage to and from the office, through crowds of hungry legitimate seamen, who were left unemployed because, unfortunately for them, they had the misfortune to be born free Englishmen, therefore they were to be punished for this accident of birth, by these free born English shipowners.

When the stoppages were explained fully to him, Richard Harris felt mean enough to be exempted from the despised title, but as he had taken the wages of a slave, he could no longer avoid the contract without further dishonour, therefore he slunk down alongside of his sable friend, and was very quickly about as tawny with the coal dust which so completely covered his blushes.

He was not very long in discovering the difference between holding a pen at the shipowner’s desk and hauling in a coal basket on board the ship itself, happily for him he had been fond of athletic sports, and his past privations rendered him not too particular, and as he knew that hands were not likely to be considered out at sea, he did his best not to wince at the raw places but worked with a will.

His comrades, with the exception of Jeff, were not much better at the task than he was himself, and many a narrow escape he had of loaded baskets coming down by the run on his head as the inexperienced loaders let the ropes slip through their wounded hands, while the unemployed regular men sat on the quay smoking and laughing over the mishaps.

It being a strike time, the blacklegs were exceedingly well treated by the owners, breakfasts, dinners, and suppers provided, with as much fresh beef, roasted and boiled, with potatoes and vegetables given and as much beer as they could swallow. To be a subordinate of the shipowners, during that strike at Cardiff, was to be a man replete with the good things of life, while the men who were fighting for their rights, with their wives and children, were famishing. Verily hunger is the grandest test of a hero.

The slaves of Sparta were surfeited with good things, while the children of the free men waited upon them fasting, this was how they were trained to be heroes, so the strikers waited upon the slavish blacklegs, of whom Richard Harris felt himself to be one of the vilest, and went fasting but resolute, free born Englishmen. As on Christmas Eve when the voice of his Mary could not raise his spirits, so until the anchors were raised and the Welsh hills receded from his view, the jokes of the light-hearted Jeff Johnson failed to lift him out of the valley of humiliation, it seemed to him that so long as he required to eat so must he sink his young manhood in the mire.

These were the sensations of a chivalrous boy of course, who had read a great deal and who had once possessed a trusting and true man as a father, but who had been driven through force of circumstances into the hard plains of daily battle; perhaps we all felt that way once ourselves before our weapons were blunted. I should be sorry for the veteran, who, like Mr. John Dagget, has not; it may be good in a pecuniary sense, yet desperately bad for the man in all other senses who has not been able to feel as Richard Harris at the age of nineteen felt.

After leaving England, with that load of carelessly trimmed coal on board of the Nancy Jane, he had not much leisure for emotions of any other kind, excepting the sensations of cold, hunger, nausea, and fatigue.

The vessel had not been docked since her last load of timber, so that she was leaking almost at every seam which required the pumps going constantly day and night, and as they were short handed, with only one or two properly qualified seamen on board, the labour was excessive and unremitting; luckily they had fairly good weather all the way in spite of the season, otherwise they must have foundered.

The fresh roast and boiled beef came to an untimely end after they were clear of the land and the casks which were broached after that were not such as might have tempted a devotee to break his fast. Dick had never been an epicure, few healthy young men are at that age, indeed he had often in his mind thought how splendid it would be to go as an explorer, and brave starvation, but at the first sniff he had at the newly broached cask of salt beef, he took vegetarian vows as far as he was able to take them with the only other thing left him as a diet, the biscuit. The others might poison themselves if they liked with that putrid meat, he resolved to stick to the only fresh meats to be had on board, which were, the multitudinous maggots that were hatched in the weevilly and stale biscuits.

Over the Atlantic these brave and dauntless heroes rolled, keeping down the water with super-human efforts; with good captain and mates, for if they blasphemed and kicked and bullied, it was no more than human nature could expect, with such an incompetent crew on board. These hardy tars, who ventured upon each voyage as the gladiators of old did the arena, passing before their tyrant owners with, “We salute thee, we are about to die.”

They had a fair run over, considering all things, from England to Nova Scotia, and at last could take a breathing spell at Halifax while the ship discharged cargo and took in her fresh load; with the men Richard Harris went ashore, and there enjoyed his first comfortable meal since leaving Cardiff.

See you tomorrow for the ending.

Winter Tales: “A Deadly Voyage” (2)

Second part of a Christmas ghost story by James Hume Nisbet. First part here.

Chapter II. John Dagget’s Dream

It is a much discussed question amongst psychologists how long a space of actual time it takes a dream of months or even years to occupy. Some say a minute is sufficiently long, others insist that the instant before waking is the longest time required; a dreamer may seem to fill out with crowded incidents the whole night through, and yet actually only dream a second.

Between the dropping of his three-parts consumed cigar from his relaxing fingers, as the soothing strain of distant music sent him to sleep, Mr. John Dagget had a very long and troubled dream—nightmare I suppose it ought to be called, since he had forgotten to take his customary glass of Benedictine. When he had last glanced drowsily at the time piece, it was a quarter to nine, when he woke up with a gasping yell and the perspiration rolling in large icy drops from his smooth brow and aquiline nose, the minute hand was pointing at seven minutes to the same hour, so that he had exactly been occupied eight minutes in the falling asleep, sleeping and waking up.

The first portion of the dream was pleasant rather than otherwise to a man of his temperament, but as it progressed, it grew in intensity and horror, an orthodox Christmas Eve dream with a grand climax.

He saw himself as a boy at school, liked by all his school-mates for his good looks and animal strength and spirits, and chuckled as he took advantage of this affection and fidelity to gather in and cheat them out of their pocket money. Then from school days he passed to his courting season and again he chuckled unctuously at the advantages his fine appearance and plausible tongue gave him over less fortunate rivals; his life hitherto had been one continued march of triumph, with a heavy baggage of loot. How easy and cheaply it had been for him to hood-wink his own relations as well as a confiding world, and keep up the character of being a “King amongst men” for good nature and generosity; the house he took from one sister under the plea that all he wanted was to be able to vote, the five hundred pounds he wheedled out of his grandmother, just before her death in order that she might get better interest for it, the legacy he borrowed from his other sister, the mother of Mary, and forgot to pay back again; the ease with which he smoothed all difficulties out of his way as he went on suavely, so that even that wronged sister thought him the proper trustee for her daughter and her fortune. At this stage of his retrospective vision, it felt as if the soul of the man was congratulating the shark-like spirit of the boy upon his early development in smart tricks.

His bride in her first infatuation smiled upon him tenderly as she placed her money-bags implicitly under his entire control and enabled him to launch out into big speculations, such as the buying up of rotten ships, and the provisioning of them with putrid meat from the condemned stores of Government, all unquestioned by law, and good enough for the poor wretches who were sent to their death by this plausible and dreaming ogre; again he chuckled contentedly as the record of ship after ship missing passed before him; he did not want to see them again with their putrid stores and rotten planks, let the scurvy-devoured wretches gnaw at each other on their bare raft, or go to the bottom with the leaky over-laden craft on which they had been simple enough to trust themselves, so long as he got the insurance offices to pay up the full value for a sound ship, good stores and that over weight of cargo; better that they should all drown if on the return voyage, for then he could defraud the widows out of their dead husbands’ wages in addition to his other clear profits.

A splendid part of the dream this, for it tickled the fancy to think how much easier it was to cheat the widows and fatherless children than it had been even to gull his school-mates and relations; all he had to say was that the drowned men had drawn the greater portion of their wages in advance to spend in debauchery in foreign parts and then pay what he pleased to the poor starving applicants, as a kind of charity, besides robbing the dead of the respect of their widows, all matters of congratulation and profit so far.

Some of the widows made by the foundering of his last ship were coming that night, headed by the clergyman, to appeal to him. One of them had received a letter posted before her husband sailed, in a foreboding spirit and telling her what was due to him. Well let them come, he was prepared with his cooked books to make that dead man out a liar and so save a clear twenty pounds; he had also his creature and dependent Richard Harris upstairs to back him out, for he had posted him carefully up to his duty that afternoon. As it was Christmas Eve, he would hood-wink the pastor by giving a ten-pound cheque to the deserving poor of his parish, and distribute another five pounds as charity amongst the widows, who came clamouring at the heels of the clergyman, so he would get his name up for benevolence and save five pounds from the one man, besides the entire wages of the rest of the crew. Not much for a man of his position, yet even the discount on a shilling must be considered in a business like his.

Richard Harris, the son of that old schoolmate who had followed him about like a dog at school, and who had trusted him blindly to the last, although he had cheated him wholesale then, who had been so happy and satisfied to lose even his pocket money as long as he, John Dagget, condescended to notice him or give him a friendly pat on the shoulder, who afterwards went out squatting in Australia and realized a limited fortune—forty thousand pounds, and was foolish enough to entrust his son and money to the tender mercies of this black-bearded wolf; ah! it was almost too funny to this dreamer to see old Dick Harris and his sister Nell Gray putting their lambkins into his claws with all their own wool, forty thousand the one, thirty thousand the other, trusted to him alone without a check, to do with and manage as he liked.

He had brought his dream down to the present day, where all was prosperity and comfort. Never once had he been stopped in his career. The bank respected him, for he had a balance to his credit there which would inspire respect from a bank to any man, he was in perfect health, with an appetite for moderate enjoyment which he was too keen-witted to spoil by over-indulgence, he stood high with the church, for a little charity spreads out very far with these simple-minded disposers of that article; he was firm in his principles of the rights of employers over the rights of employés, so that he was trusted by his confederates as a right good man, with an impressive manner, an imposing presence, a heavy bank account and a keen brain; he had good books, good pictures, good statuary because he had good advisers, a perfect cook and tailor, with tobacconist and wine merchant sans reproche; what more did the man require who had no Parliamentary aspirations, who had only one ambition and that was to rake in the shekels!

He had no reason to congratulate himself on his smartness or business capacity, as he entered upon the second portion of his eight minutes’ dream. Like Dante when visiting the Inferno, he could only look and wonder as procession after procession of drowned sailors, with their despairing wives and children swept before him, all pointing at him and shrieking the words: “Murderer” and “Thief” as a chorus, that is the sailors cried “Thief” and the wives wailed “Murderer” as each crowd thought of the wrong nearest to them.

Yet this did not disturb him over much, for he had heard the terms often before, and as for the spectres, his soul was impervious to the influence of such airy shapes.

His sister passed with a cry “Restore”; his grandmother passed him with downcast head as one ashamed; his mother trailed her feet as if heavily ironed; his wife looked at him with fixed and stony eyes as one who looks upon a hated enemy.

At last from the abyss from which they were all passing forth, came his friend and former school-mate Richard Harris, with eyes in which horror and appeal were strangely blended; unlike the others he did not pass on, but rushing forward caught the sleeper by the hand, shouting as he used to do in the dormitory when the usher was coming.

“They have found you out, Jack; come with me and I’ll make you safe.”

With that intuitive instinct of dreamers, he now knew that his robberies of Richard and Mary were known, and with a convulsive clutch at the spectre hand of his friend he turned to go with him, that horror of the night-mare-haunted for the first time laying hold of him.

He had no fear of his old school friend, although he had outraged his trust, for he had been in the habit of wronging all his friends and yet being received kindly by them and trusted. It was part of his fine physique and goodly presence to be so trusted, and he took it all for granted as his just due when in a dilemma.

“This way,” whispered his old friend, as he led the way down an alley and into a deserted house; “you must disguise yourself, put on this rough seaman’s suit, and I’ll get you on board the first outward-bound.”

His aesthetic tastes revolted against this suit of coarse serge, but not so much as at the wanton clipping short of his fine black beard, which followed shortly afterwards, yet it had to be endured, for he knew by instinct that outraged justice was after him.

Then he was smuggled on board a ship as a Federation recruit; the sailors looked askance at this fresh-water hand, who did not even know the correct way to come aboard, but he did not mind that, he was safe for a time.

By and bye the captain entered upon his duties and the moorings were loosed, then he knew that he was upon his own next outward-bound, leaky hulk, about which this very skipper had warned him as being untrustworthy for a single voyage, and on board of which were his most ancient and latest stores of provisions; some of the salt meat and pork were twenty years old and had been specially scraped and resalted for this vessel by his own orders; as this thought occurred to him, with the receding shores of old England, his horror became accentuated and the clammy sweat began to start upon his face.

He who had been so long accustomed to the best of everything, to be forced for hunger’s sake to feed upon that scurvy-producing and rankly-pickled pork and beef with the weevilly biscuits which he knew were all the forecastle hands could get; when he thought upon this dire disaster and reconsidered the information which he had received about the gaping condition of the decayed planks, he almost wished that a storm would rise in the Channel and land them upon the Goodwin Sands, or founder them in the Bay of Biscay.

It seemed to him that days had passed while he wallowed in the poisoned atmosphere of the forecastle, too sick even to heed the kickings he received from the legitimate seamen when he would not get up to help them in their hard duties of pumping out that everlasting filling hold; a fierce gnawing of morbid hunger pervaded his whole being which would not be controlled even by the horrible nausea which the smell from the putrid mess produced.

Strong men round him were already beginning to cast their teeth, with their gums and limbs becoming swollen and helpless, still that fierce gnawing of hunger tore up his vitals like rusty knives; he must eat, even if the punishment were death.

The apprentice boy, a lank and languid skeleton, came down the fok’s’le steps with the men’s allowance, holding the dish with one feeble hand and the other clutching his nose to keep the deadly fumes from entering. Each hungry man as he reached out a lank hand for his share, held with the other his nostrils firmly closed while he bolted the allowance with shut eyes so as not to see its colour.

The dreamer could no longer keep his fast. With a wolfish eye he watched the lad advance, then for the moment the deadly fumes overcame him, but ravenously he reached out his hand and clutched the meagre and foul allotment.

What was it — beef, pork, or compressed weeds? It looked like boiled grass in colour, like nothing he had ever experienced before for odour; he, the epicure and sybarite! But his appetite was like that of the starving wolf, he must take it whatever it was.

As he approached that lump of putrid, twenty-year-old, thrice round the world, pickled condiment, his pampered heart grew sick and faint within him, and the perspiration rolled in huge beads from his craven brow. Spectres of drowned victims! he would have hailed the myriad of accusing victims rather than that one small lunch. Nearer, nearer, the agony of the damned is in him as it approaches his lips, and he has not the manliness to close his eyes and nostrils. With a huge uplifting of his whole inward man as when the demon of a nightmare is about to touch one, he flung the loathed lump from him, and awoke.

Seven minutes to nine o’clock! That dream had filled out a long life-time.

The yell with which he sprang from his chair was not a very loud one, so that it had not disturbed the high-bred equanimity of James the footman as with a double knock at the door he entered with the coffee and cognac for his master.

He did not appear to notice the rather wild appearance of his master as he passed him, but turned his back to the well-padded chair, as he, James, arranged the coffee-pot and cup on the table; by the time he had arranged this to his satisfaction, the shipowner had recovered his presence of mind, wiped the damp dew from his forehead, and was, like Richard III., himself again.

“There’s a party as is enquiring for you, sir, as I’ve told to wait for the present in the ’all. The parson, with a string of women dressed in black behind him, widders per usual I should say they was.”

James is a privileged person, he has often seen widows waiting there for an audience before, and his master generally cracks a joke fitted to the occasion with him about them; on this occasion, however, the master answers his faithful and jocular servant somewhat briefly.

“Show them in, James, I am ready now to receive them.”

As James leaves the library sedately and leisurely, his master pours out and swallows a glass of cognac neat, and next makes a sudden gulp at the brandy-flavoured coffee, and then cutting and lighting another cigar, he resumes once more his easy chair and waits like a senator on the coming of his victims.

A moment afterwards they appear, headed by the Rev. Mr. Charles Penwiper, who greets his patron’s eye with a deprecating but gentle smile, as much as to say, “This ungrateful position is forced upon me, but I must do my duty to all parties concerned.” Six red-eyed, yet vengeful widows follow after him, and look at the owner of Federation Hall like the spectres who have lately passed him in his dreams; he is easy once more, however, as Pharaoh was after the plague had passed; spectres and widows are not so appalling as his own special brand of salt beef and pickled pork to face.

“Have a weed, Mr. Penwiper?”
“Not at present,” replies the mediator softly.

“James, ask Mr. Richard Harris to step down here,” replied Mr. John Dagget urbanely, as he puffed out an extensive cloud after his faithful and appreciative servitor, and then turned about with a gracious smile to face the widows.

To be continued tomorrow…

Winter Tales: “A Deadly Voyage” (1)

As I said yesterday, I forgot to give you a Christmas ghost story by James Hume Nisbet during our Advent Calendar, so you’ll get two in compensation. If you liked this selection, here’s your friendly reminder to subscribe on Patreon and see the stuff I’m doing around Gothic fiction. This story will be in 4 parts, so it will lead us right up to New Year’s Eve.

Chapter I. Christmas Eve at Federation Hall

John Dagget, Esquire, shipowner, or, as his employés and enemies termed him, “Federation John,” sat in his sumptuous library on Christmas Eve, Anno Domini 1888, enjoying an exceptionally fine and solitary cigar, after having enjoyed an exceptionally good dinner.

Mr. Dagget could well afford the enjoyment of the most expensive dinners and cigars, as his costly and artistic surroundings seemed to imply, for he was one of the most acute and successful of businessmen, in spite of the apparent contradiction that so many of his ventures came to grief; indeed, the name of the Dagget Company line was more frequently to be read in the Shipping Gazette’s list of casualties than that of any other company, yet still he went about the market, polite, smiling and suave, the staunchest supporter of shipowners’ rights divine, and the most implacable enemy to Trade Unionism or Protection Societies, excepting, of course, the Union of and Protection of his own party, The Owner.

He was a fine man to look upon, with features of the ancient Assyrian type, as seen depicted on the monuments; tall, handsome and portly, without being at all corpulent; rather dark in complexion, with a good colour. Heavy drooping eyelids half covered slumbrous brown eyes; a broad, but receding and smooth forehead fell back from above a finely-carved aquiline nose, and beneath that again, very soft, carefully kept and long jet black moustaches and beard, the former completely concealing his mouth, and the latter reaching down with rippling grace to his massive watch chain; his hair, likewise, was worn rather long and wavy, so that altogether his appearance had just that touch of Orientalism about it which caused his modern evening dress to look a little incongruous when worn by him, and apt to make an artistic onlooker almost wish that the vanity which prompted him to take such extraordinary and loving care of his person could have moved him a little further for the sake of absolute harmony with his costume—a turban and robe seemed the correct thing with that splendid profile and perfumed, silky ebon beard.

In age he was considerably past the forties, but Time had not as yet desecrated, with his white powder, that inky mass. A little thinning at the temples perhaps, which only added to his refined and intellectual appearance, and a few minute crows-feet wrinkles at the outer corner of those heavy lids. That John Dagget, the wealthy and prosperous owner of “Federation Hall” and all those vessels which kept sailing out and seldom returning to port, had been a widower for the past fifteen years was surely his own fault, with a sex that can pardon a thousand and one sins in such a man, possessed of such a magnificent beard.

The books on his well-filled shelves showed that his habits were extravagant as well as refined. Editions de luxe, displaying all the quaint conceits of costly binding; rare engravings covered the space left free of shelves, little gems of sculpture and casting in marble and bronze showed up softly in the chastened light of the silver lamp which stood on the table with its hand-painted porcelain shade. A closer look at the titles of the books and the subjects of the engravings and statuary proved this to be a bachelor’s snuggery, the nestling den of a man who admired woman in the abstract and generally, rather than as a single ideal; a longer look at the man himself, and the manner in which he enjoyed his cigar, and reclined within his comfortable Russia leather easy-chair, revealed the selfish voluptuary; a nearer and still more rigid scrutiny might have made the disciple of Lavater shrink back with a shudder; it was the indolent softness and beauty of the food-satisfied human tiger.

One might easily conclude, after this final physiognomic revelation, that domestic ties, where they involved the slightest sacrifice or obligation, would be extremely irksome to this splendid-looking sybarite, and how unlikely it was that he should ever again shackle himself with a wife after he had got free from the first encumbrance. Report had it that, the last years of the poor lady, who had given him the start on his prosperous course with her money, were unhappy ones, and that, in spite of his charms, they had existed under the same roof without addressing each other more than politeness required before the servants and company, and also that both had hailed their freedom with equal relief, for even fine-looking men, although these gifts of Nature are all sufficient to lovers, must have other qualities if they would continue to satisfy wives; therefore, although, I daresay, many spinsters and widows sighed vainly after this costly prize, and blamed the unappreciative, deceased Mrs. Dagget, it was a kind Providence which denied them their wishes, and left the fascinator still a solitary widower.

Federation Hall was a wide, roomy, and cottage-built retreat, with the dining, drawing-rooms and other day rooms on the ground floor, and the bedrooms upstairs, while the kitchen and servants’ quarters were placed more to the back. As it was planned for comfort more than economy of space, it covered a considerable piece of ground, with well-laid-out pleasure grounds surrounding it. A wife, with her extra wants and habits, would have disturbed the economy of masculine comfort of this perfect lair; while he had been troubled with one, he had rented a town mansion, but since that happy release, he had bought this estate and built the house entirely to suit himself.

As he lolled back, with half-closed eyes, watching the distant wood log spouting out its blue flames in the hearth, and sending from his jetty moustache thin, leisurely, spiral wreaths of fragrant smoke, the subdued sound of a piano, mingled with a girl’s fresh voice, stole in soothingly from the distant drawing-room, proving that something feminine, besides the servants, was in the house, which was also quite in keeping with his character, for, although he might not be bothered with the perpetual presence of a wife, such a nature required the occasional presence of a female, young, good-looking and subservient; to amuse, or sooth him when he felt inclined, and for such a position the player and singer, his niece, Mary Gray, exactly suited.

She had been left to his charge by her dying mother, his only sister, when at the most interesting age for such a guardian, that is, when she was interesting herself, being ready to leave school and bring her accomplishments into his lonely house, so that he received the charge willingly.

Mary, when she first came, had supposed herself a rich orphan, for her father had been in a good position and during his life denied her nothing, but it was not very long before her uncle, who had with the care of herself, also sole charge of her late father’s affairs, informed her, that after paying up all outstanding debts, she had no other expectations except what might come from him, her benefactor; she accepted his explanation as gospel and enquired no further about the intricate details of a business she could not understand, and as he was an easy enough guardian so that she did not intrude where she was not wanted, she accepted without much regret, or forebodings, the position of housekeeper and dependent, and did her best to entertain his guests whenever he gave an entertainment in the way of business.

He had another charge living in the house at this time, whose fortune he also had the unravelling of with the same unfortunate results of no balance left, but as he had taken his niece into his house, so he kindly employed the impecunious young Richard Harris, about his office and permitted him, by way of return, a corner at his bountiful table, and the use of a bedroom, with a little pocket money now and again, and a limited order at the tailor’s and bootmaker’s—not the most pleasant position for a youth of spirit to fill, even although it was backed by the somewhat vague promise of a future partnership, when he had mastered the business thoroughly.

At the present moment Richard Harris was sitting in a very dejected attitude with his elbow resting on a corner of the piano and his head supported on his hand, listening, or seeming to listen to the song which Mary was singing and playing for the young man, although the solitary smoker in the library was also getting his share of it, as he managed to get of most things.

Richard Harris was nineteen past, fair-skinned, with curly brown hair, and soft earnest blue-grey eyes, a gentlemanly young fellow with an expression usually frank and attractive, but now clouded over with helpless and hopeless care.

Mary was between seventeen and eighteen, dark, like her uncle, with a graceful small figure and sympathetic face, perhaps there was more sympathy expressed in it than usual as she glanced now and then from her music to her inattentive companion, who had been her constant friend for over a twelvemonth, with a closer place in her heart, for she knew not exactly how long during that space of time, perhaps a little before his eyes had shown her how near she was to his, however, being both so utterly dependent on the great man in the library, they had not as yet ventured to express in words what both had read another way.

Of late Richard had been getting more into the business confidence of his patron, and being as yet a young man with genuine and humane instincts, life was becoming less supportable so that he was not such a cheery companion as he had been to Mary.

Both sat this evening near each other for some time, while she went over several of her songs and pieces, long enough for that fine cigar to be changed to ashes in the library, and the smoker to sink into a light after-dinner slumber within his easy chair, when suddenly Mary Gray rose from her music stool, and touched the moody youth lightly on the shoulder.

“Dick, can’t you lay aside thoughts about business for one night—for this night of all nights—and be happy?”

“No, Mary, this night of all nights I must remember it most, for through it this is likely to be the last night you and I shall be able to spend together, for a long, long time, perhaps for ever.”

“What do you mean, dear?”

“That I am sick of this wrecking office, where men are murdered for the insurance money, as surely as ever the poisoner, Palmer, killed his victims!” replied the young man passionately, raising his head and voice at the same time almost to a shout.

“Hush, Dick, or uncle will hear you! Come to the fire, and let us talk about it there; business ways, you know, are different to the romantic ways of boys and girls like us.”

“Surely no other business on the face of the earth can be conducted as Dagget & Co.’s is conducted or we’d all be better out of it, and dead before every instinct of right and wrong is crushed out of us.”

“Has uncle not been good to you, Dick?—every day you are getting more into his confidence and before long you will be his partner.”

“Never! After to-day I would sooner starve than go back to that office, which the spirits of drowned sailors seem to haunt.”

“But uncle cannot help the sailors drowning if the ships go down.”

“He could prevent the ships going down if he liked; in fact, Mary, that is his principal business—to sink ships, drown the sailors, and rob the widow and the fatherless.”

“Oh! Dick, don’t say that of my uncle, and he so generous and kind to both of us, and so noble looking!” whispered Mary, in a piteous tone, putting her hand in front of his mouth to stop any more words.

The little hand he took in both of his and kissed it fondly, then dropped it in a resigned and hopeless fashion.

“Well, well! Mary, I won’t vex you by saying any more on the subject, only I cannot do the thing he has insisted on me doing to-night, therefore I shall have to go.”

“What is it, Dick? Surely nothing so very bad, since he was so pleasant at dinner to-night.”

“No, Mary, let it be, you’ll know perhaps when the time comes, and I don’t want to prejudice you against your uncle.”

“Dick, do you think I don’t care for you?” said Mary, taking both his hands in hers, so that she might see his eyes, for he had suddenly put them up to hide the despairing dampness which was gathering there.

“Yes, Mary, I think you care for me a little, but not so much as you care for your uncle, nor can I, a pauper, and all dependent on his generosity expect it, and not by a thousand fold so much as I care for you!”

“Dick!”

There was that in the girl’s eyes, as she looked into his, which stopped further words on his part for a time. They were standing now in front of the blazing fire, and after that look, her slender arms crept up, the little hands releasing his hands and then joining themselves round his neck, while she clasped her closely towards him, the two pair of young lips meeting in a different salute to any they had had before.

For a moment Richard Harris forgot his poverty and business scruples as the glowing dark face lay on his breast, and the ebon tresses brushed against the tender down of his cheek, with a thrill which once it passed would never return with quite the same subtle sensation, although the after kisses might be sweet.

A moment passed, one of the supreme moments which go to make eternity, and then a flood of remorseful self-reproaches rushed in, where only love had been before. What right had he with this young girl’s love? going as he was to fling from him protection and home; on that point, to his credit, he did not waver, even with those precious arms still clasping him, and that sweet face still resting against his beating heart. The horror of those business confidences was too real a nightmare for even love to lift. It was clearly his duty to leave her at perfect liberty and go from that ghost-filled, blood-stained house; the furniture about them, the clothes he had on, were all the proceeds of robbery and murders, murder and robbery protected, or rather winked at by law, yet real as the victims who lay by hundreds under the sea, as real as the widows and children who had so much reason to curse the name of the sleek, cold monster who robbed them even of shillings to add to his pile of crimsoned gold, who gathered in all and gave out nothing.

Filled with these self-abased horrors he raised his arms and taking hold of her fingers unclasped them, then holding her from him he spoke:

“Forgive me Mary, my darling, I have done you a great wrong. Your duty, as you say, is to your uncle, mine to fly from him, while I can still call my soul my own, before I am perjured past the power of resistance; perhaps his ways of working are the ordinary methods of business, since it is tolerated; in that case, if I keep to the same mind as I am now, I can never be anything else than a beggar, while if I change and become a business man then I shall have become too utterly base to be worthy of you; let me go, dearest, without saying any more.”

“No, Dick, we have both said too much ever to be at liberty again, and I am glad of it, if you never regret, for now you are more to me than all the world; tell me all your troubles and let me comfort you if I can do no more.”

At this moment the door was opened noiselessly, and the discreet footman made his appearance with an emotionless visage:

“Please Mister Richard, master requests your presence in the library.”

To be continued tomorrow…

Winter Tales: “The Demon Spell”

When I gave you “The Face at the Window” by James Hume Nisbet, I promised that the other story included in the eBook was going to feature in the Advent Calendar. I forgot, but my supporters on Patreon didn’t, so here’s a bonus story for this third day of Christmas (I was out of French Hens, sorry) and I’ll throw in another one tomorrow, still by the same author.

The Demon SpellA Christmas Eve’s Experience

It was about the time when spiritualism was all the craze in England, and no party was reckoned complete without a spirit-rapping seance being included amongst the other entertainments.

One night I had been invited to the house of a friend, who was a great believer in the manifestations from the unseen world, and who had asked for my special edification a well-known trance medium. “A pretty as well as a heavengifted girl, whom you will be sure to like, I know,” he said as he asked me.

I did not believe much in the return of spirits, yet, thinking to be amused, consented to attend at the hour appointed. At that time I had just returned from a long sojourn abroad, and was in a very delicate state of health, easily impressed by outward influences, and nervous to a most extraordinary extent.

To the hour appointed I found myself at my friend’s house, and was then introduced to the sitters who had assembled to witness the phenomena.

Some were strangers like myself to the rules of the table, others who were adepts took their places at once in the order to which they had in former meetings attended. The trance medium had not yet arrived, and while waiting upon her coming we sat down and opened the seance with a hymn.

We had just furnished the second verse when the door opened and the medium glided in, and took her place on a vacant seat by my side, joining with the others in the last verse, after which we all sat motionless with our hands resting upon the table, waiting upon the first manifestation from the unseen world.

Now, although I thought all this performance very ridiculous, there was something in the silence and the dim light, for the gas had been turned low down, and the room seemed filled with shadows; something about the fragile figure at my side, with her drooping head, which thrilled me with a curious sense of fear and icy horror such as I had never felt before.

I am not by nature imaginative or inclined to superstition, but, from the moment that young girl had entered the room, I felt as if a hand had been laid upon my heart, a cold iron hand, that was compressing it, and causing it to stop throbbing. My sense of hearing also had grown more acute and sensitive, so that the beating of the watch in my vest pocket sounded like the thumping of a quartz -crushing machine, and the measured breathing of those about me as loud and nerve-disturbing as the snorting of a steam engine.

Only when I turned to look upon the trance medium did I become soothed; then it seemed as if a cold-air wave had passed through my brain, subduing, for the, time being, those awful sounds. “She is possessed,” whispered my host on the other side of me. “Wait, and she will speak presently, and tell us whom we have got beside us.”

As we sat and waited the table had moved several times under our hands, while knockings at intervals took place in the table and all round the room, a most weird and blood-curdling, yet ridiculous performance, which made me feel half inclined to run out with fear, and half inclined to sit still and laugh; on the whole, I think, however, that horror had the more complete possession of me.

Presently she raised her head and laid her hand upon mine, beginning to speak in a strange monotonous, far-away voice, “This is my first visit since I passed from earth-life, and you have called me here.”

I shivered as her hand touched mine, but had no strength to withdraw it from her light, soft grasp. “I am what you would call a lost soul; that is, I am in the lowest sphere. Last week I was in the body, but met my death down Whitechapel way. I was what you call an unfortunate, aye, unfortunate enough. Shall I tell you how it happened?”

The medium’s eyes were closed, and whether it was my distorted imagination or not, she appeared to have grown older and decidedly debauched-looking since she sat down, or rather as if a light, filmy mask of degrading, and soddened vice had replaced the former delicate features.

No one spoke, and the trance medium continued: “I had been out all that day and without any luck or food, so that I was dragging my wearied body along through the slush and mud, for it had been wet all day, and I was drenched to the skin, and miserable, ah, ten thousand times more wretched than I am now, for the earth is a far worse hell for such as I than our hell here. I had importuned several passers-by as I went along that night, but none of them spoke to me, for work had been scarce all this winter, and I suppose I did not look so tempting as I have been; only once a man answered me, a dark-faced, middle-sized man, with a soft voice, and much better dressed than my usual companions. He asked me where I was going, and then left me, putting a coin into my hand, for which I thanked him. Being just in time for the last public-house, I hurried up, but on going to the bar and looking at my hand, I found it to be a curious foreign coin, with outlandish figures on it, which the landlord would not take, so I went out again to the dark fog and rain without my drink after all. There was no use going any further that night. I turned up the court where my lodgings were, intending to go home and get a sleep, since I could get no food, when I felt something touch me softly from behind like as if someone had caught hold of my shawl; then I stopped and turned about to see who it was. I was alone, and with no one near me nothing but fog and the half light from the court lamp. Yet I felt as if something had got hold of me, though Icould not see what it was, and that it was gathering about me. I tried to scream out, but could not, as this unseen grasp closed upon my throat and choked me, and then I fell down and for a moment forgot everything.

“Next moment I woke up, outside my own poor mutilated body, and stood watching the fell work going on— as you see it now.”

Yes I saw it all as the medium ceased speaking, a mangled corpse lying on a muddy pavement, and a demoniac, dark, pock-marked face bending over it, with thelean claws outspread, and the dense fog instead of a body, like the half-formed incarnation of muscles. That is what did it, and you will know it again,” she said, “I have come for you to find it”

“Is he an Englishman?” I gasped, as the vision faded away and the room once more became definite. It is neither man nor woman, but it lives as I do, it is with me now and may be with you to-night, still if you will have me instead of it, I can keep it back, only you must wish for me with all your might.”

The seance was now becoming too horrible and by general consent our host turned up the gas, and then I saw for the first time the medium, now relieved from her evil possession, a beautiful girl of about nineteen, with I think the most glorious brown eyes I had ever before looked into. “Do you believe what you have been speaking about?” I asked her as we were sitting talking together, “What was that?”

“About the murdered woman.”

“I don’t know anything at all, only that I have been sitting at the table. I never know what my trances are.”

Was she speaking the truth? Her dark eyes looked truth, so that I could not doubt her.

That night when Iwent to my lodgings I must confess that it was some time before I could make up my mind to go to bed. I was decidedly upset and nervous, and wished that I had never gone to this spirit meeting, making a mental vow, as I threw off my clothes and hastily got into bed, that it was the last unholy gathering I would ever attend.

For the first time in my life I could not put out the gas, I felt as if the room was filled with ghosts, or as if this pair of ghastly spectres, the murderer and his victim, had accompanied me home, and were at that moment disputing the possession of me, so instead, I pulled the bedclothes over my head, it being a cold night, and went that fashion off to sleep.

Twelve o’clock ! and the anniversary of the day that Christ was born. Yes, I heard it striking from the street spire and counted the strokes,slowly tolled out, listening to the echoes from other steeples, after this one had ceased, as I lay awake in that gas-lit room, feeling as if I was not alone this Christmas morn.

Thus, while I was trying to think what had made me wake so suddenly, I seemed to hear a far off echo cry “Come to me.” At the same time the bedclothes were slowly pulled from the bed, and left in a confused mass on the floor. “Is that you, Polly?” I cried, remembering the spirit seance, and the name by which the spirit had announced herself when she took possession.

Three distinct knocks resounded on the bedpost at my ear, the signal for Yes. “Can you speak to me?”

“Yes,” an echo rather than a voice replied, while I felt my flesh creeping, yet strove to be brave. “Can I see you?”

“No!”

“Feel you?”

Instantly the feeling of a light cold hand touched my brow and passed over my face. “In God’s name what do you want?”

“To save the girl I was in to-night. It is after her and will kill her if you do not come quickly.”

In an instant I was out of the bed, and tumbling my clothes on any way, horrified through it all, yet feeling as if Polly were helping me to dress. There was a Kandiandagger on my table which I had brought from Ceylon, an old dagger which I had bought for its antiquity and design, and this I snatched up as I left the room, with that light unseen hand leading me out of the house and along the deserted snow-covered streets.

I did not know where the trance medium lived, but I followed where that light grasp led me, through the wild,blinding snow-drift, round corners and through short cuts, with my head down and the flakes falling thickly about me, until at last I arrived at a silent square and in front of a house, which by some instinct, I knew that I must enter.

Over by the other side of the street I saw a man standing looking up to a dimly-lighted window, but I could not see him very distinctly and I did not pay much attention to him at the time, but rushed instead up the front steps and into the house, that unseen hand still pulling me forward.

How that door opened, or if it did open I could not say, I only know that I got in, as we get into places in a dream, and up the inner stairs, I passed into a bedroom where the light was burning dimly.

It was her bedroom, and she was struggling in the thug-like grasp of those same demon claws, with that demoniac face close to hers, and the rest of it drifting away to nothingness.

I saw it all at a glance, her half-naked form, with the disarranged bedclothes, as the unformed demon of muscles clutched that delicate throat, and then I was at it like a fury with my Kandiandagger, slashing crossways at those cruel claws and that evil face, while blood streaks followed the course of my knife, making ugly stains, until at last it ceased struggling and disappeared like a horrid nightmare, as the half-strangled girl, now released from that fell grip, woke up the house with her screams, while from her relaxing hand dropped a strange coin, which I took possession of.

Thus I left her, feeling that my work was done, going downstairs as I had come up, without impediment or even seemingly, in the slightest degree, attracting the attention of the other inmates of the house, who rushed in their night-dresses towards the bedroom from whence the screams were issuing.

Into the street again, with that coin in one hand and my dagger in the other I rushed, and then I remembered the man whom I had seen looking up at the window. Was he there still? Yes, but on the ground in a confused black mass amongst the white snow as if he had been struck down.

I went over to where he lay and looked at him. Was he dead ? Yes. I turned him round and saw that his throat was gashed from ear to ear, and all over his face— the same dark, pallid, pock-marked evil face, -and claw-like hands, Isaw the dark slashes of my Kandian dagger, while the soft white snow around him was stained with crimson life pools, and as I looked I heard the clock strike one, while from the distance sounded the chant of the coming waits, then I turned and fled blindly into the darkness.

#AdventCalendar 24: Bewitched (4)

Fourth and last part of a ghost story by Edith Wharton, included in her collection Here and Beyond from 1926. And with this, our Advent Calendar comes at an end! First part here. Second part here. Third part here.

The next day Bosworth’s sister Loretta, who kept house for him, asked him, when he came in for his midday dinner, if he had heard the news.

Bosworth had been sawing wood all the morning, and in spite of the cold and the driving snow, which had begun again in the night, he was covered with an icy sweat, like a man getting over a fever.

“What news?”

“Venny Brand’s down sick with pneumonia. The Deacon’s been there. I guess she’s dying.”

Bosworth looked at her with listless eyes. She seemed far off from him, miles away. “Venny Brand?” he echoed.

“You never liked her, Orrin.”

“She’s a child. I never knew much about her.”

“Well,” repeated his sister, with the guileless relish of the unimaginative for bad news, “I guess she’s dying.” After a pause she added: “It’ll kill Sylvester Brand, all alone up there.”

120Bosworth got up and said: “I’ve got to see to poulticing the gray’s fetlock.” He walked out into the steadily falling snow.

Venny Brand was buried three days later. The Deacon read the service; Bosworth was one of the pall-bearers. The whole countryside turned out, for the snow had stopped falling, and at any season a funeral offered an opportunity for an outing that was not to be missed. Besides, Venny Brand was young and handsome—at least some people thought her handsome, though she was so swarthy—and her dying like that, so suddenly, had the fascination of tragedy.

“They say her lungs filled right up…. Seems she’d had bronchial troubles before…. I always said both them girls was frail…. Look at Ora, how she took and wasted away! And it’s colder’n all outdoors up there to Brand’s…. Their mother, too, she pined away just the same. They don’t ever make old bones on the mother’s side of the family…. There’s that young Bedlow over there; they say Venny was engaged to him…. Oh, Mrs. Rutledge, 121excuse me…. Step right into the pew; there’s a seat for you alongside of grandma….”

Mrs. Rutledge was advancing with deliberate step down the narrow aisle of the bleak wooden church. She had on her best bonnet, a monumental structure which no one had seen out of her trunk since old Mrs. Silsee’s funeral, three years before. All the women remembered it. Under its perpendicular pile her narrow face, swaying on the long thin neck, seemed whiter than ever; but her air of fretfulness had been composed into a suitable expression of mournful immobility.

“Looks as if the stone-mason had carved her to put atop of Venny’s grave,” Bosworth thought as she glided past him; and then shivered at his own sepulchral fancy. When she bent over her hymn book her lowered lids reminded him again of marble eye-balls; the bony hands clasping the book were bloodless. Bosworth had never seen such hands since he had seen old Aunt Cressidora Cheney strangle the canary-bird because it fluttered.

The service was over, the coffin of Venny 122Brand had been lowered into her sister’s grave, and the neighbours were slowly dispersing. Bosworth, as pall-bearer, felt obliged to linger and say a word to the stricken father. He waited till Brand had turned from the grave with the Deacon at his side. The three men stood together for a moment; but not one of them spoke. Brand’s face was the closed door of a vault, barred with wrinkles like bands of iron.

Finally the Deacon took his hand and said: “The Lord gave—”

Brand nodded and turned away toward the shed where the horses were hitched. Bosworth followed him. “Let me drive along home with you,” he suggested.

Brand did not so much as turn his head. “Home? What home?” he said; and the other fell back.

Loretta Bosworth was talking with the other women while the men unblanketed their horses and backed the cutters out into the heavy snow. As Bosworth waited for her, a few feet off, he saw Mrs. Rutledge’s tall bonnet lording it above the group. Andy 123Pond, the Rutledge farm-hand, was backing out the sleigh.

“Saul ain’t here today, Mrs. Rutledge, is he?” one of the village elders piped, turning a benevolent old tortoise-head about on a loose neck, and blinking up into Mrs. Rutledge’s marble face.

Bosworth heard her measure out her answer in slow incisive words. “No. Mr. Rutledge he ain’t here. He would ‘a’ come for certain, but his aunt Minorca Cummins is being buried down to Stotesbury this very day and he had to go down there. Don’t it sometimes seem zif we was all walking right in the Shadow of Death?”

As she walked toward the cutter, in which Andy Pond was already seated, the Deacon went up to her with visible hesitation. Involuntarily Bosworth also moved nearer. He heard the Deacon say: “I’m glad to hear that Saul is able to be up and around.”

She turned her small head on her rigid neck, and lifted the lids of marble.

“Yes, I guess he’ll sleep quieter now.—And her too, maybe, now she don’t lay there alone any longer,” she added in a low voice, 124with a sudden twist of her chin toward the fresh black stain in the grave-yard snow. She got into the cutter, and said in a clear tone to Andy Pond: “’S long as we’re down here I don’t know but what I’ll just call round and get a box of soap at Hiram Pringle’s.”

#AdventCalendar 23: Bewitched (3)

Third part of a ghost story by Edith Wharton, included in her collection Here and Beyond from 1926. First part here. Second part here.

They thought that Brand wanted to be left to himself, and to give him time to unhitch his horse they made a pretense of hanging about in the doorway while Bosworth searched his pockets for a pipe he had no mind to light.

But Brand turned back to them as they lingered. “You’ll meet me down by Lamer’s pond tomorrow?” he suggested. “I want witnesses. Round about sunset.”

They nodded their acquiescence, and he got into his sleigh, gave the horse a cut across the flanks, and drove off under the snow-smothered hemlocks. The other two men went to the shed.

“What do you make of this business, Deacon?” Bosworth asked, to break the silence.

The Deacon shook his head. “The man’s a sick man—that’s sure. Something’s sucking the life clean out of him.”

But already, in the biting outer air, Bosworth was getting himself under better control. “Looks to me like a bad case of the ague, as you said.”

“Well—ague of the mind, then. It’s his brain that’s sick.”

Bosworth shrugged. “He ain’t the first in Hemlock County.”

112“That’s so,” the Deacon agreed. “It’s a worm in the brain, solitude is.”

“Well, we’ll know this time tomorrow, maybe,” said Bosworth. He scrambled into his sleigh, and was driving off in his turn when he heard his companion calling after him. The Deacon explained that his horse had cast a shoe; would Bosworth drive him down to the forge near North Ashmore, if it wasn’t too much out of his way? He didn’t want the mare slipping about on the freezing snow, and he could probably get the blacksmith to drive him back and shoe her in Rutledge’s shed. Bosworth made room for him under the bearskin, and the two men drove off, pursued by a puzzled whinny from the Deacon’s old mare.

The road they took was not the one that Bosworth would have followed to reach his own home. But he did not mind that. The shortest way to the forge passed close by Lamer’s pond, and Bosworth, since he was in for the business, was not sorry to look the ground over. They drove on in silence.

The snow had ceased, and a green sunset was spreading upward into the crystal sky. 113A stinging wind barbed with ice-flakes caught them in the face on the open ridges, but when they dropped down into the hollow by Lamer’s pond the air was as soundless and empty as an unswung bell. They jogged along slowly, each thinking his own thoughts.

“That’s the house … that tumble-down shack over there, I suppose?” the Deacon said, as the road drew near the edge of the frozen pond.

“Yes: that’s the house. A queer hermit-fellow built it years ago, my father used to tell me. Since then I don’t believe it’s ever been used but by the gipsies.”

Bosworth had reined in his horse, and sat looking through pine-trunks purpled by the sunset at the crumbling structure. Twilight already lay under the trees, though day lingered in the open. Between two sharply-patterned pine-boughs he saw the evening star, like a white boat in a sea of green.

His gaze dropped from that fathomless sky and followed the blue-white undulations of the snow. It gave him a curious agitated feeling to think that here, in this icy solitude, in the tumble-down house he had so often 114passed without heeding it, a dark mystery, too deep for thought, was being enacted. Down that very slope, coming from the grave-yard at Cold Corners, the being they called “Ora” must pass toward the pond. His heart began to beat stiflingly. Suddenly he gave an exclamation: “Look!”

He had jumped out of the cutter and was stumbling up the bank toward the slope of snow. On it, turned in the direction of the house by the pond, he had detected a woman’s foot-prints; two; then three; then more. The Deacon scrambled out after him, and they stood and stared.

“God—barefoot!” Hibben gasped. “Then it is … the dead….”

Bosworth said nothing. But he knew that no live woman would travel with naked feet across that freezing wilderness. Here, then, was the proof the Deacon had asked for—they held it. What should they do with it?

“Supposing we was to drive up nearer—round the turn of the pond, till we get close to the house,” the Deacon proposed in a colourless voice. “Mebbe then….”

Postponement was a relief. They got into the sleigh and drove on. Two or three hundred yards farther the road, a mere lane under steep bushy banks, turned sharply to the right, following the bend of the pond. As they rounded the turn they saw Brand’s cutter ahead of them. It was empty, the horse tied to a tree-trunk. The two men looked at each other again. This was not Brand’s nearest way home.

Evidently he had been actuated by the same impulse which had made them rein in their horse by the pond-side, and then hasten on to the deserted hovel. Had he too discovered those spectral foot-prints? Perhaps it was for that very reason that he had left his cutter and vanished in the direction of the house. Bosworth found himself shivering all over under his bearskin. “I wish to God the dark wasn’t coming on,” he muttered. He tethered his own horse near Brand’s, and without a word he and the Deacon ploughed through the snow, in the track of Brand’s huge feet. They had only a few yards to walk to overtake him. He did not hear them following him, and when Bosworth spoke his name, and he stopped 116short and turned, his heavy face was dim and confused, like a darker blot on the dusk. He looked at them dully, but without surprise.

“I wanted to see the place,” he merely said.

The Deacon cleared his throat. “Just take a look … yes…. We thought so…. But I guess there won’t be anything to see….” He attempted a chuckle.

The other did not seem to hear him, but laboured on ahead through the pines. The three men came out together in the cleared space before the house. As they emerged from beneath the trees they seemed to have left night behind. The evening star shed a lustre on the speckless snow, and Brand, in that lucid circle, stopped with a jerk, and pointed to the same light foot-prints turned toward the house—the track of a woman in the snow. He stood still, his face working. “Bare feet …” he said.

The Deacon piped up in a quavering voice: “The feet of the dead.”

Brand remained motionless. “The feet of the dead,” he echoed.

117Deacon Hibben laid a frightened hand on his arm. “Come away now, Brand; for the love of God come away.”

The father hung there, gazing down at those light tracks on the snow—light as fox or squirrel trails they seemed, on the white immensity. Bosworth thought to himself: “The living couldn’t walk so light—not even Ora Brand couldn’t have, when she lived….” The cold seemed to have entered into his very marrow. His teeth were chattering.

Brand swung about on them abruptly. “Now!” he said, moving on as if to an assault, his head bowed forward on his bull neck.

“Now—now? Not in there?” gasped the Deacon. “What’s the use? It was tomorrow he said—.” He shook like a leaf.

“It’s now,” said Brand. He went up to the door of the crazy house, pushed it inward, and meeting with an unexpected resistance, thrust his heavy shoulder against the panel. The door collapsed like a playing-card, and Brand stumbled after it into the 118darkness of the hut. The others, after a moment’s hesitation, followed.

Bosworth was never quite sure in what order the events that succeeded took place. Coming in out of the snow-dazzle, he seemed to be plunging into total blackness. He groped his way across the threshold, caught a sharp splinter of the fallen door in his palm, seemed to see something white and wraithlike surge up out of the darkest corner of the hut, and then heard a revolver shot at his elbow, and a cry—

Brand had turned back, and was staggering past him out into the lingering daylight. The sunset, suddenly flushing through the trees, crimsoned his face like blood. He held a revolver in his hand and looked about him in his stupid way.

“They do walk, then,” he said and began to laugh. He bent his head to examine his weapon. “Better here than in the churchyard. They shan’t dig her up now,” he shouted out. The two men caught him by the arms, and Bosworth got the revolver away from him.