Gaslit Nightmares Read online

  The baronet, in his old age, had been cast up by his vices on the shores of melancholy; heavy-eyed, grey-haired, bent, he seemed to pass through life as in a dream. Every day he would go out on horseback, always at a walking pace, as though he were following the funeral of his past self. One night he was riding up the village street as this old woman came down it. Her name was Ann Ruthers; she had a kind of reputation in the village, and although all said that she was mad, many of her utterances were remembered, and she was treated with respect. It was growing dark, and the village street was almost empty; but just at the lower end was the usual group of men by the door of The Stag, dimly illuminated by the light that came through the quaint windows of the old inn. They glanced at Sir Edric as he rode slowly past them, taking no notice of their respectful salutes. At the upper end of the street there were two persons. One was Ann Ruthers, a tall, gaunt old woman, her head wrapped in a shawl; the other was John Marsh. He was then a boy of eight, and he was feeling somewhat frightened. He had been on an expedition to a distant and fœtid pond, and in the black mud and clay about its borders he had discovered live newts; he had three of them in his pocket, and this was to some extent a joy to him, but his joy was damped by his knowledge that he was coming home much too late, and would probably be chastised in consequence. He was unable to walk fast or to run, because Ann Ruthers was immediately in front of him, and he dared not pass her, especially at night. She walked on until she met Sir Edric, and then, standing still, she called him by name. He pulled in his horse and raised his heavy eyes to look at her. Then in clear tones she spoke to him, and John Marsh heard and remembered every word that she said; it was her prophecy of the end of the Vanquerests. Sir Edric never answered a word. When she had finished, he rode on, while she remained standing there, her eyes fixed on the stars above her. John Marsh dared not pass the mad woman; he turned round and walked back, keeping close to Sir Edric’s horse. Quite suddenly, without a word of warning, as if in a moment of ungovernable irritation, Sir Edric wheeled his horse round and struck the boy across the face with his switch.

  On the following morning John Marsh – or rather, his parents – received a handsome solatium in coin of the realm; but sixty-five years afterwards he had not forgiven that blow, and still spoke of the Vanquerests as a most devilish family, still hoped and prayed that he might see the prophecy fulfilled. He would relate, too, the death of Ann Ruthers, which occurred either later on the night of her prophecy or early on the following day. She would often roam about the country all night, and on this particular night over the Vanquerest lands, where trespassers, especially at night, were not welcomed. But no one saw her, and it seemed that she had made her way to a part where no one was likely to see her; for none of the keepers would have entered Hal’s Planting by night. Her body was found there at noon on the following day, lying under the tall bracken, dead, but without any mark of violence upon it. It was considered that she had died in a fit. This naturally added to the ill-repute of Hal’s Planting. The woman’s death caused considerable sensation in the village. Sir Edric sent a messenger to the married sister with whom she had lived, saying that he wished to pay all the funeral expenses. This offer, as John Marsh recalled with satisfaction, was refused.

  Of the last two baronets he had but little to tell. The fifth baronet was credited with the family temper, but he conducted himself in a perfectly conventional way, and did not seem in the least to belong to romance. He was good man of business, and devoted himself to making up, as far as he could, for the very extravagant expenditure of his predecessors. His son, the present Sir Edric, was a fine young fellow and popular in the village. Even John Marsh could find nothing to say against him; other people in the village were interested in him. It was said that he had chosen a wife in London – a Miss Guerdon – and would shortly be back to see that Mansteth Hall was put in proper order for her before his marriage at the close of the season. Modernity kills ghostly romance. It was difficult to associate this modern and handsome Sir Edric, bright and spirited, a good sportsman and a good fellow, with the doom that had been foretold for the Vanquerest family. He himself knew the tradition and laughed at it. He wore clothes made by a London tailor, looked healthy, smiled cheerfully, and, in a vain attempt to shame his own head-keeper, had himself spent a night alone in Hal’s Planting. This last was used by Mr. Spicer in argument, who would ask John Marsh what he made of it. John Marsh replied, contemptuously, that it was ‘nowt’. It was not so that the Vanquerest family was to end; but when the thing, whatever it was, that lived in Hal’s Planting, left it and came up to the house, to Mansteth Hall itself, then one would see the end of the Vanquerests. So Ann Ruthers had prophesied. Sometimes Mr. Spicer would ask the pertinent question, how did John Marsh know that there really was anything in Hal’s Planting? This he asked, less because he disbelieved, than because he wished to draw forth an account of John’s personal experiences. These were given in great detail, but they did not amount to very much. One night John Marsh had been taken by business – Sir Edric’s keepers would have called the business by hard names – into the neighbourhood of Hal’s Planting. He had there been suddenly startled by a cry, and had run away as though he were running for his life. That was all he could tell about the cry – it was the kind of cry to make a man lose his head and run. And then it always happened that John Marsh was urged by his companions to enter Hal’s Planting himself, and discover what was there. John pursed his thin lips together, and hinted that that also might be done one of these days. Whereupon Mr. Spicer looked across his pipe to Farmer Wynthwaite, and smiled significantly.

  Shortly before Sir Edric’s return from London, the attention of Mansteth was once more directed to Hal’s Planting, but not by any supernatural occurrence. Quite suddenly, on a calm day, two trees there fell with a crash; there were caves in the centre of the plantation, and it seemed as if the roof of some big chamber in these caves had given way.

  They talked it over one night in the parlour of The Stag. There was water in these caves, Farmer Wynthwaite knew it; and he expected a further subsidence. If the whole thing collapsed, what then?

  ‘Ay,’ said John Marsh: He rose from his chair, and pointed in the direction of the Hall with his thumb. ‘What then?’

  He walked across to the fire, looked at it meditatively for a moment, and then spat in it.

  ‘A trewly wun’ful owd mon,’ said Farmer Wynthwaite as he watched him.

  III

  In the smoking-room at Mansteth Hall sat Sir Edric with his friend and intended brother-in-law, Dr. Andrew Guerdon. Both men were on the verge of middle-age; there was hardly a year’s difference between them. Yet Guerdon looked much the older man; that was, perhaps, because he wore a short, black beard, while Sir Edric was clean shaven. Guerdon was thought to be an enviable man. His father had made a fortune in the firm of Guerdon, Guerdon and Bird; the old style was still retained at the bank, although there was no longer a Guerdon in the firm. Andrew Guerdon had a handsome allowance from his father, and had also inherited money through his mother. He had taken the degree of Doctor of Medicine; he did not practise but he was still interested in science, especially in out-of-the-way science. He was unmarried, gifted with perpetually good health, interested in life, popular. His friendship with Sir Edric dated from their college days. It had for some years been almost certain that Sir Edric would marry his friend’s sister, Ray Guerdon, although the actual betrothal had only been announced that season.

  On a bureau in one corner of the room were spread a couple of plans and various slips of paper. Sir Edric was wrinkling his brows over them, dropping cigar-ash over them, and finally getting angry over them. He pushed back his chair irritably, and turned towards Guerdon.

  ‘Look here, old man!’ he said. ‘I desire to curse the original architect of this house – to curse him in his down-sitting and his uprising.’

  ‘Seeing that the original architect had gone to where beyond these voices there is peace, he won’t be offended. Nei
ther shall I. But why worry yourself? You’ve been rooted to that blessed bureau all day, and now, after dinner, when every self-respecting man chucks business, you return to it again – even as a sow returns to her wallowing in the mire.’

  ‘Now, my good Andrew, do be reasonable. How on earth can I bring Ray to such a place as this? And it’s built with such ingrained malice and vexatiousness that one can’t live in it as it is, and can’t alter it without having the whole shanty tumble down about one’s ears. Look at this plan now. That thing’s what they’re pleased to call a morning room. If the window had been here there would have been an uninterrupted view of open country. So what does this forsaken fool of an architect do? He sticks it there, where you see it on the plan, looking straight on to a blank wall with a stable yard on the other side of it. But that’s a trifle. Look here again – ’

  ‘I won’t look any more. This place is all right. It was good enough for your father and mother and several generations before them until you arose to improve the world; it was good enough for you until you started to get married. It’s a picturesque place, and if you begin to alter it you’ll spoil it.’ Guerdon looked round the room critically. ‘Upon my word,’ he said, ‘I don’t know of any house where I like the smoking-room as well as I like this. It’s not too big, and yet it’s fairly lofty; it’s got those comfortable-looking oak-panelled walls. That’s the right kind of fireplace, too, and these corner cupboards are handy.’

  ‘Of course this won’t remain the smoking-room. It has the morning sun, and Ray likes that, so I shall make it into her boudoir. It is a nice room, as you say.’

  ‘That’s it, Ted, my boy,’ said Guerdon bitterly; ‘take a room which is designed by nature and art to be a smoking-room and turn it into a boudoir. Turn it into the very deuce of a boudoir with the morning sun laid on for ever and ever. Waste the twelfth of August by getting married on it. Spend the winter in foreign parts, and write letters that you can breakfast out of doors, just as if you’d created the mildness of the climate yourself. Come back in the spring and spend the London season in the country in order to avoid seeing anybody who wants to see you. That’s the way to do it; that’s the way to get yourself generally loved and admired!’

  ‘That’s chiefly imagination,’ said Sir Edric. ‘I’m blest if I can see why I should not make this house fit for Ray to live in.’

  ‘It’s a queer thing: Ray was a good girl, and you weren’t a bad sort yourself. You prepare to go into partnership, and you both straightway turn into despicable lunatics. I’ll have a word or two with Ray. But I’m serious about this house. Don’t go tinkering it; it’s got a character of its own, and you’d better leave it. Turn half Tottenham Court Road and the culture thereof – Heaven help it! – into your town house if you like, but leave this alone.’

  ‘Haven’t got a town house – yet. Anyway I’m not going to be unsuitable; I’m not going to feel myself at the mercy of a big firm. I shall supervise the whole thing myself. I shall drive over to Challonsea tomorrow afternoon and see if I can’t find some intelligent and fairly conscientious workmen.’

  ‘That’s all right; you supervise them and I’ll supervise you. You’ll be much too new if I don’t look after you. You’ve got an old legend, I believe, that the family’s coming to a bad end; you must be consistent with it. As you are bad, be beautiful. By the way, what do you yourself think of the legend?’

  ‘It’s nothing,’ said Sir Edric, speaking, however, rather seriously. ‘They say that Hal’s Planting is haunted by something that will not die. Certainly an old woman, who for some godless reason of her own made her way there by night, was found there dead on the following morning; but her death could be, and was, accounted for by natural causes. Certainly, too, I haven’t a man in my employ who’ll go there by night now.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘How should I know? I fancy that a few of the villagers sit boozing at The Stag in the evening, and like to scare themselves by swopping lies about Hal’s Planting. I’ve done my best to stop it. I once, as you know, took a rug, a revolver and a flask of whisky and spent the night there myself. But even that didn’t convince them.’

  ‘Yes, you told me. By the way, did you hear or see anything?’

  Sir Edric hesitated before he answered. Finally he said:

  ‘Look here, old man, I wouldn’t tell this to anyone but yourself. I did think that I heard something. About the middle of the night I was awakened by a cry; I can only say that it was the kind of cry that frightened me. I sat up, and at that moment I heard some great, heavy thing go swishing through the bracken behind me at a great rate. Then all was still; I looked about, but I could find nothing. At last I argued as I would argue now that a man who is just awake is only half awake, and that his powers of observation, by hearing or any other sense, are not to be trusted. I even persuaded myself to go to sleep again, and there was no more disturbance. However, there’s a real danger there now. In the heart of the plantation there are some caves and a subterranean spring; lately there has been some slight subsidence there, and the same sort of thing will happen again in all probability. I wired today to an expert to come and look at the place; he has replied that he will come on Monday. The legend says that when the thing that lives in Hal’s Planting comes up to the Hall the Vanquerests will be ended. If I cut down the trees and then break up the place with a charge of dynamite I shouldn’t wonder if I spoiled that legend.’

  Guerdon smiled.

  ‘I’m inclined to agree with you all through. It’s absurd to trust the immediate impressions of a man just awakened; what you heard was probably a stray cow.’

  ‘No cow,’ said Sir Edric impartially. ‘There’s a low wall all round the place – not much of a wall, but too much for a cow.’

  ‘Well, something else – some equally obvious explanation. In dealing with such questions, never forget that you’re in the nineteenth century. By the way, your man’s coming on Monday. That reminds me today’s Friday, and as an indisputable consequence tomorrow’s Saturday, therefore, if you want to find your intelligent workmen it will be of no use to go in the afternoon.’

  ‘True,’ said Sir Edric, ‘I’ll go in the morning.’ He walked to a tray on a side table and poured a little whisky into a tumbler. ‘They don’t seem to have brought any seltzer water,’ he remarked in a grumbling voice.

  He rang the bell impatiently.

  ‘Now why don’t you use those corner cupboards for that kind of thing? If you kept a supply there, it would be handy in case of accidents.’

  ‘They’re full up already.’

  He opened one of them and showed that it was filled with old account-books and yellow documents tied up in bundles. The servant entered.

  ‘Oh, I say, there isn’t any seltzer. Bring it, please.’

  He turned again to Guerdon.

  ‘You might do me a favour when I’m away tomorrow, if there’s nothing else that you want to do. I wish you’d look through all these papers for me. They’re all old. Possibly some of them ought to go to my solicitor, and I know that a lot of them ought to be destroyed. Some few may be of family interest. It’s not the kind of thing that I could ask a stranger or a servant to do for me, and I’ve so much on hand just now before my marriage – ’

  ‘But of course, my dear fellow, I’ll do it with pleasure.’

  ‘I’m ashamed to give you all this bother. However, you said that you were coming here to help me, and I take you at your word. By the way, I think you’d better not say anything to Ray about the Hal’s Planting story.’

  ‘I may be some of the things that you take me for, but really I am not a common ass. Of course I shouldn’t tell her.’

  ‘I’ll tell her myself, and I’d sooner do it when I’ve got the whole thing cleared up. Well, I’m really obliged to you.’

  ‘I needn’t remind you that I hope to receive as much again. I believe in compensation. Nature always gives it and always requires it. One finds it everywhere, in philology and onwards.�
��

  ‘I could mention omissions.’

  ‘They are few, and make a belief in a hereafter to supply them logical.’

  ‘Lunatics, for instance?’

  ‘Their delusions are often their compensation. They argue correctly from false premises. A lunatic believing himself to be a millionaire has as much delight as money can give.’

  ‘How about deformities or monstrosities?’

  ‘The principle is there, although I don’t pretend that the compensation is always adequate. A man who is deprived of one sense generally has another developed with unusual acuteness. As for monstrosities of at all a human type one sees none; the things exhibited in fairs are, almost without exception, frauds. They occur rarely, and one does not know enough about them. A really good text-book on the subject would be interesting. Still, such stories as I have heard would bear out my theory – stories of their superhuman strength and cunning, and of the extraordinary prolongation of life that has been noted, or is said to have been noted, in them. But it is hardly fair to test my principle by exceptional cases. Besides, anyone can prove anything except that anything’s worth proving.’

  ‘That’s a cheerful thing to say. I wouldn’t like to swear that I could prove how the Hal’s Planting legend started; but I fancy, do you know, that I could make a very good shot at it.’

  ‘Well?’

  ‘My great-grandfather kept wolves – I can’t say why. Do you remember the portrait of him? – not the one when he was a boy, the other. It hangs on the staircase. There’s now a group of wolves in one corner of the picture. I was looking carefully at the picture one day and thought that I detected some over-painting in that corner; indeed, it was done so roughly that a child would have noticed it if the picture had been hung in a better light. I had the over-painting removed by a good man, and underneath there was that group of wolves depicted. Well, one of these wolves must have escaped, got into Hal’s Planting, and scared an old woman or two; that would start a story, and human mendacity would do the rest.’