In Ghostly Company (Tales of Mystery & The Supernatural) (6 page)

Little by little did she become absorbed into them; she dared not as yet visit them at night, on account of the certain annoyance of her father, but by day she almost lived in them, and her belief in the souls of the trees grew stronger and ever stronger. She would sit for hours motionless, hoping, believing, that at any moment the revelation might come to her, and that she would see the Dryads dancing, and hear the pipes of Pan. But there was nothing. ‘Another day of disappointment,’ she would cry.

The summer passed on, one of those rare summers which only too seldom visit our English land, but which, when they do appear, by their wonderful beauty and delight, serve to make us thankful to be alive if only to enjoy the joys of Nature.

On one of these glorious days the girl had wandered out, as usual, into the woods. It was afternoon, the sky was cloudless, the wind was almost still, but at times a gentle breath from the west made a soft rustling amongst the pine branches far overhead. As the girl moved on she gazed around her on the well-known trees. All was as usual; Nature spread her beauties before her, glorious, mysterious, veiled from the ken of the human soul. The girl stopped. ‘Is there nothing,’ she cried, ‘nothing behind this? Is Nature all a painted show? Oh, I have so longed for Nature, to find the peace, and pierce the mystery of the woods, and nothing comes in answer to my soul’s call!’ She moved on again, passionate, eager, yearning, with all the yearning of youth and growth for the new, the wonderful. Presently she reached her seat above the pool, and sitting down buried her face in her hands. Her shoulders heaved, her feet beat the ground in hasty emotion, her soul cried out in longing.

Suddenly she ceased to move, for a moment longer she sat in her old attitude, then, lifting her face, she gazed around her. Something had happened! Something, in those few moments! To her outward eye all was unchanged, the pool still lay silent in the sunlight, the breeze still murmured in the tree-tops, the golden-rod still nodded in the sun at the verge of the pool, and the heather still blazed on the lower slopes of the ridge opposite her. But there had come a change! – an unseen change! – and in a flash the girl understood. The woods were aware of her, the trees knew of her presence and were watching her, the very flowers and shrubs were cognisant of her! A feeling of pride, of joy, of a little fear, possessed her; she stretched out her arms, ‘Oh, my beloved playmates,’ she cried, ‘you have come at last!’

She listened, and the gentle breeze among the pine-trees seemed to change, and she could hear its voices, nay, the very sentences of those voices, calling to each other in a language still strange to her ears, but which she felt she knew she would soon understand. She knew she was being watched, discussed, appraised, and a faint sense of disappointment stole over her. Where was the love and the beauty of Nature; these woods, were they friendly or hostile, surely such beauty could mean nothing but love? She began to grow fearful, what was going to happen next? She knew something great was coming, something awe-inspiring, something, perchance, terrible! Already she began to feel invisible, inaudible beings closing in upon her, already she began to know that slowly her strength, her will, were being drawn out of her. And for what end? Terror began to possess itself of her, when suddenly on the farther side of the pool she saw the old woodman, slowly plodding on his homeward way. The sight of the familiar figure, clad in his rough fustian clothes, bending under a new-cut faggot to which was tied the bright red handkerchief containing the old man’s dinner-pail, a splash of bright colour outlined against the green verdure by the pool, was as a dash of cold water over a fainting man. She braced herself up, and watched the distant figure – as she did so, as silently, as suddenly as the mysterious door had opened, it closed again. The woods slept again, ignorant of and indifferent to the young girl.

But, that night, long after the household slept, the girl was at her window, gazing out across the valley to where the fir woods crowned the opposite hill. Long she watched them as they towered, irregular and mysterious, overhanging the grey moonlit fields and sleeping village below them. They seemed to her now to be a strong, thick wall defending the quiet valley below, and guarding it from ill, and now to be the advance guard of an enemy overhanging her peaceful village home and waiting but the word to swoop down and overwhelm it.

The woods enthralled her.

She felt herself on the point of penetrating their mystery; a glimpse had been given her, and now she hesitated and doubted, torn between many emotions. The fascination of fear possessed her, she dreaded and yet she loved the woods. For a day or two after her adventure she shunned them, but they lured her to them, and again and again she went, seeking, hoping for, dreading, what she knew must come. But her search was vain, silently and blindly the woods received her, though again and again she felt that after she had passed she was noted, she was discussed, and that her coming was watched for. The fascination and the fear grew; her food, her few duties, were all neglected; she felt, she knew, that her eyes would soon be opened.

The summer was over. September was upon the world of the woods: the bracken was turning into a thousand shades of yellows and browns, the heather was fading, the leaves of the early trees were browning, the bulrushes hung their dying heads, the flowers were nearly over; the golden-rod alone seemed to defy the changing year. The young rabbits, the fledgling birds, the young life, had all disappeared. At times one saw a lordly cock pheasant, or his more modest wife, strut across the woodland rides. Once in a while, with a loud clapping of wings, wild duck would rise from the pool; among the hazel bushes the squirrels were busy garnering their winter store, and from the distant fields the young girl, as she sat in her well-loved corner of the woods, could hear the far-off lowing of cattle. The afternoon was heavy and oppressive; a dull sensation of coming change hung over the woods, dreaming their last dreams of summer. The firs stood dark and motionless, with a faint aspect of menace in their clustering ranks; no birds were moving among them, no rabbit slipped from one patch of yellowing bracken to another. All was still as the young girl sat musing by her well-loved pool.

Suddenly she started up, listening. Far off, up the green valley, beyond where a cluster of osiers hid the bend, she seemed to hear a sound of piping. Very faint and far off it seemed; very sweet and enthralling; sweet, with a tang of bitter in the sweet, enthralling, with a touch of threatening. As she stood listening eagerly, and with the air of one who hears what he has hoped and longed and dreaded to hear, that same well-remembered sudden, subtle change passed over the woods. Once more she became aware that the trees were alive, were watching her, and this time she felt that they were closer, their presences were more akin to her than before. And it seemed to her as if everywhere, figures, light, slender, brown-clad figures, were passing to and fro, coming from, fading into, the brown trunks of the trees. She could not discern these figures clearly; as she turned to watch they faded out, but sidelong they seemed to flock and whirl in a giddy dance. Ever the sound of the piping drew nearer, bringing with it strange thoughts, overpowering sensations, sensations of growth, of life, thoughts of the earth, vague desires, unholy thoughts, sweet but deadly. As the sounds of the piping drew nearer, the vague, elusive figures danced more nimbly, they seemed to rush towards the girl, to surround her from behind, from each side, never in front, never showing clearly, always shifting, always fading. The girl felt herself changing. Wild impulses to leap into the air, to cry aloud, to sing a new strange song, to join in the wild woodland dance, possessed her. Joy filled her heart, and yet, mingling with the joy, came fear; fear, at first low-lying, bidden, but gradually gaining; a fear, a natural fear, of the secret mysteries unfolding before her. And still the piping drew nearer; it was coming, it was coming! it was coming down the quiet valley, through the oak-trees that seemed to spring to attention to greet it, as soldiers salute the coming of their King. The piping rose louder and more clear. Beautiful it was, and entrancing, but evil and menacing; the girl knew, deep in her consciousness she knew, that when it appeared, evil and beauty would come conjoined in it. Her terror and her sense of helplessness grew; it was very near now; the dancing, elusive forms were drawing closer around her, the fir woods behind her were closing against her escape. She was like a bird charmed by a serpent, her feet refused to fly, her conscious will to act. And the Terror drew ever nearer. Despairingly she looked around her, despairingly uttered a cry of helpless agony.

The great St Bernard lying at her feet, disturbed by her cry, raised himself to his haunches and looked up into her face. The movement of the dog recalled him to her thoughts; she looked down at him, into the wise old eyes that gazed up at her with love and with the calm look of the aged, the experienced, of one from whom all the illusions of Life had faded. In the peaceful, sane, loving look of the dog the girl saw safety, escape. ‘Oh, Bran, save me, save me,’ she cried, and clung to the old dog’s neck. Slowly he arose, stretched himself, and, with the girl holding fast to his collar, turned towards the homeward path. As they moved forwards together the whirling forms seemed to fade and to recede, the menacing, clustered firs fell back, the piping changed and, harsh and discordant, resolved itself into the whistle of the rising wind, the very sky seemed to grow lighter, the air less heavy.

And so they passed through the woods together; and emerging from their still clutching shadows stood gazing across the valley darkening in the evening light, towards the gates of home, lit up by the cheerful rays of the setting sun.

* * *

The old woman, resting her aching back, looked up and saw the girl descending from the woods with quick light steps. ‘I wish I were as young and carefree as she be,’ she muttered, and stooped again among her vegetables.

The Late Earl of D.

The story which I am about to tell, whilst bearing some resemblance to a type of phenomena which have frequently formed the basis of tales both frankly fictitious or actually experienced, or believed to have been experienced, differs in one or two marked respects from this type and is, therefore, worthy of record. Mr Ellis, whose narrative I transcribe, has given a very clear and exact account of what befell him on that September evening in D. House; but, if it had been possible to ascertain whether the glass of the window had been changed during the fifteen years previous, it might have thrown still further light on how the phenomena were brought about. With this observation I give place to Mr Ellis.

* * *

I was but a young man when some thirty years ago I became the junior partner in Messrs Ransome and Ellis, Solicitors, of Lincoln’s Inn Fields. The practice with which I thus became connected is an old-established one; sound, but of no very great magnitude, although we count several well-known and honoured families amongst our clients. Not the least among these was that of the Earl of D. and his family, the possessors of an ancient but not wealthy estate in the Midland Counties. At the date of my becoming a partner in Messrs Ransome and Ellis the direct family of D. was reduced to two persons. The present Earl was a man of over middle age, unmarried and permanently resident at D. House, where he occupied himself in local activities, both charitable and official, and bore a high repute among ministers of many denominations as an earnest and sincere Christian gentleman. His lordship in his earlier years had by no means merited this description, having led an extremely wild life, a life not altogether untarnished by performances of a somewhat disreputable nature. He had passed through Eton and Sandhurst and joined a crack cavalry regiment from which, after sundry escapades, he had been requested to resign. Thereafter he had lived the life of a fast man about town, existing, after the expenditure of his private fortune, on his wits, a method of gaining a livelihood which is neither easy nor honourable, nor always successful. On more than one occasion his elder brother, who at that time held the Earldom, came to his assistance, raised money and paid his debts for him, thereby encumbering somewhat seriously a not very wealthy property. However, after the sudden and singular death of the Earl, The Honble. Charles, as he then was, turned over a new leaf and settled down soberly at D. to devote the remainder of his life to the activities I have mentioned. He did not marry, and at his death the title was doomed to extinction, although the property would pass to his sister, Lady Margaret, the other surviving member of the family, or to her children as the case might be. Lady Margaret had long ago quarrelled with her brother and neither she nor her husband visited D. House.

I must now devote a few sentences to the late Earl. This gentleman had been an invalid from very early years, suffering from a form of paralysis which entirely deprived him of the use of his lower extremities. Thus confined to his bed, his
chaise longue
or his wheeled chair, his energies were perforce diverted to literary subjects and, being gifted by nature with an acute and powerful intelligence and a great love of learning, he succeeded in supporting existence not unhappily. By nature he was a kindly and happy soul; fond of such society as he could mingle in, he was popular among his neighbours and beloved by his tenants and other dependants. He read widely, wrote a little and meditated much. Owing to his malady he was necessarily much alone, but to this he was accustomed and he was well cared for by his confidential nurse-valet, a man named Sinnett.

During a certain September about fifteen years before I joined my firm, Mr Charles descended upon D. House and his brother for one of his rare visits, visits which my partner well knew usually meant further arrangements being made by Lord D. for money to settle his impecunious brother’s affairs. Lord D. could not have been especially attached to his troublesome junior, who had been cast off by their only sister as a hopeless prodigal, but he had a lively sense of the family honour and stretched his resources to avert a stain being cast upon it. Mr Charles no doubt deliberately reckoned on his brother’s sensitiveness in this respect. We do not know exactly what passed between the brothers during this last visit, but I gather that Lady Margaret had been recently protesting strongly against the possible injury to her children’s interests that was being caused by Mr Charles’s extravagance and that this protest, coupled with the growing sense that his brother’s pocket was a bottomless pit, caused Lord D. to refuse to make any further payments. At any rate during the two or three days of Mr Charles’s stay the relations between the brothers, which had not been cordial for years, grew extremely strained and on the last night of his life Lord D., after a violent quarrel, ordered Mr Charles to leave the house the next morning for ever.