Shivers for Christmas (4 page)

‘I say—they tell me you have something to look at in there’—he pointed with his thumb at the old coach-house door. ‘Let us have a peep.’

Tom Scales happened to be at that moment in a state of mind highly favourable to anyone in search of a submissive instrument. He was in great perplexity, and even perturbation. He suffered the stranger to lead him to the coach-house gate.

‘You must come in and hold the lantern,’ said he. ‘I’ll pay you handsomely.’

The old hostler applied his key and removed the padlock.

‘What are you afraid of? Step in and throw the light on his face,’ said the stranger grimly. ‘Throw open the lantern: stand
there
. Stoop over him a little—he won’t bite you. Steady, or you may pass the night with him!’

In the meantime the company at the George had dispersed; and, shortly after, Anthony Turnbull—who, like a good landlord, was always last in bed, and first up, in his house—was taking, alone, his last look round the kitchen before making his final visit to the stable-yard, when Tom Scales tottered into the kitchen, looking like death, his hair standing upright; and he sat down on an oak chair, all in a tremble, wiped his forehead with his hand, and, instead of speaking, heaved a great sigh or two.

It was not till after he had swallowed a dram of brandy that he found his voice, and said:

‘We’ev the deaul himsel’ in t’ house! By Jen! ye’d best send fo t’ sir’ (the clergyman). ‘Happen he’ll tak him in hand wi’ holy writ, and send him elsewhidder deftly. Lord atween us and harm! I’m a sinfu’ man. I tell ye, Mr. Turnbull, I dar’n’t stop in t’ George to-night under the same roof wi’ him.’

‘Ye mean the ra-beyoned, black-feyaced lad, wi’ the brocken neb? Why, that’s a gentleman wi’ a pocket full o’ guineas, man, and a horse worth fifty pounds!’

‘That horse is no better nor his rider. The nags that were in the stable wi’ him, they all tuk the creepins, and sweated like rain down a thack. I tuk them all out o’ that, away from him, into the hack-stable, and I thocht I cud never get them past him. But that’s not all. When I was keekin inta t’ window at the nags, he comes behint me and claps his claw on ma shouther, and he gars me gang wi’ him, and open the aad coach-house door, and haad the cannle for him, till he pearked into the deed man’s feyace; and, as God’s my judge, I sid the corpse open its eyes and wark its mouth, like a man smoorin’ and strivin’ to talk. I cudna move or say a word, though I felt my hair rising on my heed; but at lang-last I gev a yelloch, and say I “La! what is that?” and he himself looked round on me, like the devil he is; and, wi’ a skirl o’ a laugh, he strikes the lantern out o’ my hand. When I cum to myself we were outside the coach-house door. The moon was shinin’ in, and I cud see the corpse stretched out on the table whar we left it; and he kicked the door to wi’ a purr o’ his foot. “Lock it,” says he; and so I did. And here’s the key for ye—tak it yoursel’, sir. He offer’d me money: he said he’d mak me a rich man if I’d sell him the corpse, and help him awa’ wi’ it.’

‘Hout, man! What cud he want o’ t’ corpse? He’s not doctor, to do a’ that lids. He was takin’ a rise out o’ ye lad,’ said Turnbull.

‘Na, na—he wants the corpse. There’s summat you a’ me can’t tell he wants to do wi’ ’t; and he’d liefer get it wi’ sin and thievin’, and the damage of my soul. He’s one of them freytens a boo or a dobbies off Dardale Moss, that’s always astir wi’ the like after nightfall; unless—Lord save us!—he be the deaul himsel’.’

‘Whar is he noo?’ asked the landlord, who was growing uncomfortable.

‘He spang’d up the back stair to his room. I wonder you didn’t hear him trampin’ like a wild horse; and he clapt his door that the house shook again—but Lord knows whar he is noo. Let us gang awa’ up to the Vicar’s, and gan
him
come down, and talk wi’ him.’

‘Hoity toity, man—you’re too easy scared,’ said the landlord, pale enough by this time. ‘’Twould be a fine thing, truly, to send abroad that the house was haunted by the deaul himsel’! Why, ’twould be the ruin o’ the George. You’re sure ye locked the door on the corpse?’

‘Aye, sir—sartain.’

‘Come wi’ me, Tom—we’ll gi’ a last look round the yard.’

So, side by side, with many a jealous look right and left, and over their shoulders, they went in silence. On entering the old-fashioned quadrangle, surrounded by stables and other offices—built in the antique cage-work fashion—they stopped for a while under the shadow of the inn gable, and looked round the yard, and listened. All was silent—nothing stirring.

The stable lantern was lighted; and with it in his hand Tony Turnbull, holding Tom Scales by the shoulder, advanced. He hauled Tom after him for a step or two; then stood still and shoved him before him for a step or two more; and thus cautiously—as a pair of skirmishers under fire—they approached the coach-house door.

‘There, ye see—all safe,’ whispered Tom, pointing to the lock, which hung—distinct in the moonlight—in its place. ‘Cum back, I say!’

‘Cum on, say I!’ retorted the landlord valorously. ‘It would never do to allow any tricks to be played with the chap in there’—he pointed to the coach-house door.

‘The coroner here in the morning, and never a corpse to sit on!’ He unlocked the padlock with these words, having handed the lantern to Tom. ‘Here, keck in, Tom,’ he continued; ‘ye hev the lantern—and see if all’s as ye left it.’

‘Not me—na, not for the George and a’ that’s in it!’ said Tom, with a shudder, sternly, as he took a step backward.

What the—what are ye afraid on? Gi’ me the lantern—it is all one:
I
will.’

And cautiously, little by little, he opened the door; and, holding the lantern over his head in the narrow slit, he peeped in—frowning and pale—with one eye, as if he expected something to fly in his face. He closed the door without speaking, and locked it again.

‘As safe as a thief in a mill,’ he whispered with a nod to his companion. And at that moment a harsh laugh overhead broke the silence startlingly, and set all the poultry in the yard gabbling.

‘Thar he be!’ said Tom, clutching the landlord’s arm—‘in the winda—see!’

The window of the cedar-room, up two pairs of stairs, was open; and in the shadow a darker outline was visible of a man, with his elbows on the window-stone, looking down upon them.

‘Look at his eyes—like two live coals!’ gasped Tom.

The landlord could not see all this so sharply, being confused, and not so long-sighted as Tom.

‘Time, sir,’ called Tony Turnbull, turning cold as he thought he saw a pair of eyes shining down redly at him—‘time for honest folk to be in their beds, and asleep!’

‘As sound as your sexton!’ said the jeering voice from above.

‘Come out of this,’ whispered the landlord fiercely to his hostler, plucking him hard by the sleeve.

They got into the house, and shut the door.

‘I wish we were shot of him,’ said the landlord, with something like a groan, as he leaned against the wall of the passage. ‘I’ll sit up, anyhow—and, Tom, you’ll sit wi’ me. Cum into the gun-room. No one shall steal the dead man out of my yard while I can draw a trigger.’

The gun-room in the George is about twelve feet square. It projects into the stable-yard and commands a full view of the old coach-house; and, through a narrow side window, a flanking view of the back door of the inn, through which the yard is reached.

Tony Turnbull took down the blunderbuss—which was the great ordnance of the house—and loaded it with a stiff charge of pistol bullets.

He put on a great-coat which hung there, and was his covering when he went out at night, to shoot wild ducks. Tom made himself comfortable likewise. They then sat down at the window, which was open, looking into the yard, the opposite side of which was white in the brilliant moonlight.

The landlord laid the blunderbuss across his knees, and stared into the yard. His comrade stared also. The door of the gun-room was locked; so they felt tolerably secure.

An hour passed; nothing had occurred. Another. The clock struck one. The shadows had shifted a little; but still the moon shone full on the old coach-house, and the stable where the guest’s horse stood.

Turnbull thought he heard a step on the back-stair. Tom was watching the back-door through the side window, with eyes glazing with the intensity of his stare. Anthony Turnbull, holding his breath, listened at the room door. It was a false alarm.

When he came back to the window looking into the yard:

‘Hish! Look thar!’ said he in a vehement whisper.

From the shadow at the left they saw the figure of the gaunt horseman, in short cloak and jack-boots, emerge. He pushed open the stable door, and led out his powerful black horse. He walked it across the front of the building till he reached the old coach-house door; and there, with its bridle on its neck, he left it standing, while he stalked to the yard gate; and, dealing it a kick with his heel, it sprang back with the rebound, shaking from top to bottom, and stood open. The stranger returned to the side of his horse; and the door which secured the corpse of the dead sexton seemed to swing slowly open of itself as he entered, and returned with the corpse in his arms, and swung it across the shoulders of the horse, and instantly sprang into the saddle.

‘Fire!’ shouted Tom, and bang went the blunderbuss with a stunning crack. A thousand sparrows’ wings winnowed through the air from the thick ivy. The watch-dog yelled a furious bark. There was a strange ring and whistle in the air. The blunderbuss had burst into shivers right down to the very breech. The recoil rolled the inn-keeper upon his back on the floor, and Tom Scales was flung against the side of the recess of the window, which had saved him from a tumble as violent. In this position they heard the scaring laugh of the departing horseman, and saw him ride out of the gate with his ghastly burden.

Perhaps some of my readers, like myself, have heard this story told by Roger Turnbull, now host of the George and Dragon, the grandson of the very Tony who then swayed the spigot and keys of that inn, in the identical kitchen of which the fiend treated so many of the neighbours to punch.

What infernal object was subserved by the possession of the dead villain’s body, I have not learned. But a very curious story, in which a vampire resuscitation of Crooke the sexton figures, may throw a light upon this part of the tale.

The result of Turnbull’s shot at the disappearing fiend certainly justifies old Andrew Moretons’s dictum, which is thus expressed in his curious ‘History of Apparitions’: ‘I warn rash brands who, pretending not to fear the devil, are for using the ordinary violences with him, which affect one man from another—or with an apparition, in which they may be sure to receive some mischief. I knew one fired a gun at an apparition and the gun burst in a hundred pieces in his hand; another struck at an apparition with a sword, and broke his sword in pieces and wounded his hand grievously; and ’tis next to madness for anyone to go that way to work with any spirit, be it angel or be it devil.’

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Robert Louis Stevenson (1850–94) wrote some of the most enduring and memorable Christmas tales of the 1880s including ‘Olalla’ and the shorter ‘Markheim’. The latter, written in 1884, was inspired by an article on the subconscious which Stevenson had read in a French scientific journal. It was published in
The Merry Men and other Tales and Fables
, 1887.

‘Y
es,’ said the dealer, ‘our windfalls are of various kinds. Some customers are ignorant, and then I touch a dividend on my superior knowledge. Some are dishonest,’ and here he held up the candle, so that the light fell strongly on his visitor, ‘and in that case,’ he continued, ‘I profit by my virtue.’

Markheim had but just entered from the daylight streets, and his eyes had not yet grown familiar with the mingled shine and darkness in the shop. At these pointed words, and before the near presence of the flame, he blinked painfully and looked aside.

The dealer chuckled. ‘You come to me on Christmas Day,’ he resumed, ‘when you know that I am alone in my house, put up my shutters, and make a point of refusing business. Well, you will have to pay for that; you will have to pay for my loss of time, when I should be balancing my books; you will have to pay, besides, for a kind of manner that I remark in you to-day very strongly. I am the essence of discretion, and ask no awkward questions; but when a customer cannot look me in the eye, he has to pay for it.’ The dealer once more chuckled; and then, changing to his usual business voice, though still with a note of irony, ‘You can give, as usual, a clear account of how you came in to the possession of the object?’ he continued. ‘Still your uncle’s cabinet? A remarkable collector, sir!’

And the little pale, round-shouldered dealer stood almost on tiptoe, looking over the top of his gold spectacles, and nodding his head with every mark of disbelief. Markheim returned his gaze with one of infinite pity, and a touch of horror.

‘This time,’ said he, ‘you are in error. I have not come to sell, but to buy. I have no curios to dispose of; my uncle’s cabinet is bare to the wainscot; even were it still intact, I have done well on the Stock Exchange, and should more likely add to it than otherwise, and my errand to-day is simplicity itself. I seek a Christmas present for a lady,’ he continued, waxing more fluent as he struck into the speech he had prepared; ‘and certainly I owe you every excuse for thus disturbing you upon so small a matter. But the thing was neglected yesterday; I must produce my little compliment at dinner; and, as you very well know, a rich marriage is not a thing to be neglected.’

There followed a pause, during which the dealer seemed to weigh this statement incredulously. The ticking of many clocks among the curious lumber of the shop, and the faint rushing of the cabs in a near thoroughfare, filled up the interval of silence.

‘Well, sir,’ said the dealer, ‘be it so. You are an old customer after all; and if, as you say, you have the chance of a good marriage, far be it from me to be an obstacle. Here is a nice thing for a lady now,’ he went on, ‘this hand glass—fifteenth century, warranted; comes from a good collection, too; but I reserve the name, in the interests of my customer, who was just like yourself, my dear sir, the nephew and sole heir of a remarkable collector.’