The Oxford Book of Victorian Ghost Stories (62 page)

'The people who own this house must be lunatics,' remarked Aggie as she peered round the pantry; 'fancy hiring out one's best family plate and good old china! And I saw some ancient music books in the drawing-room, and there is a side saddle in the bottle khana.'

'My dear, the people who owned this house are dead,' explained Mrs. Chalmers. 'I heard all about them last evening from Mrs. Starkey.'

'Oh, is she up there?' exclaimed Aggie somewhat fretfully.

'Yes, her husband is cantonment magistrate. This house belonged to an old retired colonel and his wife. They and his niece lived here. These were all their belongings. They died within a short time of one another, and the old man left a queer will, to say that the house was to remain precisely as they left it for twenty years, and at the end of that time it was to be sold and all the property dispersed. Mrs. Starkey says she is sure that he never intended it to be let, but the heir-at-law insists on that, and is furious at the terms of the will.'

'Well, it is a very good thing for us,' remarked Aggie; 'we are as comfortable here as if we were in our own house: there is a stove in the kitchen; there are nice boxes for firewood in every room, clocks, real hair mattresses—in short, it is as you said, a treasure trove.'

We set to work to modernize the drawing-room with phoolkaries, Madras muslin curtains, photograph screens and frames, and such like portable articles. We placed the piano across a corner, arranged flowers in some handsome Dresden china vases, and entirely altered and improved the character of the room. When Aggie had dispatched a most glowing description of our new quarters to Tom, and we had had tiffin, we set off to walk into Kantia to put our names down at the library and to enquire for letters at the post office. Aggie met a good many acquaintances—who does not who has lived five years in India in the same district?

Among them Mrs. Starkey, an elderly Lady with a prominent nose and goggle eyes, who greeted her loudly across the reading-room table in this agreeable fashion:

'And so you have come up after all, Mrs. Shandon. Someone told me that you meant to remain below, but I knew you never could be so wicked as to keep your poor little children in that heat.' Then coming round and dropping into a chair beside her she said, 'And I suppose this young Lady is your sister-in-law?'

Mrs Starkey eyed me critically, evidently appraising my chances in the great marriage market. She herself had settled her own two daughters most satisfactorily, and had now nothing to do but interest herself in these people's affairs.

'Yes,' acquiesced Aggie, 'Miss Shandon—Mrs. Starkey.'

'And so you have taken Briarwood?'

'Yes, we have been most lucky to get it.'

'I hope you will think so at the end of three months,' observed Mrs. Starkey with a significant pursing of her lips. 'Mrs. Chalmers is a stranger up here, or she would not have been in such a hurry to jump at it.'

'Why, what is the matter with it?' enquired Aggie. 'It is well built, well furnished, well situated, and very cheap.'

'That's just it—suspiciously cheap. Why, my dear Mrs. Shandon, if there was not something against it, it would let for two hundred rupees a month.'

'And what is against it?'

'It's haunted! There you have the reason in two words.'

'Is that all? I was afraid it was the drains. I don't believe in ghosts and haunted houses. What are we supposed to see?'

'Nothing,' retorted Mrs. Starkey, who seemed a good deal nettled at our smiling incredulity.

'Nothing!' with an exasperating laugh.

'No, but you will make up for it in hearing. Not now—you are all right for the next six weeks—but after the monsoon breaks I give you a week at Briarwood. No one would stand it longer, and indeed you might as well bespeak your rooms at Cooper's Hotel now. There is always a rush up here in July by the two month's leave people, and you will be poked into some wretched go-down.'

Aggie laughed rather a careless ironical little laugh and said, 'Thank you, Mrs. Starkey; but I think we will stay on where we are; at any rate for the present.'

'Of course it will be as you please. What do you think of the verandah?' she enquired with a curious smile.

'I think, as I was saying to Susan, that it is worth half the rent of the house.'

'And in my opinion the house is worth double rent without it,' and with this enigmatic remark she rose and sailed away.

'Horrid old frump,' exclaimed Aggie as we walked home in the starlight. 'She is jealous and angry that she did not get Briarwood herself—I know her so well. She is always hinting and repeating stories about the nicest people—always decrying your prettiest dress or your best servant.'

We soon forgot all about Mrs. Starkey and her dismal prophecy, being too gay and too busy to give her, or it, a thought. We had so many engagements—tennis parties and tournaments, picnics, concerts, dances and little dinners. We ourselves gave occasional afternoon teas in the verandah, using the best Spode cups and saucers and the old silver cake-basket, and were warmly complimented on our good fortune in securing such a charming house and garden. One day the children discovered to their great joy that the old chowkidar belonging to the bungalow possessed an African grey parrot—a rare bird indeed in India; he had a battered Europe cage, doubdess a remnant of better days, and swung on his ring, looking up at us enquiringly out of his impudent little black eyes.

The parrot had been the property of the former inmates of Briarwood, and as it was a long-lived creature, had survived its master and mistress, and was boarded out with the chowkidar, at one rupee per month.

The chowkidar willingly carried the cage into the verandah, where the bird seemed perfectly at home.

We got a little table for its cage, and the children were delighted with him, as he swung to and fro, with a bit of cake in his wrinkled claw.

Presently he startled us all by suddenly calling 'Lucy', in a voice that was as distinct as if it had come from a human throat. 'Pretty Lucy—Lu—cy.'

'That must have been the niece,' said Aggie. 'I expect she was the original of that picture over the chimney-piece in your room; she looks like a Lucy.'

It was a large framed half-length photograph of a very pretty girl, in a white dress, with gigantic open sleeves. The ancient parrot talked incessantly now that he had been restored to society; he whistled for the dogs, and brought them flying to his summons, to his great satisfaction and their equally great indignation. He called 'Qui hye' so naturally, in a Lady's shrill soprano, or a gruff male bellow, that I have no doubt our servants would have liked to have wrung his neck. He coughed and expectorated like an old gentleman, and whined like a puppy, and mewed like a cat, and I am sorry to add, sometimes swore like a trooper; but his most constant cry was, 'Lucy, where are you, pretty Lucy—Lucy—Lu—cy?'

Aggie and I went to various picnics, but to that given by the Chalmers (in honour of Mr Chalmers's brother Charlie, a captain in a Gurkha regiment, just come up to Kantia on leave) Aggie was unavoidably absent. Tor had a little touch of fever, and she did not like to leave him; but I went under my hostess's care, and expected to enjoy myself immensely. Alas! on that self-same afternoon the long expected monsoon broke, and we were nearly drowned! We rode to the selected spot, five miles from Kantia, laughing and chattering, indifferent to the big blue-black clouds that came slowly, but surely, sailing up from below; it was a way they had had for days and nothing had come of it. We spread the tablecloth, boiled the kettle, unpacked the hampers, in spite of sharp gusts of wind and warning rumbling thunder. Just as we had commenced to reap the reward of our exertions, there fell a few huge drops, followed by a vivid flash, and then a tremendous crash of thunder, like a whole park of artillery, that seemed to shake the mountains, and after this the deluge. In less than a minute we were soaked through; we hastily gathered up the tablecloth by its four ends, gave it to the coolies and fled. It was all I could do to stand against the wind; only for Captain Chalmers I believe I would have been blown away; as it was I lost my hat, it was whirled into space. Mrs. Chalmers lost her boa, and Mrs. Starkey, not merely her bonnet, but some portion of her hair. We were truly in a wretched plight, the water streaming down our faces and squelching in our boots; the little trickling mountain rivulets were now like racing seas of turbid water; the lightning was almost blinding; the trees rocked dangerously and lashed one another with their quivering branches. I had never been out in such a storm before, and I hope I never may again. We reached Kantia more dead than alive, and Mrs. Chalmers sent an express to Aggie, and kept me till the next day. After raining as it only can rain in the Himalayas, the weather cleared, the sun shone, and I rode home in borrowed plumes, full of my adventures and in the highest spirits. I found Aggie sitting over the fire in the drawing-room, looking ghastly white: that was nothing uncommon; but terribly depressed, which was most unusual. 'I am afraid you have neuralgia?' I said as I kissed her; she nodded and made no reply.

'How is Tor?' I enquired as I drew a chair up to the fire.

'Better—quite well.' 'Any news—any letter?' 'Not a word—not a line.'

'Has anything happened to Pip'—Pip was a fox terrier, renowned for having the shortest tail and being the most impertinent dog in Lucknow—'or the mongoose?'

'No, you silly girl! Why do you ask such questions?'

'I was afraid something was amiss; you seem rather down on your luck.' Aggie shrugged her shoulders and then said:

'What put such an absurd idea into your head? Tell me all about the picnic,' and she began to talk rapidly and to ask me various questions; but I observed that once she had set me going—no difficult task—her attention flagged, her eyes wandered from my face to the fire. She was not listening to half I said, and my most thrilling descriptions were utterly lost on this indifferent, abstracted little creature! I noticed from this time that she had become strangely nervous for her. She invited herself to the share of half my bed; she was restless, distrait, and even irritable; and when I was asked out to spend the day, dispensed with my company with an alacrity that was by no means flattering. Formerly, of an evening she used to herd the children home at sundown, and tear me away from the delights of the reading-room at seven o'clock; now she hung about the library until almost the last moment, until it was time to put out the lamps, and kept the children with her, making transparent pretexts for their company. Often we did not arrive at home till half-past eight o'clock. I made no objections to these late hours, neither did Charlie Chalmers, who often walked back with us and remained to dinner. I was amazed to notice that Aggie seemed delighted to have his company, for she had always expressed a rooted aversion to what she called 'tame young men', and here was this new acquaintance dining with us at least thrice a week! About a month after the picnic we had a spell of dreadful weather—thunderstorms accompanied by torrents. One pouring afternoon, Aggie and I were sitting over the drawing-room fire, whilst the rain came fizzing down among the logs and ran in rivers off the roof and out of the spouts. There had been no going out that day, and we were feeling rather flat and dull, as we sat in a kind of ghostly twilight, with all outdoor objects swallowed up in mist, listening to the violent battering of the rain on the zinc verandah, and the storm which was growling round the hills. 'Oh, for a visitor!' I exclaimed; 'but no one but a fish or a lunatic would be out on such an evening.'

'No one, indeed,' echoed Aggie in a melancholy tone. 'We may as well draw the curtains and have in the lamp and tea to cheer us up.'

She had scarcely finished speaking when I heard the brisk trot of a horse along the road. It stopped at the gate and came rapidly down our avenue. I heard the wet gravel crunching under his hoofs and—yes—a man's cheery whistle. My heart jumped, and I half rose from my chair. It must be Charlie Chalmers braving the elements to see me!—such, I must confess, was my incredible vanity! He did not stop at the front door as usual, but rode straight into the verandah, which afforded ample room and shelter for half-a-dozen mounted men.

'Aggie,' I said eagerly, 'do you hear? It must be-'

I paused—my tongue silenced by the awful pallor of her face and the expression of her eyes as she sat with her little hands clutching the arms of her chair, and her whole figure bent forward in an attitude of listening—an attitude of terror.

'What is it, Aggie?' I said, 'Are you ill?'

As I spoke the horse's hoofs made a loud clattering noise on the stone-paved verandah outside and a man's voice—a young man's eager voice—called, 'Lucy'.

Instantly a chair near the writing-table was pushed back and someone went quickly to the window—a French one—and bungled for a moment with the fastening—I always had a difficulty with that window myself. Aggie and I were within the bright circle of the firelight, but the rest of the room was dim, and outside the streaming grey sky was spasmodically illuminated by occasional vivid flashes that lit up the surrounding hills as if it were daylight. The trampling of impatient hoofs and the rattling of a door handle were the only sounds that were audible for a few breathless seconds; but during those seconds Pip, bristling like a porcupine and trembling violently in every joint, had sprung off my lap and crawled abjectly under Aggie's chair, seemingly in a transport of fear. The door was opened audibly, and a cold, icy blast swept in, that seemed to freeze my very heart and made me shiver from head to foot. At this moment there came with a sinister blue glare the most vivid flash of lightning I ever saw. It lit up the whole room, which was empty save for ourselves, and was instantly followed by a clap of thunder that caused my knees to knock together and that terrified me and filled me with horror. It evidently terrified the horse too; there was a violent plunge, a clattering of hoofs on the stones, a sudden loud crash of smashing timber, a woman's long, loud, piercing shriek, which stopped the very beating of my heart, and then a frenzied struggle in the cruel, crumbling, treacherous shale, the rattle of loose stones and the hollow roar of something sliding down the precipice.