The House by the Churchyard

by J. Sheridan le Fanu

  'I believe, Sir, that this is the sixth time I’ve ventured to ask a distinct statement from your lips, of the cauthe of your dithagreement with Mr. Nutter, which I plainly tell you, Thir, I don’t at prethent underthtand, said Puddock, loftily and firmly enough.

  'To be sure, my darlin' Puddock,' replied O’Flaherty, 'it was that cursed little French whipper–snapper, with his monkeyfied intherruptions; be the powers, Puddock, if you knew half the mischief that same little baste has got me into, you would not wondher if I murthered him. It was he was the cause of my jewel with my cousin, Art Considine, and I wanting to be the very pink of politeness to him. I wrote him a note when he came to Athlone, afther two years in France, and jist out o' compliment to him, I unluckily put in a word of French: come an' dine, says I, and we’ll have a dish of chat. I knew u–n p–l–a–t (spelling it), was a dish, an' says I to Jerome, that pigimy (so he pronounced it) you seen here at the door, that’s his damnable name, what’s chat in French—c–h–a–t—spelling it to him; "sha," says he; "sha?" says I, "spell it, if you plase," says I; "c–h–a–t," says he, the stupid old viper. Well, I took the trouble to write it out, "un plat de chat;""is that right?" says I, showing it to him. "It is, my lord," says he, looking at me as if I had two heads. I never knew the manin' of it for more than a month afther I shot poor Art through the two calves. An' he that fought two jewels before, all about cats, one of them with a Scotch gentleman that he gave the lie to, for saying that French cooks had a way of stewing cats you could not tell them from hares; and the other immadiately afther, with Lieutenant Rugge, of the Royal Navy, that got one stewed for fun, and afther my Cousin Art dined off it, like a man, showed him the tail and the claws. It’s well he did not die of it, and no wondher he resented my invitation, though upon my honour, as a soldier and a gentleman, may I be stewed alive myself in a pot, Puddock my dear, if I had the laste notion of offering him the smallest affront!'

  'I begin to despair, Sir,' exclaimed Puddock, 'of receiving the information without which 'tis vain for me to try to be useful to you; once more, may I entreat to know what is the affront of which you complain?'

  'You don’t know; raly and truly now, you don’t know?' said O’Flaherty, fixing a solemn tipsy leer on him.

  'I tell you no, Thir,' rejoined Puddock.

  'And do you mean to tell me you did not hear that vulgar dog Nutter’s unmanly jokes?'

  'Jokes!' repeated Puddock, in large perplexity, 'why I’ve been here in this town for more than five years, and I never heard in all that time that Nutter once made a joke—and upon my life, I don’t think he could make a joke, Sir, if he tried—I don’t, indeed, Lieutenant O’Flaherty, upon my honour!'

  And rat it, Sir, how can I help it?' cried O’Flaherty, relapsing into pathos.

  'Help what?' demanded Puddock.

  O’Flaherty took him by the hand, and gazing on his face with a maudlin, lacklustre tenderness, said:—

  'Absalom was caught by the hair of his head—he was, Puddock—long hair or short hair, or (a hiccough) no hair at all, isn’t it nature’s doing, I ask you my darlin' Puddock, isn’t it?' He was shedding tears again very fast. 'There was Cicero and Julius Cæsar, wor both as bald as that,' and he thrust a shining sugar basin, bottom upward, into Puddock’s face. 'I’m not bald; I tell you I’m not—no, my darlin' Puddock, I’m not—poor Hyacinth O’Flaherty is not bald,' shaking Puddock by both hands.

  'That’s very plain, Sir, but I don’t see your drift,' he replied.

  'I want to tell you, Puddock, dear, if you’ll only have a minute’s patience. The door can’t fasten, divil bother it; come into the next room;' and toppling a little in his walk, he led him solemnly into his bed–room—the door of which he locked—somewhat to Puddock’s disquietude, who began to think him insane. Here having informed Puddock that Nutter was driving at the one point the whole evening, as any one that knew the secret would have seen; and having solemnly imposed the seal of secrecy upon his second, and essayed a wild and broken discourse upon the difference between total baldness and partial loss of hair, he disclosed to him the grand mystery of his existence, by lifting from the summit of his head a circular piece of wig, which in those days they called I believe, a 'topping,' leaving a bare shining disc exposed, about the size of a large pat of butter.

  'Upon my life, Thir, it’th a very fine piethe of work,' says Puddock, who viewed the wiglet with the eye of a stage–property man, and held it by a top lock near the candle. 'The very finetht piethe of work of the kind I ever thaw. 'Tith thertainly French. Oh, yeth—we can’t do such thingth here. By Jove, Thir, what a wig that man would make for Cato!'

  'An' he must be a mane crature—I say, a mane crature,' pursued O’Flaherty, 'for there was not a soul in the town but Jerome, the—the treacherous ape, that knew it. It’s he that dhresses my head every morning behind the bed–curtain there, with the door locked. And Nutter could never have found it out—who was to tell him, unless that ojus French damon, that’s never done talkin' about it;' and O’Flaherty strode heavily up and down the room with his hands in his breeches' pockets, muttering savage invectives, pitching his head from side to side, and whisking round at the turns in a way to show how strongly he was wrought upon.

  'Come in, Sorr!' thundered O’Flaherty, unlocking the door, in reply to a knock, and expecting to see his 'ojus French damon.' But it was a tall fattish stranger, rather flashily dressed, but a little soiled, with a black wig, and a rollicking red face, showing a good deal of chin and jaw.

  O’Flaherty made his grandest bow, quite forgetting the exposure at the top of his head; and Puddock stood rather shocked, with the candle in one hand and O’Flaherty’s scalp in the other.

  'You come, Sir, I presume, from Mr. Nutter,' said O’Flaherty, with lofty courtesy. This, Sir, is my friend, Lieutenant Puddock of the Royal Irish Artillery, who does me the honour to support me with his advice and—'

  As he moved his hand towards Puddock, he saw his scalp dangling between that gentleman’s finger and thumb, and became suddenly mute. He clapped his hand upon his bare skull, and made an agitated pluck at that article, but missed, and disappeared, with an imprecation in Irish, behind the bed curtains.

  'If you will be so obliging, Sir, as to precede me into that room,' lisped Puddock, with grave dignity, and waving O’Flaherty’s scalp slightly towards the door—for Puddock never stooped to hide anything, and being a gentleman, pure and simple, was not ashamed or afraid to avow his deeds, words, and situations; 'I shall do myself the honour to follow.'

  'Gi' me that,' was heard in a vehement whisper from behind the curtains. Puddock understood it, and restored the treasure.

  The secret conference in the drawing–room was not tedious, nor indeed very secret, for anyone acquainted with the diplomatic slang in which such affairs were conducted might have learned in the lobby, or indeed in the hall, so mighty was the voice of the stranger, that there was no chance of any settlement without a meeting which was fixed to take place at twelve o’clock next day on the Fifteen Acres.

  CHAPTER XI.

  SOME TALK ABOUT THE HAUNTED HOUSE—BEING, AS I SUPPOSE, ONLY OLD WOMAN’S TALES.

  Old Sally always attended her young mistress while she prepared for bed—not that Lilias required help, for she had the spirit of neatness and a joyous, gentle alacrity, and only troubled the good old creature enough to prevent her thinking herself grown old and useless.

  Sally, in her quiet way, was garrulous, and she had all sorts of old–world tales of wonder and adventure, to which Lilias often went pleasantly to sleep; for there was no danger while old Sally sat knitting there by the fire, and the sound of the rector’s mounting upon his chairs, as was his wont, and taking down and putting up his books in the study beneath, though muffled and faint, gave evidence that that good and loving influence was awake and busy.

  Old Sally was telling her young mistress, who sometimes listened with a smile, and sometimes lost a good five minutes together of her gentle prattle, how the young
gentleman, Mr. Mervyn, had taken that awful old haunted habitation, the Tiled House 'beyant at Ballyfermot,' and was going to stay there, and wondered no one had told him of the mysterious dangers of that desolate mansion.

  It stood by a lonely bend of the narrow road. Lilias had often looked upon the short, straight, grass–grown avenue with an awful curiosity at the old house which she had learned in childhood to fear as the abode of shadowy tenants and unearthly dangers.

  'There are people, Sally, nowadays, who call themselves free–thinkers, and don’t believe in anything—even in ghosts,' said Lilias.

  'A then the place he’s stopping in now, Miss Lily, 'ill soon cure him of free–thinking, if the half they say about it’s true,' answered Sally.

  'But I don’t say, mind, he’s a free–thinker, for I don’t know anything of Mr. Mervyn; but if he be not, he must be very brave, or very good, indeed. I know, Sally, I should be horribly afraid, indeed, to sleep in it myself,' answered Lilias, with a cosy little shudder, as the aërial image of the old house for a moment stood before her, with its peculiar malign, sacred, and skulking aspect, as if it had drawn back in shame and guilt under the melancholy old elms among the tall hemlock and nettles.

  'And now, Sally, I’m safe in bed. Stir the fire, my old darling.' For although it was the first week in May, the night was frosty. 'And tell me all about the Tiled House again, and frighten me out of my wits.'

  So good old Sally, whose faith in such matters was a religion, went off over the well–known ground in a gentle little amble—sometimes subsiding into a walk as she approached some special horror, and pulling up altogether—that is to say, suspending her knitting, and looking with a mysterious nod at her young mistress in the four–poster, or lowering her voice to a sort of whisper when the crisis came.

  So she told her how when the neighbours hired the orchard that ran up to the windows at the back of the house, the dogs they kept there used to howl so wildly and wolfishly all night among the trees, and prowl under the walls of the house so dejectedly, that they were fain to open the door and let them in at last; and, indeed, small need was there for dogs; for no one, young or old, dared go near the orchard after night–fall. No, the burnished golden pippins that peeped through the leaves in the western rays of evening, and made the mouths of the Ballyfermot school–boys water, glowed undisturbed in the morning sunbeams, and secure in the mysterious tutelage of the night smiled coyly on their predatory longings. And this was no fanciful reserve and avoidance. Mick Daly, when he had the orchard, used to sleep in the loft over the kitchen; and he swore that within five or six weeks, while he lodged there, he twice saw the same thing, and that was a lady in a hood and a loose dress, her head drooping, and her finger on her lip, walking in silence among the crooked stems, with a little child by the hand, who ran smiling and skipping beside her. And the Widow Cresswell once met them at night–fall, on the path through the orchard to the back–door, and she did not know what it was until she saw the men looking at one another as she told it.

  'It’s often she told it to me,' said old Sally; 'and how she came on them all of a sudden at the turn of the path, just by the thick clump of alder trees; and how she stopped, thinking it was some lady that had a right to be there; and how they went by as swift as the shadow of a cloud, though she only seemed to be walking slow enough, and the little child pulling by her arm, this way and that way, and took no notice of her, nor even raised her head, though she stopped and courtesied. And old Dalton, don’t you remember old Dalton, Miss Lily?'

  'I think I do, the old man who limped, and wore the old black wig?'

  'Yes, indeed, acushla, so he did. See how well she remembers! That was by a kick of one of the earl’s horses—he was groom there,' resumed Sally. 'He used to be troubled with hearing the very sounds his master used to make to bring him and old Oliver to the door, when he came back late. It was only on very dark nights when there was no moon. They used to hear all on a sudden, the whimpering and scraping of dogs at the hall door, and the sound of the whistle, and the light stroke across the window with the lash of the whip, just like as if the earl himself—may his poor soul find rest—was there. First the wind 'id stop, like you’d be holding your breath, then came these sounds they knew so well, and when they made no sign of stirring or opening the door, the wind 'id begin again with such a hoo–hoo–o–o–high, you’d think it was laughing, and crying, and hooting all at once.'

  Here old Sally’s tale and her knitting ceased for a moment, as if she were listening to the wind outside the haunted precincts of the Tiled house; and she took up her parable again.

  'The very night he met his death in England, old Oliver, the butler, was listening to Dalton—for Dalton was a scholar—reading the letter that came to him through the post that day, telling him to get things ready, for his troubles wor nearly over and he expected to be with them again in a few days, and maybe almost as soon as the letter; and sure enough, while he was reading, there comes a frightful rattle at the window, like some one all in a tremble, trying to shake it open, and the earl’s voice, as they both conceited, cries from outside, "Let me in, let me in, let me in!""It’s him," says the butler. "'Tis so, bedad," says Dalton, and they both looked at the windy, and at one another—and then back again—overjoyed, in a soart of a way, and frightened all at onst. Old Oliver was bad with the rheumatiz. So away goes Dalton to the hall–door, and he calls "who’s there?" and no answer. "Maybe," says Dalton, to himself, "'tis what he’s rid round to the back–door;" so to the back–door with him, and there he shouts again—and no answer, and not a sound outside—and he began to feel quare, and to the hall door with him back again. "Who’s there? do you hear? who’s there?" he shouts, and receives no answer still. "I’ll open the door at any rate," says he, "maybe it’s what he’s made his escape," for they knew all about his troubles, and wants to get in without noise, so praying all the time—for his mind misgave him it might not be all right—he shifts the bars and unlocks the door; but neither man, woman, nor child, nor horse, nor any living shape was standing there, only something or another slipt into the house close by his leg; it might be a dog, or something that way, he could not tell, for he only seen it for a moment with the corner of his eye, and it went in just like as if it belonged to the place. He could not see which way it went, up or down, but the house was never a happy one, or a quiet house after; and Dalton bangs the hall–door, and he took a sort of a turn and a trembling, and back with him to Oliver, the butler, looking as white as the blank leaf of his master’s letter, that was between his finger and thumb. "What is it? what is it?" says the butler, catching his crutch like a waypon, fastening his eyes on Dalton’s white face, and growing almost as pale himself. "The master’s dead," says Dalton—and so he was, signs on it.

  'After the turn she got by what she seen in the orchard, when she came to know the truth of what it was, Jinny Cresswell, you may be sure, did not stay there an hour longer than she could help: and she began to take notice of things she did not mind before—such as when she went into the big bed–room over the hall, that the lord used to sleep in, whenever she went in at one door the other door used to be pulled to very quick, as if some one avoiding her was getting out in haste; but the thing that frightened her most was just this—that sometimes she used to find a long straight mark from the head to the foot of her bed, as if 'twas made by something heavy lying there, and the place where it was used to feel warm—as if—whoever it was—they only left it as she came into the room.

  'But the worst of all was poor Kitty Haplin, the young woman that died of what she seen. Her mother said it was how she was kept awake all the night with the walking about of some one in the next room, tumbling about boxes, and pulling over drawers, and talking and sighing to himself, and she, poor thing, wishing to go asleep, and wondering who it could be, when in he comes, a fine man, in a sort of loose silk morning–dress, an' no wig, but a velvet cap on, and to the windy with him quiet and aisy, and she makes a turn in the bed to let
him know there was some one there, thinking he’d go away, but instead of that, over he comes to the side of the bed, looking very bad, and says something to her—but his speech was thick and choakin' like a dummy’s that id be trying to spake—and she grew very frightened, and says she, 'I ask your honour’s pardon, Sir, but I can’t hear you right,' and with that he stretches up his neck nigh out of his cravat, turning his face up towards the ceiling, and—grace between us and harm!—his throat was cut across, and wide open; she seen no more, but dropped in a dead faint in the bed, and back to her mother with her in the morning, and she never swallied bit or sup more, only she just sat by the fire holding her mother’s hand, crying and trembling, and peepin' over her shoulder, and starting with every sound, till she took the fever and died, poor thing, not five weeks after.'

  And so on, and on, and on flowed the stream of old Sally’s narrative, while Lilias dropped into dreamless sleep, and then the story–teller stole away to her own tidy bed–room and innocent slumbers.

  CHAPTER XII.

  SOME ODD FACTS ABOUT THE TILED HOUSE—BEING AN AUTHENTIC NARRATIVE OF THE GHOST OF A HAND.

  I’m sure she believed every word she related, for old Sally was veracious. But all this was worth just so much as such talk commonly is—marvels, fabulæ, what our ancestors called winter’s tales—which gathered details from every narrator, and dilated in the act of narration. Still it was not quite for nothing that the house was held to be haunted. Under all this smoke there smouldered just a little spark of truth—an authenticated mystery, for the solution of which some of my readers may possibly suggest a theory, though I confess I can’t.