Old House of Fear

by Russell Kirk

  “Very good old sherry, this,” Jackman was saying. “Sir Alastair kept an admirable cellar, and much of it still is below stairs. One has to watch the servants. There’s a quantity – perhaps two bins – of Jamaica rum of 1800 or earlier, commencing to lose its savor now, alas. Another drop, Mr. Logan? You’ve been looking at the hole in my head: not that I mean to reproach you, for you’d have to be blind to ignore it. It’s a souvenir of Spain. In the lines outside Teruel, a spent bullet went right through the bone. But there was a Russian surgeon in Teruel that day, luckily, and he got the bullet out, and now there’s a bit of plastic set into my poor skull. I call the place my third eye. You’ve read the Hebridean legends of third eyes, Mr. Logan? No? I suppose you’ve little time for general reading, what with the getting and spending of your vocation. For that matter, I presume you know next to nothing of the Spanish trouble, more than twenty years ago: a youthful indiscretion of mine. But possibly that’s just as well. Every man to his last. You will be twenty-seven years old, Mr. Logan, or perhaps twenty-eight? And earning seven pounds a week, like as not. And you aspire to marry the sole survivor of the old, old line of MacAskival. Not that I blame you, not in the least. In the coming world, Mr. Logan, there will be no rank and no class. And intellect will have its rewards. No, so far as social status is concerned, I offer no objection. ‘A man’s a man for a’ that,’ as you Scots say, Mr. Logan. Yet I would be no friend to you if I neglected to give you some description of the difficulties in your way.”

  His face and his facility of speech had served him well, Logan thought: Dr. Jackman had no doubt, it appeared, that Logan was indeed an Edinburgh clerk; and astute though Jackman obviously was, he had underestimated Logan’s age by nearly a decade. The man could make mistakes. Logan intended that Jackman should continue to make mistakes, at least until he could discover more about Lady MacAskival and Mary MacAskival and Jackman himself. “Difficulties, Dr. Jackman?” Logan said, leaning forward and acting the pushing clerk, at once brash and smarmy. “Difficulties? Mary has told me more than once that there will be no financial problem, for she says she’s money to burn. And look at this grand house. Aye, I’ll take more sherry, and I thank you. Would Lady MacAskival raise difficulties, do you think, Dr. Jackman? Look here, sir: I ask you as a son to his dad. If Lady MacAskival’s incapacitated, would it be asking too much for you to give away the bride, sir?”

  That twist of the knife had been felt, Logan could tell: the skin twitched about the strange spot in Jackman’s forehead; but the man’s expression did not change, nor the tone of his voice alter. “Why,” Jackman said, “before you and I speak of marrying and giving in marriage, there is some history I must tell you, Mr. Logan. And I fear I have been neglecting my duties as host in Lady MacAskival’s absence.” He put his hand on an old-fashioned velvet bell-pull, and jerked it. “Among the difficulties of life in Carnglass, Mr. Logan, is the problem of staff. We take men where we find them, and try to be thankful for small mercies. Life in the remotest of the Hebrides isn’t to the taste of modern servants. Our butler, however, is rather a jewel; you’ll see him in a moment. The footman is a diamond, though rough. We may have to let the footman, Anderson, go; for he has involved us in all this trouble, doubtless with the best of intentions. It was on his urging that we engaged that Irish brute of a gamekeeper, Seamus Donley, who was some connection of Anderson’s. I could see that Donley was three parts savage, but in a lonely island like Carnglass, savagery may be a virtue in a keeper. What I failed to detect was his insanity. For a man of his age, Donley is astonishingly strong and quick – for a man of any age, so far as that goes. And quite out of his head. He concealed his madness with a certain Kerry wheedling wit. I must confess that I knew Donley had been in gaol at one time; in Belfast or Derry; but I mistook him for a mere simple-minded Irish rebel, relatively harmless. I’ve still some fellow-feeling for rebels: in my younger days I was rather a radical – almost an activist. I still have many acquaintances in the labor movement. You are not a Socialist, by any chance, Mr. Logan?”

  “Oh, no, sir,” Logan demurred wholeheartedly, “that never would do at the British Linen Bank. The manager never would allow it.”

  “Quite.” Dr. Jackman nodded approval, with the merest suggestion of a pucker about the corners of his mouth. “Quite right. Socialism is a snare and a delusion, at least as socialism is understood in Britain. Hold fast by your principles, Mr. Logan.”

  A tap at the door, then; and a small gray-haired man in a neat velvet jacket entered. He almost stumbled upon Logan, and his mouth fell open. “Blimey!” he cried; and then, to Jackman, “Begging your pardon, that is, sir.” This must be the Cockney butler Donley had mentioned, Sam Tompkins; and he certainly did not look like a ruffian or a conspirator, though there was a shiftiness about the little eyes. South of Mason’s and Dixon’s Line, Logan reflected, such a servant would be given to “totin’ victuals.” Yet, the times and the place considered, a very decent-looking butler.

  “Tompkins,” Dr. Jackman said, “this gentleman is Mr. Hugh Logan, a friend of Miss MacAskival. He was landed from a boat this morning. We shall put him in the brown room, opposite mine, and you are to see that everything is in order. Take his sack and stick and cape with you. And you’d best tell the others as they come in, for fear of misunderstanding. Niven is standing guard at the door just now? Very well. Make sure he gets nothing to drink. And tell Miss MacAskival that Mr. Logan will be late for tea; he and I are having a very interesting talk.”

  As Tompkins went out, Jackman smiled at Logan. “Your arrival will be a nine-days’ wonder below stairs. If you observe some surliness or fecklessness below, please accept my apologies in advance. I never tolerate deliberate rudeness; report anything of that sort to me. Whatever the deficiencies of these fellows, I suppose they make up a better staff than the mob of Anguses and Annies that must have slept on the stairs and in the kitchens of the Old House in the grand old days of the MacAskivals – before Donald MacAskival was sold up, I mean. Miss MacAskival has told you something of the history of the family? Quite so. And speaking of old Donald MacAskival, who died raving in the New House, I have a curiosity to show you.” Jackman, going to a cupboard set in the wall, carefully drew out a heavy box and set it on the table before Logan.

  The big box, or rather casket, seemed to be carved from a single block of stone, almost blue in color, but here and there shading into gray. The lid was of the same polished stone. “If the servants had the slightest notion of the value of these,” Jackman remarked, “I should have to put the casket under lock and key.” He lifted the lid and began to lift out strange stone figures, each some five inches high. “You play chess, Mr. Logan? I have a marble chessboard here – modern, I regret to say. But these chessmen are ancient, and Norse. They are called the Table Men of Askival.”

  The little statuettes were marvellously carved by some master of the Viking age. Each was wrapped in cotton-wool, and Jackman put them deftly in place on the marble board. They were of the same blue stone as the casket in which they had lain; and, after a thousand years, they remained almost perfect, only three or four being badly chipped. “The chiefs of MacAskival would have slit a hundred throats rather than have parted with these toys,” Jackman went on. “For more than a century, it was thought they were lost altogether, but Sir Alastair MacAskival discovered them when he was restoring the family tombs by St. Merin’s Chapel. The casket was resting, of all places, in the stone coffin that is said to be Askival’s own tomb. Perhaps Donald MacAskival hid them there when his creditors were hard at his heels, for even in the eighteenth century these things would have brought a pretty price. If so, they are all he left to his descendants. Sir Alastair died less than a month after the finding of these, and Lady MacAskival has told no one of them, so far as I am aware; so you are looking at works of art never photographed or catalogued by the museum-people. Do you ever go to the Queen Street Museum in Edinburgh? No? A pity. There they have walrus-ivory chessmen from Lewis, also Norse work
, and perhaps as old as these. And there are others in the British Museum. You have not visited the British Museum? Once, like Marx, I went there daily. But I presume it is all l.s.d. with you, Mr. Logan. ‘Put money in thy purse, and yet again, put money in thy purse.’ So the world goes. Shall we make a game of it as we talk?”

  Yes, fearfully and wonderfully made, these chessmen. The kings held drawn swords across their knees, and stared stonily out of bulging merciless eyes; the queens, with long wild faces, held daggers; the rooks were berserkers, biting on their shields; and all the other pieces, even the pawns were modelled from the life of the age of the Sea-Kings. One set of men had been saturated in some reddish dye or paint; the other retained its natural blue hue. To play with these priceless and timeless things was to sink into a remote past. “They’re very nice, I’m sure,” Logan the bank-clerk said, with what he trusted was a Philistine indifference. “Aye, I’ll play you a game, sir, if you’ll promise me I sha’n’t miss my spot of tea with Miss Mary.”

  “Miss MacAskival will excuse you; and it occurs to my mind, Logan, that perhaps we can discuss certain delicate matters more easily in the progress of a match. But I warn you, Mr. Logan, that I rarely lose. Here: I submit to a handicap.” Jackman removed his own queen from the board. “No protests: I think you’ll find me an old hand at chess.”

  Logan advanced the pawn before his queen’s bishop. “I’ve had many a grand match at the West End Young Men’s Society for the Advancement of Chess, Dr. Jackman.”

  “Indeed.” Jackman made a similar move with his king’s bishop’s pawn. “Now the question of marriage aside, Mr. Logan, I don’t suppose you’d choose to live in a great rambling ill-lit place such as the Old House of Fear is, would you?”

  “Oh, never in the world, sir.” Logan moved again, and lost a pawn to Jackman. “No, sir, give me a nice semi-detached villa beyond Bruntsfield Links, any day. Even the New Town of Edinburgh is too old and stuffy for my taste, Dr. Jackman. I like a bit of a rookery in the front garden, and an Aga cooker, and a fridge, and a parlor with a pair of Portobello china dogs by the hearth.” He advanced his king’s knight.

  Jackman shot a sharp glance at him. Had he overplayed his role a trifle? Logan wondered. The Aga cooker and the Portobello dogs were spreading the butter rather thick. He smiled ingenuously at Dr. Jackman; and apparently the smile was fatuous enough to convince that alarming gentleman.

  “That is precisely the sort of man I took you to be, Logan: my congratulations. And do you think Miss MacAskival would share these reasonable ambitions?” He took Logan’s knight.

  Logan captured one of Jackman’s pawns. “I don’t see why Mary shouldn’t, sir; she’s a canny lass, and the day of grand houses like this one is long past.”

  Having sent a bishop on a raid deep into Logan’s territory, Jackman leaned back in his armchair. “Canny, Mr. Logan? Sensible? Miss MacAskival? Charming, certainly; beautiful, at least in many eyes; but canny is the last word I should apply to her. I consider her my ward de facto, you understand, and what I say now is for her good and your own, and is to be held in confidence.”

  Logan took one of Jackman’s knights. “Perhaps you’ll take the trouble to enlighten me, Dr. Jackman.” He hunched forward, the picture of the respectful and hopeful young man on the rise.

  Jackman frowned at the chessboard. “I take it that Miss MacAskival has given you to understand that she has large expectations, or possibly that she already has ample independent means? That she is Lady MacAskival’s heiress?”

  “Why, sir, we’ve not discussed the matter in detail, but I have assumed that Mary was to have her due.”

  “Her due, Mr. Logan? To be quite frank, Miss MacAskival is very little better than a waif. Her grandfather was first cousin to Sir Alastair MacAskival – though the closest male relative left to Sir Alastair, at the end of his life. But Sir Alastair and his cousin were on bad terms; and, in any event, Miss Mary MacAskival was born nearly a generation after old Sir Alastair died. This is a most tenuous family bond, you see, although it is true that the old line of MacAskival being almost extinct altogether, Mary MacAskival has a better claim than anyone else to be the head of her little dispersed and forgotten clan. Our Mary’s father was a ship’s second mate, and drowned off Naples in the late war. The girl, who cannot remember her father, was left with the widow at a village in North Uist. Had matters followed their usual course, probably she would have grown up knitting sweaters and milking cows, and have married some crofter. But then her mother died. The girl was left quite alone.

  “Lady MacAskival is an old friend of mine, but I cannot say she has been known for openhandedness. A minister in North Uist wrote to her, however; and, oddly enough, Lady MacAskival agreed to take the child into her own household and provide for her schooling. Perhaps Lady MacAskival felt she owed some debt to her husband’s name; she is oppressed by a sense of guilt where her husband is concerned, but I sha’n’t enter into that. Whatever her reason, she took the girl Mary, and sent her to good schools – to the convent school at Bridge of Earn, most recently. I must make it clear here, Mr. Logan, that she did not adopt Miss MacAskival, nor make any provision for her future.”

  Jackman’s narration did not take his mind altogether from the chess match. He played with assurance and even arrogance, while Logan lost three more pieces to him. Logan set his face in an expression meant to suggest alarm at both the account of Mary MacAskival and the match.

  “What’s in a name, Mr. Logan,” Jackman continued, “or in the inheritance of family traits? The scientists have been at work on these things for a century and better, but nothing is settled. Possibly you followed the course of the Lysenko affair in the Soviet Union? No, I didn’t suppose that was an especial interest of yours. As I said, these problems of hereditary traits are not settled, though for my part I feel confident that the Russians will give us the answers before 1965. Well, our Miss Mary MacAskival seems to offer some decided evidence that a certain type of character is conveyed from generation to generation within a family, whether the cause is genetic or environmental. Since time out of mind, the MacAskival men and women – the family of the chiefs, I mean – have been rash, spendthrift, fearless, and – why, promiscuous, shall we say. Sir Alastair was an exception, true, going to the contrary extreme. It has been a family exceedingly inbred. I think I am not venturing too far when I suggest that the stock is worn out. The qualities I mentioned just now were dominant in both Mary’s father and mother. The beauty and the daring may survive long after the strength and the wits are gone.”

  “Dr. Jackman, what are you telling me?” Logan deliberately threw a strong burr into his words, to simulate dismay; and his disturbance was not altogether feigned. But he did not neglect to take Dr. Jackman’s other knight.

  Jackman compressed his mouth, as if pained at the necessity for speaking out. “Lady MacAskival, while she was still in full possession of her faculties, gave me a detailed account of the girl’s conduct – sometimes she calls Mary her niece, out of kindness – from the age of seven upward. I have made some serious study in the realm of psychiatric disturbances, if I may say so, Mr. Logan. From the month Lady MacAskival took the child under her patronage, there was trouble with the girl. The reports from the schools – she changed schools a number of times – were disturbing. Mary was haughty, full of notions of her family’s importance; shy, at the same time; and sometimes what I must call ferocious. Compensation, perhaps; no doubt she was very lonely. Lady MacAskival is not a cordial woman, and, besides, Mary saw her ‘aunt’ very seldom; and she did not make many friends at school. And now I am about to tell you something that may shock you, Logan, or may not. Did it ever occur to your mind that sexual overindulgence, like drunkenness, often is a retreat into a world of fantasy, caused by a deep unhappiness in this real world? Our Mary has fed on fantasies of one sort or another, it seems, ever since she was a baby. For her, the legends of Carnglass, for instance, are real: real in the most literal sense of that word. She migh
t happen to identify you with her legendary ancestor, Sigurd Askival; and herself with his bride, Merin or Mann; and me with – why, the monster, the man-goat, the tyrant: the Firgower, that pleasant creature we see overhead.”

  “Check,” said Logan. Jackman retrieved his situation promptly. “Aye, sir,” Logan said, “I know Mary is dreamy; but that’s small harm, if we’ve money enough for the whole of our lives.”

  “I scarcely think you understand how extremely and dangerously fanciful Miss MacAskival is, Mr. Logan; nor what consequences that sort of mental sickness may lead to. She may have let you think, for instance, that she’s a great heiress, or rich already. In plain fact, she hasn’t a shilling of her own, and I may have difficulty in persuading Lady MacAskival to leave her two or three thousand pounds. My old friend says she has given the girl – who is no kin of hers really – schooling and breeding enough to make her a governess or schoolmistress; and she owes her no more. What is worse, perhaps, Mary lives in her own irrational private world of gods and devils. And that way lies … why, extreme eccentricity, at the least. And then there is the concupiscence, which may be an inherited tendency, or at least the next thing to a biological characteristic.”