The Haunted House

by Hilaire Belloc

  “Not that you’ve seen nothing since, Mr. Miple?” pursued his lordship anxiously.

  “No, no, no!” John assured him. “I am sure it was a matter of health, and I got my health back as I grew up. And you know, I went abroad. So it became only a memory.”

  The old man was restless. And when John began again, “Of course, they say that the influence of a violent and horrible death …” Lord Mere de Beaurivage wanted to change the subject.

  “Yus, yus, yus!” he said hastily, as John helped him to his feet. They went back slowly towards the house, Lord Mere already hobbling even after so short a stroll, and John tenderly supporting him by the arm and treading most leisurely to ease the old man’s way.

  It was after some moments of silence, when they were in the thick of the rhododendrons on either side, that Lord Mere de Beaurivage gave a startled twist in the midst of a step, a twist that hurt him and stopped him as he shot a glance at the thick growth to his left. He had heard—he thought he had heard—had he heard?—an evil whisper, sneering little words, not high above the ground, as from the mouth of something creeping, not human: surely the leaves had never stirred in that windless afternoon? And the words he had heard, or thought he had heard, were: “To the house,” or “in the house”—something like that. It was a sibilant sound. He had heard the word “house” sneered at him.… Surely he had heard it.… It was a sound such as rustling leaves might have made.… But then no leaf had stirred.

  He turned his head towards John. He was still halted, and still breathing heavily.

  “What’s the matter, Lord Mere,” said the young man, with great sympathy. “I’m afraid I’ve overtired you?” The old fellow shook his head.

  “No, no. It’s me heart, I think,” he said. “I’m orl right. Let’s be getting along and doing—along and doing. Get among the others, eh? Get among the others. More cheerful-like.”

  They were moving away from the rhododendrons now, and into the open. So much to the good. And there was the house before them. He thought of that whispered word “house,” and he shuddered.

  Then he shook off the little trouble. It had only been a moment. And any small beast creeping in the shrubs might have brushed through with that sibilant sound.

  During what remained of their brief companionship as they made back towards the porch John Maple cheered his guest in every way.

  He made no allusion to the Abominable Thing. He even appeared to have forgotten it.

  But Lord Mere de Beaurivage, as he painfully put down his hat and stick on the oaken chest in the hall, and more painfully crawled out of his coat with his companion’s aid, had something or other on his mind that would not away. He turned back suddenly on his way toward the library, put one arm on John’s shoulder, and looked with a fixed but uncertain look in his poor old yellow eyes, straight into the frank glance of his hostess’ nephew.

  “Did yer say it ’ad no ’ed?” he whispered thickly.

  “Oh, Lord Mere,” answered John, “don’t let’s think of it!” He drew in his breath. “It was a long time ago, and I tell you, I was only a child. And—and—I’m sleeping here to-night also,” he added, suddenly. “So the less I think of it the better.”

  Then he watched the broad, squat figure retreating slowly towards the library door. He saw the painful aged gesture of the gouty hand upon the knob, the shuffle into the room beyond. He thought he heard something like a groan, and in his heart he half repented.

  But already that which commanded him was upon him: no less than Bo herself, swinging into the hall out of the drawing-room like a rather too tall ray of sunshine.

  “Dog-Man,” she said, “how’s your end? Have you bitten ’em? Have you bitten ’em good and hard?”

  There was no lack of healthy determination in this conspirator. Women know their minds. At least, some women do. And especially those of the kind who make happy marriages. John was learning every hour. But pray remember that the woman tempted him.

  He was a little ashamed, and he did not meet her eye.

  “I have suggested things, Bo. I did say a few words. Made an atmosphere.”

  “Was he scared?” persisted his implacable pre-mate.

  “I’m afraid he was,” said John.

  “What did ye tell him, Jacko?” she asked softly, with such affection that he was relieved. “Did you make it glare?”

  “He couldn’t glare without a head, Bo.”

  “No more could he,” answered the young lady thoughtfully. “Not in nature, that wouldn’t be. But then, he’s not in nature either, Jacko, is he? Did ye make Blackie Bogey talk?”

  “No,” said her lover. Then he corrected himself. “He did say a word in the rhododendrons.”

  “What?” answered Bo, delighted. “Oh, that’s good! Push it along. He’ll babble yet, Jacko. He’ll babble like a brook. He’ll moan and he’ll groan. He’ll put down old Uncle Hamlet like a one-spot taking a deuce. You are,” she added, after searching for a compliment at the back of her mind, “the Bee’s Knees. You are the Cat’s Pyjamas.”

  Even as she spoke she was looking through the open drawing-room door and the tall French windows towards the big lawn in front of Rackham, and there she saw a sight which made her seize John Maple’s wrist suddenly and strongly after a fashion more tolerable to-day from her sex and age than it would have been half a generation ago.

  “Look, Dog-Man!” she whispered excitedly, and jutted her chin towards the sight that had thus fixed her eyes.

  “What is it, Bo?” he asked. He saw nothing but his aunt and Lady Mere de Beaurivage standing on the grass some little way off, and looking up towards the new-old woodwork of the house. Once more the comprehension of women came to aid the dullness of men.

  “You haven’t gotten it, haven’t you?” she said compassionately. “John Maple, heir of Rackham, mark the twain. The Baroness is deep in converse with the Lady of the Manor upon the green sward. Money’s going to talk.”

  John Maple understood.

  “You think it’s begun already?” said he. Isabeau Hellup nodded, with a fixed certitude.

  “And my noble father will be the next to suffer,” she added.

  “It’s a race, Bo,” said John, “between them and us.”

  “And you’ve got to win by four little plaits of the mane on the steed’s neck—or the whole neck, if you like. But you’ve got to win, damn you, Jacko!—you’ve got to win. Now see here. Have you gotten that spell with Cortón yet?”

  “No,” said John. “I can’t do everything at once.”

  “Well,” answered Bo, looking at the impossible watch on her wrist, “step on the gas and shoot. There’s no time to lose.”

  He agreed.

  “I’m going to fix the coat and the ruff. And I’m going to sew through the slit in it that dandy little sword which I got from the shield stack on the stairs; six in a star. There’s only five now. But I put them straight. No one’ll notice. You run off to Corton.” She paused and added, “And I’ll add a word to Lord Mere. Just a word. Just a follow up, Jacko. ’Nuff said.”

  Chapter X

  Amathea, First Baroness de Beaurivage, stood in ecstacy upon the lawn, holding darling Hilda’s arm solidly in the crook of hers—two solid arms well interlocked. In spite of the thickness and the shortness of her neck, she carried her head a little upon one side, partly from the intensity of her emotions, more through her conviction that such an attitude befitted the occasion.

  “Oh, Ilda!” she said, “darling Ilda, wot a gem! What a reel Jule!” Then she sighed. “I wish the Prime Minister could see it, that I do,” she continued. “Yer can’t think ’ow ’ot’e is on old English ’ouses. Why, I tell you strite, Ilda, show that man an old English ’ouse, and he just fair goes off the deep end—as the saying is. He said to me once, he did, ‘Amathea,’ he says—’e calls me Amathea, ’cos Uggins don’t like him to call me Mattie—yet we ‘re pals, ye’ know—” and here she nudged her hostess strongly in the rib with a powerful elbow, and that l
ady, having before her one approach to fifty thousand pounds, stalwartly bore the blow.

  “There’ll never be another like ’im, Ilda,” went on the Baroness sentimentally, and in a rather lower tone. “Never no more! There’ll be another in ’is place, no doubt—one passeth and another cometh—as the good book says. It’s the rule of them great Parliament men, they pass away like the flowers o’ the field. Yus, and it’s the rule of the ’ole world too.” She shook her head. “Mebbe they’ll get some ’ighbrow in his room: but we’ll never see the likes of ’im again—not in that plice. ’Owever, he’s there now, and long may he stick. A treasure, Ilda.” (Then she was off on the house again.) “To see all that quiet, and them old trees, and all so peaceful like, and timber on the front and all—oh, it fair sets me envious. Aren’t you ’appy, ’Ilda, aren’t you ’appy in a plice like this?”

  Aunt Hilda sighed in her turn, profoundly.

  “Dearest Amathea,” she said, with a Christian squeezing of the arm that had so lately dealt her such a cruel blow (you are too young, reader, to know what it will feel like to get a bang in the ribs from the elbow of a peeress and sister-friend in your fiftieth year), “I shall hate to leave it.”

  “Oo talks of yer leavin’ it? Why, you’re the queen o’ the place,” answered the noblewoman, not without guile, but in her business-like heart she was murmuring, “Artful, artful! That artful!”

  “Sometimes,” said Hilda Maple, disengaging her arm for one moment in the desire to breathe, and under the excuse of smoothing her kilt, “sometimes I think that I can’t bear to leave it, and that some day I might hope … Then, you know, there comes back to me all that I owe to the family and the name, and how Rackham ought always to be in Maple hands … And then I remember how the poor boy …” she shrugged her shoulders, “well, Mattie, you know what he is.”

  “I’m shore he’s an ’andsome, well-set-up young feller,” said Mattie.

  “Yes, yes,” sighed Hilda again. “He’s all that. But you know what he is. He could never keep the place up. He will never really earn. His poor father was just like him … That’s why I sometimes think … well, that I ought to realise and leave the poor lad, when I am gone …” (she sighed again, as though she were on the brink of the grave) “with a solid lump of money behind him anyhow.” She glanced at her companion. “But well tied up, Mattie—you understand me. Well tied up. I wouldn’t trust him to keep a penny of it, any more than his poor dear father.” And Mattie nodded confidence. “Sometimes I think it’s my duty,” Hilda Maple went on, “to sell … And then sometimes I feel torn and distracted …” She clasped her hands, and cast upwards a gaze which took in the gables of Rackham and the lower part of the sky. “But to think of Rackham no longer in Maple hands!” The distinguished figure of Sir Harry Murtenshaw rose before her eyes, the romantic marriage—but no ghost. She had already forgotten about Him.

  Mattie hadn’t.

  “Ow! It’s all so romantic! An’ the gowst an’ all!” resumed that lady, capturing her hostess’ arm once again and leading her towards the door of the hall. “I wish we ud ad a gowst at home when I was young, that I do,” and she shook her head. “But there, you can’t have everything!”

  There was a pause upon the gravel, and the two ladies made their majestic progress towards the entry of those ancient walls. The one was ardently longing for an advance—I do not mean a prepayment (for the moment), but a suggestion of purchase. The other was considering the best form in which that suggestion might be made. Hilda Maple, having, if that were possible, the higher breeding, had the more rapid process of brain; and the initiative came from her.

  “You know, Amathea,” she said gently, reverting to more formality, “that Lord … that your husband has spoken of buying the place?” Her tone was thoughtful, gentle, and a little pensive too.

  “Why, Hilda Maple,” answered the peeress, standing back as though in amaze, “oo’d ’ave thought it?”

  “Yes,” went on her hostess, still pensive, still subdued, and she sighed again yet more profoundly than before. “Oh, I wish there was someone to make up our minds for us, as there was when we were children! What am I to say? What am I to do? I can’t bear to leave the place, and yet … And yet … I think I know where my duty lies. When I had several offers for it,” she added, lying gently, “I mean, just after the war, when there were so many people after it, I refused, as you know.” (It was the first time Mattie had heard of it—and no wonder!) “But things were different then; my brother-in-law was alive, and the boy seemed such a child. And now, of course, when it’s quite a different place in value, with all the changes I’ve made, and the improvements, they will come offering me more than they did, and I shall be tempted. I know I shall. But I do promise you this, Mattie. I won’t even mention figures till I have given you and your husband first choice. There! I’ve said it now!”

  “I knew you would!” answered Mattie impulsively, at the door, and suddenly kissing her friend. “Oh, you’re strite and loyal, you are! Pity it is there ain’t more like you. It’s what I was saying to the Prime Minister only the other day, when he said that about Uggins. He said, ‘Amathea,’ he said (he calls me Amathea, ’cos I won’t let him call me Mattie—I don’t think it’s right, nor he wouldn’t neither), ‘Amathea,’ ’e says, ‘that usband of yours is one of a thousand. And do you know why I ses it?’ ses he. ‘Because he’s strite,’ ses he. ‘He runs strite,’ aes ’e. ‘I tell you, Amathea,’ he ses, ‘a man that runs strite is a jule.’ And you run strite too, Ilda, you do. That’s what ’e said. Them was the identical words!”

  So the song ended—as the poet Longfellow somewhere remarks—and the two ladies strolled into the hall. Amathea, with an agility worthy of a better cause, rapidly performed the pounding gymnastics which she called “popping upstairs.” She had certain calculations to make, certain notes.

  As for Hilda, she was turning towards her room, herself also intent on certain notes, certain calculations, when she heard a firm and regular step, which she knew. It was Lord Hellup. He had just caught up his expensive but reasonable grey hat, and his not demonstrative but costly gold-headed cane, and was about, as befitted the creases in his clothes and the exactitude of his coat, to adorn the gardens of Rackham. He had an hour before tea. He was suddenly aware that Hilda stood before him. I am sorry to say that he impulsively took her hand, as though he were meeting her for the first time in some days. But he smiled and she smiled, and he begged her to show him the rosery of which she had spoken.

  So they went out together, he sixty or so, she fifty, and the spring around them both; and in the rosery they talked of roses.

  On the way back Hilda Maple led the way round, still talking in the manner he found so engrossing, with such refinement, such subtlety, such charm, as none other but he had noticed in her conversation, until, turning out of the shrubbery, they found themselves upon the lawn where so lately Lady Mere de Beaurivage had stood, where Lord Hellup now was—but with this difference, that Lord Hellup had far too much respect for womankind to link his arm in Hilda’s; contrariwise, his hung somewhat awkwardly along his flank.

  Hilda Maple gazed at Rackham with a world of affection in her eyes. Lord Hellup stood by watching, admiring, nearly worshipping that gaze. It apprehended the gables of Rackham, and the lower part of the sky.

  “I can’t bear to think of leaving it,” she said in a subdued voice, and there was a little catch in it, almost like a sob.

  “Why, Mercy!” cried the candid gentleman from overseas, “you’re sure not thinking of leaving it, Mrs. Maple! Why, we associate you with Rackham, and Rackham with you, like hand and glove. You’re necessary to Rackham, Mrs. Maple,” he added, with an emphatic enthusiasm, and he very nearly continued, “and Rackham’s necessary to you,” when his quick mind perceived that this would be a blunder. He said, with something almost like tenderness in his tone, and with a drop of two notes in his voice, “I could not bear to think of Rackham without you, Mrs. Maple.”

&nb
sp; She sighed—that same sigh.

  “There was a time when I would not have dreamed of it, Lord Hellup,” she answered. “You know, these things are very difficult to talk about——” she delicately put the tips of her fingers upon his arm for a moment, and at once withdrew them. “But now I have begun perhaps I ought to say it. When they were making all those offers for the place—just at the end of the war …”

  “Were they so?” inquired Lord Hellup with interest, and a most intelligent look in his eyes.

  “Yes, yes,” said Hilda Maple hurriedly. “Well, I wouldn’t hear of it then. It seemed to me abominable that Rackham should leave the Maple name. But then, you know, my brother-in-law was alive then, and John was only a boy. I refused them. Of course, it’s more valuable now: that was before I had done anything to the place, and I must say,” she went on prettily, and smiling at him as she said it, “I have made it what it used to be. I do think I may be proud of it.”

  “Why, sure, you can,” answered the magnate emphatically. “It’s the niftiest little nest I’ve seen this side of the water. The more I see of it, the more I think so. And so does Bo,” he added hurriedly; to support his judgment lest by any chance his hostess should disagree with him. He repeated himself. “The niftiest little nest this side the water.”

  The adjectives and noun were not those which Hilda Maple would herself have chosen. Rackham Catchings was not so little, after all; and there was something impertinent about “nifty,” seeing that the foundations were pre-monstrous, or whatever the word was. But she had that in her mind which made verbal niceties unimportant.

  “My heart’s been torn, Lord Hellup,” she said, with a rising voice (and she clasped her hands). “But I think it’s my duty to provide … You know what the boy is.”

  “He’s some lad,” replied Lord Hellup politely. It was not what Aunt Hilda wanted.

  “Yes, yes,” she said, almost impatiently—English people are sometimes a little like that with their trans-Atlantic cousins. “Oh, I know his talents, and he’s a dear boy. But,” shaking her head, “he could never keep up Rackham!” She sighed again. “It’s the same old story. Like father, like son. He’s like his father before him. I’m afraid it’s my duty to see when I’m gone that there shall be solid money behind him—well tied up. When I am gone …” she added, putting a bell-like tone into her voice and receiving, what she had expected, an ardent protest from her companion.