Evidently she was expecting someone. A minute later a horse, that had been hard ridden, drew up steaming before the door; its rider dismounted.
‘Leave the beast to me,’ said the woman from the window, in a voice hardly raised above a whisper. ‘I’ll see that it’s made all right in the stable. Come straight upstairs; it’s the third room on the right.’
The man took up what seemed to be a heavy bag and, leaving his horse, passed on up the stair. I heard him stumble at the step on the landing and swear beneath his breath. Just then the clock struck three. I began to wonder if any mischief were brewing in Midnight House.
I have only the vaguest recollection of what happened between then and dawn. My attempts to obtain sleep were not as great as the struggles I made to free myself from the awful nightmares that took possession of me as soon as I began to lose consciousness. All I knew was that there was a spirit of evil abroad, an ugly, horrible spirit, that was trying to enter the house; and that everyone seemed to be blind to its true nature, seemed to be helping it to gain its end. That was the lurid background of my dreams. One thing alone I remember clearly, a long-drawn-out cry, real and no wild fantasy, that came out of the night to die away into nothingness.
When I got up in the morning soon after nine, I had a splitting headache that made me resolve to be less ready in future to sample strange beds and stranger inns.
I entered the dining-room to find myself no longer alone. A tall, middle-aged man, with a look about him as if he had passed anything but a restful night, was seated at the table. He had just finished breakfast, and rose to go as I took my place. He wished me a curt good-morning and left the room. I hurried over my meal, paid my bill to the same impassive-faced woman, the only occupant of the house I had seen, and shouldering my rucksack, set out along the road. I walked on for two miles, until I had nearly reached the summit of a steep incline, and was hesitating over which of three roads to take, when, turning round, I saw the stranger approaching.
As soon as his horse had overtaken me I asked him the way.
‘By the bye,’ I said, ‘can you tell me anything about that inn? It’s the gloomiest house I ever slept in. Is it haunted?’
‘Not that I know of. How can a house be haunted when there are no such things as ghosts?’
Something in the ill-concealed superiority of the tone in which he replied made me look at him more closely. He seemed to read my thoughts. ‘Yes, I’m the doctor,’ he said, ‘and precious little I get out of the business, I can tell you. You are not looking out for a quiet country practice yourself, I suppose? I don’t think a night’s work like this last’s would tempt you.’
‘I don’t know what it was,’ I said, ‘but, if I was to hazard a guess, I should say some singularly wicked man must have died in the inn last night.’
He laughed out loud. ‘You’re rather wide of the mark, for the fact is I have been helping to usher into the world another pretty innocent. As things turned out, the child did not live above half an hour, not altogether to the mother’s sorrow, I should judge. People talk pretty freely in the country. There’s nothing else to do; and we all know each other’s affairs. It might have come into the world in better circumstances, certainly; but after all is said and done, we shan’t have much to complain of if we can keep the birth-rate from falling any lower. What was it last year? Some appallingly low figure, but I can’t remember the actual one. Yes, I’ve always been interested in statistics. They can explain nearly everything.’
I was not quite so sure.
THE STAR
THE NIGHT outside was clear and frosty, not a cloud in the sky. There had perhaps been five such nights in the year, and the opportunity was too good to lose.
Jackson put his wife’s cloak around her shoulders with more than his usual tenderness.
He even agreed with her that it was scandalous that he had not yet attended a single Lenten sermon; but he pleaded his cold in excuse.
He saw her into the carriage, and then walked across bareheaded, in his evening shoes, to the observatory.
He wanted to confirm one or two facts about the star on which Mortimer had reported in the Review. It would be a splendid thing if he could explode yet another of his rival’s theories; and he chuckled as he remembered the comet of last June.
‘It’s a curious thing,’ said Jackson to himself as he gazed at the speck of light in the eyepiece of the telescope. ‘The betting’s a hundred to one that Mortimer’s looking at the star this very moment, and a thousand to one that we two are the only people who have the slightest interest in it. Confound the man’s ugly face! I can see it now.’
How he disliked the fellow! He disliked his voice, his manner, the way he dressed.
And Mrs Mortimer! What a woman!
He wished that she and Eliza were not quite so intimate.
And what an absurd paper the man had read before the society the other evening: based on the wildest hypothesis, of course, and yet Linton and one or two others seemed to think there was something in it.
Jackson looked through the telescope again at the star, but found it hard to concentrate his attention. All the time he was thinking how ridiculous Mortimer looked now that he had shaved his beard. He had always told Eliza that he had a weak chin.
He remembered overhearing that the man had applied for some professor’s post in Australia. Well, he hoped he would get it, there would be a few thousand miles between them; though the people out there would not consent to be gulled for long.
Jackson got up and stretched himself. It was a glorious night, but he felt strangely disinclined for work.
‘I think I’ll write to the Review,’ he said to himself. ‘There are one or two discrepancies in Mortimer’s paper that ought to remain unanswered no longer.’
When Mrs Jackson came in, an hour later, she found her husband sitting with his feet on the library mantelpiece, dressed in his oldest Norfolk, and smoking his oldest briar. He was aware that his attitude probably annoyed his wife.
‘You had better take your feet down, unless you wish the servants to see you in that ridiculous posture,’ she said. ‘I am about to ring for some hot milk. It’s a pity you did not hear the sermon, George, I am sure you would have appreciated it; though I do wish the churchwardens or someone would see that place does not get so appallingly stuffy. Poor Father Trewhit looked quite pale when he pronounced the benediction.’
‘So Father Pewhit occupied the pulpit,’ began Jackson.
‘Father Pewhit! I tell you once again that there is nothing funny in that inane appellation. The man comes from one of the oldest Cornish families. He works like a slave for the poor of East London, and hasn’t had a holiday for five years, excepting alternate Tuesdays, when he plays golf at Mudbury with the vicar.’
‘Yes, yes, I grant it all, Eliza. To oblige you I will refer to him in future as Father Lapwing.’
Mrs Jackson ground a predigested biscuit between her teeth, gulped down half a tumbler of milk and water, and went on:
‘It’s no use, George, I see perfectly well what you’re aiming at. You’re trying to irritate me. But I won’t be irritated! It’s too bad that you should try to spoil the good the service does one by these childish attacks on religion.’
‘My dear Elizabeth,’ her husband replied, ‘I have not mentioned the word religion this evening. Because I call your spiritual instructor by the name of a pretty, inoffensive bird, that struts about in a ridiculous attitude, and only utters one note which it repeats over and over again, there is no reason to suppose that the foundations of Christianity are in danger. Well, well! What was the sermon about?’
Mrs Jackson had begun her second predigested biscuit. ‘It was the fourth Lenten sermon on the “Witness of Nature”.’
‘An unsatisfactory witness,’ said Jackson, ‘but never mind.’
‘He preached this evening on the “Witness of the Stars”. He took as his text “For we have seen His star”, somewhere in St Matthew, I think, but I am no
t sure. It was just the sermon you would have liked, George, with your scientific tastes and things.’
George was fully aware that by scientific tastes and things his wife meant his predilection for Sunday golf, a general distrust of missionaries, and an emphatic refusal to contribute to the choir of St Jude’s when they came round at Christmas.
‘He began,’ went on Mrs Jackson, ‘by describing the feelings of the first man who ever saw a star, how frightened he would be, and with what wonder he would look up to it. Then he told us of a woman he knew who always put a light in her window to guide her son home at night; and he said that the stars were the shining lamps of the windows of Heaven.’
‘How pleased the good man must have been when he thought of that! I suppose he’ll print these sermons. Any more anecdotes?’
‘He never tells anecdotes, you know, George! But he told us of a boy whose crippled sister, when she died, told him that whenever he looked at a particular star he was to think of her and do good. And when the little boy was in trouble (‘Trials or perplexities is the correct phrase,’ her husband interrupted), he used to stay awake for hours looking at the star through a crack in the attic roof above his bed.’
‘Good heavens, Eliza! That’s enough for the present. In the first place, the star would move, and he could not watch it for hours through a crack. In the second place, if a healthy English boy, who has never known the degrading influence of the Sunday school, finds out that there is a hole in the roof above his head, he plugs it up with something to keep the rain out. In the third place, what happened to the boy when he had his little trials and perplexities on a cloudy night? In the fourth place, why should the sister be crippled? It is nothing else than an unprincipled appeal to feminine sentiment.’
‘I knew you’d scoff, George. You always do scoff at religion. Thank goodness Roger is in bed and asleep hours ago.’
‘As a matter of fact from the noise immediately above my head, I believe him to be in the process of having a hot bath. But do go on with your account of the sermon.’
‘I’ll proceed with pleasure if you promise to take me seriously. By the bye, I must remind cook tomorrow about putting these biscuits in the oven before she sends them up. Well, Father Trewhit finished by describing to us the feelings of a man who was gazing at a star millions of miles away, a nameless, flashing pin-prick of eternity, he called it. He described how the man would lose all sense of self, how he would cast aside all his little everyday petty squabblings and jealousies, losing all thoughts of time and space as he sees the fringe of new worlds, new universes, until, shielding his eyes, he would exclaim with the Psalmist: What is man?’
There Mrs Jackson stopped, leaving her quotation unfinished. George was sitting in his chair convulsed with laughter.
She drew herself up, and in her most frigid manner left the room without speaking.
‘Don’t slam the door, for pity’s sake!’ said her husband, and then began to laugh again.
ACROSS THE MOORS
IT REALLY was most unfortunate.
Peggy had a temperature of nearly a hundred, and a pain in her side, and Mrs Workington Bancroft knew that it was appendicitis. But there was no one whom she could send for the doctor.
James had gone with the jaunting-car to meet her husband who had at last managed to get away for a week’s shooting. Adolph she had sent to the Evershams, only half an hour before, with a note for Lady Eva.
The cook could not manage to walk, even if dinner could be served without her.
Kate, as usual, was not to be trusted: There remained Miss Craig.
‘Of course, you must see that Peggy is really ill,’ said she, as the governess came into the room, in answer to her summons. ‘The difficulty is, that there is absolutely no one whom I can send for the doctor.’ Mrs Workington Bancroft paused; she was always willing that those beneath her should have the privilege of offering the services which it was her right to command.
‘So, perhaps, Miss Craig,’ she went on, ‘you would not mind walking over to Tebbit’s Farm. I hear there is a Liverpool doctor staying there. Of course I know nothing about him, but we must take the risk, and I expect he’ll be only too glad to be earning something during his holiday. It’s nearly four miles, I know, and I’d never dream of asking you if it was not that I dread appendicitis so.’
‘Very well,’ said Miss Craig, ‘I suppose I must go; but I don’t know the way.’
‘Oh, you can’t miss it,’ said Mrs Workington Bancroft, in her anxiety temporarily forgiving the obvious unwillingness of her governess’s consent.
‘You follow the road across the moor for two miles, until you come to Redman’s Cross. You turn to the left there, and follow a rough path that leads through a larch plantation. And Tebbit’s farm lies just below you in the valley.
‘And take Pontiff with you,’ she added, as the girl left the room. ‘There’s absolutely nothing to be afraid of, but I expect you’ll feel happier with the dog.’
‘Well, miss,’ said the cook, when Miss Craig went into the kitchen to get her boots, which had been drying by the fire; ‘of course she knows best, but I don’t think it’s right after all that’s happened for the mistress to send you across the moors on a night like this. It’s not as if the doctor could do anything for Miss Margaret if you do bring him. Every child is like that once in a while. He’ll only say put her to bed, and she’s there already.’
‘I don’t see what there is to be afraid of, cook,’ said Miss Craig as she laced her boots, ‘unless you believe in ghosts.’
‘I’m not so sure about that. Anyhow I don’t like sleeping in a bed where the sheets are too short for you to pull them over your head. But don’t you be frightened, miss. It’s my belief that their bark is worse than their bite.’
But though Miss Craig amused herself for some minutes by trying to imagine the bark of a ghost (a thing altogether different from the classical ghostly bark), she did not feel entirely at her ease.
She was naturally nervous, and living as she did in the hinterland of the servants’ hall, she had heard vague details of true stories that were only myths in the drawing-room.
The very name of Redman’s Cross sent a shiver through her; it must have been the place where that horrid murder was committed. She had forgotten the tale, though she remembered the name.
Her first disaster came soon enough.
Pontiff, who was naturally slow-witted, took more than five minutes to find out that it was only the governess he was escorting, but once the discovery had been made, he promptly turned tail, paying not the slightest heed to Miss Craig’s feeble whistle. And then, to add to her discomfort, the rain came, not in heavy drops, but driving in sheets of thin spray that blotted out what few landmarks there were upon the moor.
They were very kind at Tebbit’s farm. The doctor had gone back to Liverpool the day before, but Mrs Tebbit gave her hot milk and turf cakes, and offered her reluctant son to show Miss Craig a shorter path on to the moor, that avoided the larch wood.
He was a monosyllabic youth, but his presence was cheering, and she felt the night doubly black when he left her at the last gate.
She trudged on wearily. Her thoughts had already gone back to the almost exhausted theme of the bark of ghosts, when she heard steps on the road behind her that were at least material. Next minute the figure of a man appeared: Miss Craig was relieved to see that the stranger was a clergyman. He raised his hat. ‘I believe we are both going in the same direction,’ he said. ‘Perhaps I may have the pleasure of escorting you.’ She thanked him. ‘It is rather weird at night,’ she went on, ‘and what with all the tales of ghosts and bogies that one hears from the country people, I’ve ended by being half afraid myself.’
‘I can understand your nervousness,’ he said, ‘especially on a night like this. I used at one time to feel the same, for my work often meant lonely walks across the moor to farms which were only reached by rough tracks difficult enough to find even in the daytime.’
> ‘And you never saw anything to frighten you—nothing immaterial I mean?’
‘I can’t really say that I did, but I had an experience eleven years ago which served as the turning-point in my life, and since you seem to be now in much the same state of mind as I was then in, I will tell it you.
‘The time of year was late September. I had been over to Westondale to see an old woman who was dying, and then, just as I was about to start on my way home, word came to me of another of my parishioners who had been suddenly taken ill only that morning. It was after seven when at last I started. A farmer saw me on my way, turning back when I reached the moor road.
‘The sunset the previous evening had been one of the most lovely I ever remember to have seen. The whole vault of heaven had been scattered with flakes of white cloud, tipped with rosy pink like the strewn petals of a full-blown rose.
‘But that night all was changed. The sky was an absolutely dull slate colour, except in one corner of the west where a thin rift showed the last saffron tint of the sullen sunset. As I walked, stiff and footsore, my spirits sank. It must have been the marked contrast between the two evenings, the one so lovely, so full of promise (the corn was still out in the fields spoiling for fine weather), the other so gloomy, so sad with all the dead weight of autumn and winter days to come. And then added to this sense of heavy depression came another different feeling which I surprised myself by recognising as fear.
‘I did not know why I was afraid.
‘The moors lay on either side of me, unbroken except for a straggling line of turf shooting-butts, that stood within a stone’s throw of the road.
‘The only sound I had heard for the last half hour was the cry of the startled grouse—Go back, go back, go back. But yet the feeling of fear was there, affecting a low centre of my brain through some little-used physical channel.
The Double Eye Page 3
