by Ashby, R. C.
Well, I came out into a hard night. The rain-pools were freezing. As I rode along, the black lake of the sky was shot with curious lights, like lurid flashes from the crackling stars, beaten out by the hammers of the frost. Twice I thought that I saw fires starting on the moor’s horizon, but it was only some weird effect of cloud and moonshine. When I came in sight of the sea it was as bright as steel and strangely still, except where a wave seemed to leap under the wandering beam of the lighthouse, sweeping along its circuit. It was becoming very cold, and my breath rose in sad little wraithlike shapes. A strange sensation to watch them flickering away from the handle-bars. When I came to the house there was a terrific altercation in progress between Charlie Barr and Miss Goff. They were carrying on this ‘argy-bargying’ in the hall for anybody to hear, and at the time I arrived they had both completely lost their tempers. Nerves, you see. They were both strung up. As usual in a domestic riot there was something to be said for both sides, though in this case I was privately rather inclined to sympathize with Charlie.
‘Go on,’ I said, as I slung my coat over a stag’s convenient antlers; ‘don’t mind me.’ So they went on.
‘It isn’t any use, Mr. Barr,’ the nurse was saying, ‘so you can argue till doomsday. I’ve made my rule, and I shall stick to it.’
‘And you call yourself an intelligent woman?’ Charlie blazed. ‘But, of course, that’s just like a woman—to put the letter of the law first. A fetish——’
‘If the papers are as important as you say they are,’ she said icily, ‘I’ll take them up now to the Colonel, and if he’s well enough he shall read them over. But see him you shall not, nor anybody else in this house or this village, but me.’
‘But I tell you, the papers need an explanation——’
‘Then you can write it and give it to me——’
‘Look here, Nurse, once and for all I won’t have tyranny from anyone employed in this house. Come with me at once to my uncle’s room, or give me the key and let me——’
‘I shall not!’
‘Then consider yourself dismissed, and leave the house to-morrow!’
‘I shall not do that either,’ she said coolly. ‘Colonel Barr employs me, and no one else has the right to dismiss me.’
There was deadlock for a moment, and then Charlie said, quite reasonably, I thought: ‘Will you please to tell me what harm it could possibly do my uncle if you were to prepare him to see me, and I were to go in and talk to him quietly for five minutes? Or three would be sufficient. Just tell me that.’
‘No one!’ was all she said, and her blue eyes were hot under the starched coif across her forehead.
‘But me! Me! Will you tell me why I——’
‘Who knows,’ she said deliberately, ‘from whose hand it will come?’
Their eyes locked for a moment, and then with a stifled exclamation he wheeled into the dining-room, to return in a moment with a slim sheaf of papers. He thrust them into the nurse’s hand. ‘Here they are. Tell him to make what he can of them, and that I should have liked—remember this part—should have liked to have discussed them. They deal with transference of investments, quite a simple matter. If he approves, a mere yes is sufficient. Thank you, Miss Goff.’ He made her a stiff bow, but his lips were unsteady, and I was secretly sorry for him. She went upstairs with her usual unhurried step.
‘What do you think of that, Mertoun?’ said Charlie.
‘High-handed,’ I said. ‘They all are.’
‘Yes, but this is carrying things to excess . . . beyond all reason,’ he said, with a worried frown. ‘I suppose you gathered from what you heard of the edifying conversation that it was the old topic of my uncle’s complete seclusion. I was really angry this time, Mertoun. Do you think I’m justified?’
‘I quite see your point of view,’ I said, ‘and I admit I think Miss Goff is unreasonable. But she regards it as her duty——’
He gave me a swift, burning look. ‘Mertoun,’ he said, ‘I’m worried. I don’t trust that woman.’
I said in amazement: ‘Why, she’s got a face as frank as a summer sky!’
‘Yes,’ he answered curtly. And that was all.
After supper we sat by the library fire, and I said: ‘Barr, when are you going to tell me who V. G. is?’
‘V. G.?’ he said. ‘Who’s been talking about V. G.? There’s only one person calls him that, and it’s Ingram, the good old madman. You’ve been calling on Ingram. No one knows what he’s going to say next. How did this happen?’
‘I fell off M‘Coul’s bike,’ I said, ‘and split my arm. This muscular protuberance is a dressing—in fact, Ingram’s dressing. He was the only doctor available. What an amazing man!’
‘Yes,’ said Charlie. ‘He once had his plate in Harley Street, London. I don’t know it myself, but I guess it’s the goods in his profession, isn’t it? Lost his wife and family in a motor accident during the War, came up here, buried himself, and quietly went mad.’
‘That,’ said the voice of Miss Goff from the doorway, ‘is hardly fair to Doctor Ingram.’
Charlie flushed, and said quietly: ‘I was summarizing the situation, Miss Goff. Is it necessary for you always to misjudge me?’
I was completely in sympathy with Charlie.
She turned to me. ‘Perhaps you will let me tell you a little about Doctor Ingram. Strangers can so easily misunderstand.’
‘Of course,’ I said awkwardly. What else could I say?—though Charlie was looking thoroughly uncomfortable, through no fault of his own.
‘Thirteen years ago,’ said Miss Goff, ‘Doctor Ingram’s beautiful wife and three children were burnt to death in a blazing car while he was serving at a Base Hospital in France. Against the advice of his friends he came here . . . he had been a boy in this county . . . and buried himself in the cottage where he still lives. He was alone and companionless. If he had stayed in London with his friends he would have recovered. Instead of that, solitude and one other thing led on to slight derangement. Hereabouts they have no half-shades. They call him mad. The mad doctor. Two years after that tragedy he became a victim of the mania known as spiritualism; that was directly responsible for his lapse from sanity—the mad, unreasonable craving to get into touch with those poor departed spirits which he had adored and lost. Charlatans encouraged him; it was wicked. Of course, he never got any satisfaction; he’s still searching, pathetically hoping for the impossible. Two years ago some friends of his from London came and tried to get him away. He became violent. They had to leave him. You see, it’s tragic. He was a genius, and such a very lovable man. There must be people who remember him at his best and care for him still, but he shuts his doors against them now. He thinks they’re his enemies and want to take him away. And he talks pathetic nonsense about the moors around here being peopled by the ghosts of the dead who died in the battles of the old, savage times. When he’s working he’s sane, but talk of spirits. . . . They’ve filled his poor, bewildered brain——’
Charlie made a gesture of distaste to silence her. ‘Please, Miss Goff! I think that’s enough——’
She hesitated, and said in a different tone: ‘Here are your papers. The Colonel has studied them, and he says that he approves.’
‘Thank you,’ said Charlie curtly. She went out, with a flick of the heavy door-curtain. Charlie pushed the papers into a drawer. ‘I’m angry,’ he said. ‘I’m being treated like a bad child.’
‘Forget it,’ I said, ‘and come here, push your feet to the logs, and tell me about V. G.’
‘What do you want to know?’ he asked thoughtfully.
‘Everything,’ I said.
He shuddered slightly, and looked towards the window. ‘I’ll say it’s cold!’
‘Freezing,’ I said.
‘Snow!�
� he grumbled. ‘You should see this place when it’s cut off by drifts three feet high. Like a circle of hell. No wonder the folks grow morbid. But you want to hear about Gracchus?’
I suddenly remembered. ‘The stone,’ I said. ‘He said you were to show me the stone.’
‘The stone!’ he repeated. ‘Well, you see, it’s covered, and I haven’t been near it myself for months. I’ve been kind of hoping . . . that it would disappear. It may have disappeared; we’ll go and look to-morrow morning. Can’t go to-night in the dark. But Gracchus, he’s a different matter.’
‘He’s no poltergeist,’ I said.
He smiled. ‘Of course I deceived you,’ he said, ‘Naturally. You don’t tell such things to strangers.’
‘You don’t look upon me as a stranger now?’
‘Somehow—not,’ he said. ‘Besides, I might have guessed that you couldn’t come to this cursed place without getting an inkling. . . . You’ll have to know. Lucky for you, it won’t affect you. You’ll be gone in a week or two, and it’ll be forgotten. It’s half legend; half truth.’
I kicked at a log which fell in a little inferno of blue flame and glittering sparks.
‘Come!’ I said. ‘For a beginning, who is Vitellius Gracchus?’
‘The powerful spirit,’ he said, ‘of a mighty man; a centurion of the third legion, the Augustine, stationed at Corstopitum in the south of the county some sixteen hundred years ago. . . .’ He paused for a minute. ‘That’s all,’ he said abruptly, as though—how shall I explain it?—as though he were addressing himself, a cowering, beseeching Charlie Barr, shrinking in the shadows of the room.
‘Oh no!’ I said; ‘oh no. That isn’t all.’
With an outflung hand he snatched back the scarlet silk shade of the electric standard, so that the clear white light broke into the room with its crude glare.
‘There!’ said Charlie. ‘That’s better.’ He thrust his hands deep down into his pockets. ‘I don’t know why you stop in a place like this, Mertoun. Other men would have thrown up the job long ago and got out—while the going was good. Other men would look upon us here as a lot of half-crazy devils. So we are. But even we didn’t believe that such things could be . . . until they came to be. You go, Mertoun; go to-morrow. We shan’t blame you. I speak for my uncle, whom I’m not allowed to see!’ The last phrase held a note of bitterness.
‘I’m not going,’ I said; ‘I want to meet this Gracchus.’
His dark eyes withdrew under frowning brows. ‘Meet Gracchus and die—as they say in these parts.’
‘Very well,’ I said; ‘I’ll abide by the local rules.’
He gave a short, unmirthful laugh. ‘I wish I were back in New York. The American part of me pulls that way, but the English roots are as deep as the English rocks. I honestly don’t want to tell you any more. You’d much better go away.’
But by then I knew that curiosity alone would hold me there to the bitter end, though I was far from foreseeing what that end would be. So by and by he told me the historical story of Vitellius Gracchus, which half legend, half fact, was harmless enough so far as it went; just a battle story that might belong to any century and any land.
This Roman officer, a man of outstanding personality and military ability, was stationed at the great camp in the south of the county, the headquarters of his legion. To the north was a fearsome desert of moorland, populated by fighting tribesmen. The order was for penetration and conquest, and the establishing of Roman outposts. Gracchus, with a column of a hundred and twenty men—his own company—and half a dozen sub-officers, was sent out to discover and relieve a force which had disappeared in this unknown and perilous region. In those fog-bound, wintry hills this little company was ambushed, miles from the friendly Wall, miles from aid, within sound of the moaning North Sea and the screeching, hostile wind that haunts those waves. They threw up an earthwork and defended themselves; and so they waited and the tribesmen waited. No help came. Some died of starvation, and others of heart-break for these cold northern skies and the memories of golden Rome which they would never see again.
After a week Gracchus led out his men to die in battle. They marched out in their tattered glory, and once on the open moor they formed their square, some sixty of them, drew their swords and waited for the onrush. Hordes of howling tribesmen with tattooed bodies and streaming yellow hair swept down from the hill crests. The square was never broken, but in a few minutes it was a square of the Roman dead. Last of all to die, though none had been more cruelly wounded, was that mighty man the centurion, Vitellius Gracchus. He lay gasping on the broad surface of an English rock, and with the point of his short sword he carved the one word ROMA!—and beneath, his name.
‘And perhaps it’s only a legend,’ said Charlie Barr, ‘but some few years ago the Society of Antiquaries, excavating for Roman remains, laid bare that rock a few feet below the surface. And where do you suppose they were excavating?’
‘I don’t know,’ I told him.
‘In the cellars of this house.’
I started. ‘Oh. Then this house . . . ?’
‘—Is pitched on the site of Gracchus’s last battle—the piece of earth which he won for Rome. Well, it belonged to Rome for all anyone cared but the curlews, until the old house on the other side of the hill was burnt down some hundred years ago, and my ancestor built again, and chose this place. It was an unlucky choice. The Gracchus legend had been active in this neighbourhood before then, and suddenly it broke out like a prairie fire. We can’t tell why—which is disappointing—because it was all so long ago, and nobody kept a record. I sometimes wonder if there was some sort of manifestation. . . . Anyhow, the new house got an ill name before the plaster was dry.’
Barr got up suddenly and began to poke the fire with unnecessary violence. ‘They say,’ he said, ‘that a spirit by patient waiting, even for centuries, can draw to itself more power. Gracchus is waiting—for his hour. I can’t tell you any more until you’ve seen the stone.’
‘What can there be in the stone——?’ I began.
‘I’ll show you to-morrow,’ he said, and his voice had become strained. ‘I told you, I haven’t seen it for months. . . . I’ve been hoping . . .’
So we both sat over the fire, smoking, in that unpleasant house, and for the life of me I couldn’t keep my mind away from the nasty story Ingram had told me about the doctor’s mare, and what she saw—or didn’t see—on the road.
I said suddenly: ‘What do you think, Barr? Ingram told me about the doctor’s accident from which he hasn’t recovered yet. Did the mare see something? What’s behind it all?’
He paled suddenly and his dark eyes gave me a horrified glance.
‘Don’t ever speak to me about that night!’ he said, and he stretched out his foot and clattered the fire-irons into the hearth as though he couldn’t endure the silence. So then I knew there was more in it than the doctor’s accident. Because previously I had rather suspected Mackie of having come straight from the village pub.
‘Look here!’ I said. ‘You won’t be offended, Barr, but I promised poor Ingram I’d mention a matter to you. He has it on his mind, and wouldn’t let me go until I promised. I don’t know how you’ll take it, but don’t be hard on the poor fellow. He wants you to have a séance.’
‘A séance!’ he repeated, half incredulously, half cynically.
‘Yes. He thinks it would be easy to get into touch with Gracchus and find out what he wants.’
Charlie took the suggestion lightly, to my relief. ‘Tell him,’ he said, ‘that my Latin isn’t equal to it. Classical education isn’t a strong point in the States.’
‘Surely,’ I said, equally lightly, ‘after sixteen hundred years in this country our friend ought to be able to oblige us with some proficiency in the vernacular.’
‘
Pooh!’ said Charlie, twisting a spill and plunging it into the reddest furnace of the flames.
‘He was very much in earnest about it,’ I said.
Charlie suddenly flared. ‘I know! He wants to get in touch with his wife. He thinks he’ll do it through me and my private ghost. What about me? He doesn’t think of what Gracchus might do if we gave him that much liberty! I won’t be caught. There’ll be no séance.’
The spill which he had forgotten burned down and caught his fingers, and he used some fine Yankee oaths, until I had to laugh.
‘Do you believe that it would be a real danger?’ I found myself asking, almost as if I were pleading Ingram’s cause. I don’t know what had brought me round to that attitude; perhaps my natural obstinacy had been piqued by Charlie’s opposition, though it was reasonable that he should oppose the scheme. I granted him that.
‘I won’t have it, Mertoun,’ he said firmly; ‘I won’t have anything to do with mediums, trances, telekinesis, or controls. So take the whole conjuring outfit away, and tell Ingram to go drown himself at Salt Lake City. And I don’t mean maybe.’
So that was final enough, and we parted and went to our rooms. The whole moor was freezing then and the sky looked high and bitter. During the night snow began to fall, coming thicker and faster while we were asleep, and when I looked out in the morning there were great billows of snow rolling away into the hungry mist of the wild moor, and the deadly frost-wind was tearing at the bowed laurels in the garden. A cruel morning. I went down to the dining-room and found Charlie Barr sitting with his head in his hands. He lifted it as I entered. His eyes looked as though he hadn’t slept, and there was something wrung about his mouth.
‘Mertoun,’ he said, ‘something’s happened. I got thinking about that séance last night, and in the dark I heard someone laugh. I hope I’ll never hear that laughter again. He was glad . . . that I wasn’t going to track him down.’
