The cold wind died, hot air seeped back into the room; all around lay wrecked pictures, scattered books, broken furniture. An ugly crack disfigured the polished surface of a table. Susan was crying softly, Reginald was white-faced, looking like a man who has survived a long illness. Madame Orloff rose, pulled open the window curtains, then looked about with an air of satisfaction.
‘A bit of a ruddy mess, but then, as someone once said, you can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs. ’Fraid me services come a bit high, dear. I’ll want fifty nicker for this little do.’
‘Worth every penny,’ Reginald rose somewhat unsteadily to his feet. ‘I can’t thank you enough, Madame, I feel like . . .’
‘A feather, eh?’ Madame Orloff beamed. ‘A great weight lifted off yer shoulders? I know what you mean. I remember an old geezer down in Epsom; he had a nasty attached to him that was as big as a house. Ruddy great thing, had a lust for rice puddings, made the poor old sod eat three at one sitting. When I got shot of it, he leapt about like a two-year-old. Said he felt like floating. Well . . .’ She took up her handbag. ‘Mustn’t keep that car waiting any longer – the fare will cost you a fortune.’ She put a hand under Susan’s chin and tilted her head; the blue eyes were bright with tears.
‘Cheer up, ducks. It’s all over now. Nothing to worry your pretty little head about any more.’
‘You must stay for dinner,’ Susan said softly. ‘We can’t let you go like this . . .’
‘Thanks all the same, but I’ve got a sitting laid on for six o’clock, so I’ll leave you to clear up the mess. Don’t trouble to see me out. I’m quite capable of opening and closing a door.’
From the hallway she looked back.
‘I should keep away from the Underground during the rush hour, Mr Warren. The place is a cesspit – everything from a damn nuisance poltergeist to a vampire-elemental. See you.’
The front-door slammed and Reginald gathered Susan up into his arms; he patted her shaking shoulders and murmured. ‘There, there, it’s all over now. It’s all over.’ They sat in the twilight, younger than youth, older than time, and rejoiced in each other.
‘You are wonderful,’ she said.
‘True,’ he nodded.
‘And awfully conceited.’
‘Self-confidence,’ he corrected. ‘The weak are vain, the strong self-confident.’
‘And what am I?’
‘White, gold and tinged with pink.’
‘I like that.’ She snuggled up to him and Mr. Hawkins dozed peacefully on the hearthrug.
Presently –
‘What’s that?’
She sat up. Fear was in waiting, ready to leap into her eyes.
‘Nothing.’ He pulled her back. ‘Just nerves. It’s all over now.’
‘I thought I heard someone knocking.’
‘There’s no one to come knocking at our door. No one at all.’
Mr Hawkins whimpered in his sleep, and somewhere above, a floorboard creaked.
‘The wood contracting,’ he comforted her. ‘The temperature is falling, so the wood contracts. We must not let imagination run away with us.’
‘Reginald . . .’ She was staring up at the ceiling. ‘Madame Orloff – she got it loose from you, and I am grateful, but suppose – ’
Another floorboard creaked and a bedroom door slammed.
‘Suppose – it’s – still here?’
He was going to say ‘Nonsense’, laugh at her fears, but Mr Hawkins was up on his four legs, his coat erect, growling fiercely as he glared at the closed door. Heavy footsteps were on the landing, pacing back and forth, making the ceiling lamp shake, breaking now and again into a kind of skipping dance.
Susan screamed before she collapsed into merciful oblivion, and at once the sounds ceased, to be replaced by a menacing silence.
Reginald laid Susan down upon the sofa and crept on tip-toe towards the door. When he opened it a wave of foul-smelling cold air made him gasp, then, with courage born of desperation, he went out to the hall and peered up into the gloom-haunted staircase.
It was coming down. A black blob that was roughly human-shaped, but the face was real – luminous-green; the eyes, red; a bird’s-nest thatch of black hair. It was grinning, and the unseen feet were making the stairs tremble. Reginald, aware only that he must fight, picked up a small hall table and flung it straight at the approaching figure. Instantly, something – some invisible force – hurled him against the front door, and he lay on the door-mat powerless to move. The Thing moved slowly down the stairs, and for a hell-bound second the red eyes glared down at the prostrate man before it clumped into the living-room. The door slammed, and Mr Hawkins howled but once.
Minutes passed and Reginald tried to move, but the power had gone from his legs. Also, there was a dull pain in the region of his lower spine, and he wondered if his back were broken. At last, the living-room door slid open, went back on its hinges with a protesting creak as though wishing to disclaim all responsibility for that which was coming out. Susan walked stiff-legged into the hall, white-faced, clothes torn, but her face was lit by a triumphant smile, and Reginald gasped out aloud with pure relief.
‘Darling, thank heavens you’re safe. Don’t be alarmed – it flung me against the door, but I think I’ve only sprained something. Give me a hand up and we’ll get the hell out of here.’
She moved closer, still walking with that grotesque stiff-legged gait. Her head went over to one side, and for the first time he saw her eyes. They were mad – mad – mad . . . Her mouth opened, and the words came out in a strangled, harsh tone.
‘Life . . . life . . . life . . . flesh . . . flesh . . . flesh . . . blood . . .’
‘Susan!’ Reginald screamed and tried to get up, but collapsed as a blast of pain seared his back; he could only watch with dumb horror as she swung her stiff left leg round and began to hobble towards the broken table that lay on the bottom stair. She had difficulty in bending over to pick up the carved walnut leg, and even more difficulty in straightening up, but she gripped the leg firmly in her right hand, and the grimace on her face could have denoted pleasure.
‘You . . . denied . . . me . . . life,’ the harsh voice said. ‘You . . . denied . . . me . . . life . . .’
She, if the thing standing over Reginald could still be so called, looked down with red-tinted eyes, horror in ivory and gold, and he wanted even then to hold her, kiss away the grotesque lines from around the full-lipped mouth, murmur his great love, close those dreadful eyes with gentle fingers. Then the carved walnut leg came down and smashed deep into his skull, and the world exploded, sent him tumbling over and over into eternity.
Presently the Thing which had been Susan went out into the evening that was golden with the setting sun. It drank deep of the cool air, for storm clouds were pouring in from the west and soon there would be rain.
It went stiff-legged down the garden path, and out into the roadway. There was still much killing to be done.
HERSELF by Mary Elizabeth Braddon
Mary Elizabeth Braddon (1835-1915) was a prolific author of Victorian popular fiction, producing more than eighty novels, along with numerous short stories and articles; she also founded and edited the magazine Belgravia. Braddon is remembered as the queen of ‘Sensation’ fiction, a genre that became extremely popular in England in the 1860s and ’70s, with plots involving crime and murder and often incorporating then-controversial elements such as adultery and bigamy. But Braddon also deserves to be known for her Gothic and horror stories, some of which, like ‘Herself’, rank among the best of their era. Two of Braddon’s novels have appeared in scholarly editions from Valancourt: Thou Art the Man (1894), a murder mystery that incorporates Victorian theories of disease and criminality, and Dead Love Has Chains (1907), a psychological novel about the relationship between a woman disgraced by having had a child out of wedlock and a man who has previously been committed as insane and is in danger of relapsing. ‘Herself’, in our opinion one of the very best of
Braddon’s Gothic tales, was originally published in the Sheffield Weekly Telegraph’s Christmas number in 1894 and has very seldom been anthologized.
CHAPTER I
‘And you intend to keep the Orange Grove for your own occupation, Madam,’ interrogates the lawyer gravely, with his downward-looking eyes completely hidden under bushy brows.
‘Decidedly,’ answered my friend. ‘Why, the Orange Grove is the very best part of my fortune. It seems almost a special Providence, don’t you know, Helen,’ pursued Lota, turning to me, ‘that my dear old grandfather should have made himself a winter home in the south. There are the doctors always teasing me about my weak chest, and there is a lonely house and gardens and orange groves waiting for me in a climate invented on purpose for weak chests. I shall live there every winter of my life, Mr Dean.’
The eminently respectable solicitor allowed a lapse of silence before he replied.
‘It is not a lucky house, Miss Hammond.’
‘How not lucky?’
‘Your grandfather only lived to spend one winter in it. He was in very good health when he went there in December – a strong, sturdy old man – and when he sent for me in February to prepare the will which made you his sole heiress, I was shocked at the change in him – broken – wasted – nerves shattered – a mere wreck.
‘It was not merely that he was aged – he was mentally changed – nervous, restless, to all appearance unhappy.’
‘Well, didn’t you ask him why?’ demanded Lota, whose impetuous temper was beginning to revolt against the lawyer’s solemnity.
‘My position hardly warranted my questioning Mr Hammond on a matter so purely personal. I saw the change, and regretted it. Six weeks later he was gone.’
‘Poor old gran’pa. We were such friends when I was a little thing. And then they sent me to Germany with a governess – poor little motherless mite – and then they packed me off to Pekin where father was Consul and there he died, and then they sent me home again – and I was taken up by the smartest of all my aunts, and had my little plunge in society, and always exceeded my allowance; was up to my eyes in debt – for a girl. I suppose a man would hardly count such bills as I used to owe. And then Gran’pa took it into his head to be pleased with me; and here I am – residuary legatee. I think that’s what you call me?’ with an interrogative glance at the lawyer, who nodded a grave assent, ‘and I am going to spend the winter months in my villa near Taggia. Only think of that, Helen, Taggia – Tag-gi-a!’
She syllabled the word slowly, ending with a little smack of her pretty lips as if it were something nice to eat, and she looked at me for sympathy.
‘I haven’t the faintest idea what you mean by Tag-gi-a,’ said I. ‘It sounds like an African word.’
‘Surely you have read Dr Antonio.’
‘Surely I have not.’
‘Then I have done with you. There is a gulf between us. All that I know of the Liguria comes out of that delightful book. It taught me to pine for the shores of the Mediterranean when I was quite a little thing. And they show you Dr Ruffini’s house at Taggia. His actual house, where he actually lived.’
‘You ought to consider, Miss Hammond, that the Riviera has changed a good deal since Ruffini’s time,’ said the lawyer. ‘Not that I have anything to say against the Riviera per se. All I would advise is that you should winter in a more convenient locality than a romantic gorge between San Remo and Alassio. I would suggest Nice, for instance.’
‘Nice. Why, someone was saying only the other day that Nice is the chosen rendezvous of all the worst characters in Europe and America.’
‘Perhaps that’s what makes it such an agreeable place,’ said the lawyer. ‘There are circles and circles in Nice. You need never breathe the same atmosphere as the bad characters.’
‘A huge towny place,’ exclaimed Lota. ‘Gran’pa said it was not better than Brighton.’
‘Could anything be better than Brighton?’ asked I.
‘Helen, you were always a Philistine. It was because of the horridness of Nice and Cannes that gran’pa bought a villa – four times too big for him – in this romantic spot.’
She kissed the white house in the photograph. She gloated over the wildness of the landscape, in which the villa stood out, solitary, majestic. Palms, olives, cypress – a deep gorge cutting through the heart of the picture – mountains romantically remote – one white crest in the furthest distance – a foreground of tumbled crags and threads of running water.
‘Is it really real?’ she asked suddenly, ‘not a photographer’s painted background? They have such odious tricks, those photographers. One sits for one’s picture in a tidy South Kensington studio, and they send one home smirking out of a primeval forest, or in front of a stormy ocean. Is it real?’
‘Absolutely real.’
‘Very well, Mr Dean. Then I am going to establish myself there in the first week of December, and if you want to be very careful of me for gran’pa’s sake all you have to do is to find me a thoroughly respectable major-domo, who won’t drink my wine or run away with my plate. My aunt will engage the rest of my people.’
‘My dear young lady, you may command any poor services of mine; but really now, is it not sheer perversity to choose a rambling house in a wild part of the country when your ample means would allow you to hire the prettiest bijou-villa on the Riviera?’
‘I hate bijou houses, always too small for anybody except some sour old maid who wants to over-hear all her servants say about her. The spacious rambling house – the wild solitary landscape – those are what I want, Mr Dean. Get me a butler who won’t cut my throat, and I ask no more.’
‘Then madam, I have done. A wilful woman must have her way, even when it is a foolish way.’
‘Everything in life is foolish,’ Lota answered, lightly. ‘The people who live haphazard come out just as well at the end as your ineffable wiseacres. And now that you know I am fixed as Fate, that nothing you can say will unbend my iron will, do, like a darling old family lawyer whom I have known ever since I began to know one face from another, do tell me why you object to the Orange Grove. Is it the drainage?’
‘There is no drainage.’
‘Then that’s all right,’ checking it off on her forefinger. ‘Is it the neighbours?’
‘Need I say there are no neighbours?’ pointing to the photograph.
‘Number two satisfactory.’
‘Is it the atmosphere? Low the villa is not; damp it can hardly be, perched on the side of a hill.’
‘I believe the back rooms are damp. The hill side comes too near the windows. The back rooms are decidedly gloomy, and I believe damp.’
‘And how many rooms are there in all?’
‘Nearer thirty than twenty. I repeat it is a great rambling house, ever so much too large for you or any sensible young lady.’
‘For the sensible young lady, no doubt,’ said Lota, nodding impertinently at me. ‘She likes a first floor in Regency Square, Brighton, with a little room under the tiles for her maid. I am not sensible, and I like lots of rooms; rooms to roam about in, to furnish and unfurnish, and arrange and rearrange; rooms to see ghosts in. And now, dearest Mr Dean, I am going to pluck out the heart of your mystery. What kind of ghost is it that haunts the Orange Grove? I know there is a ghost.’
‘Who told you so?’
‘You. You have been telling me so for the last half-hour. It is because of the ghost you don’t want me to go to the Orange Grove. You might just as well be candid and tell me the whole story. I am not afraid of ghosts. In fact, I rather like the idea of having a ghost on my property. Wouldn’t you, Helen, if you had property?’
‘No,’ I answered, decisively. ‘I hate ghosts. They are always associated with damp houses and bad drainage. I don’t believe you would find a ghost in Brighton, not even if you advertised for one.’
‘Tell me all about the ghost,’ urged Lota.
‘There is nothing to tell. Neither the people in the neighbourhood nor
the servants of the house went so far as to say the Orange Grove was haunted. The utmost assertion was that time out of mind the master or the mistress of that house had been miserable.’
‘Time out of mind. Why, I thought gran’pa built the house twenty years ago.’
‘He only added the front which you see in the photograph. The back part of the house, the larger part, is three hundred years old. The place was a monkish hospital, the infirmary belonging to a Benedictine monastery in the neighbourhood, and to which the sick from other Benedictine houses were sent.’
‘Oh, that was ages and ages ago. You don’t suppose that the ghosts of all the sick monks, who were so inconsiderate as to die in my house, haunt the rooms at the back?’
‘I say again, Miss Hammond, nobody has ever to my knowledge asserted that the house was haunted.’
‘Then it can’t be haunted. If it were the servants would have seen something. They are champion ghost-seers.’
‘I am not a believer in ghosts, Miss Hammond,’ said the friendly old lawyer, ‘but I own to a grain of superstition on one point. I can’t help thinking there is such a thing as “luck.” I have seen such marked distinctions between the lucky and unlucky people I have met in my professional career. Now, the Orange Grove has been an unlucky house for the last hundred years. Its bad luck is as old as its history. And why, in the name of all that’s reasonable, should a beautiful young lady with all the world to choose from insist upon living at the Orange Grove?’
‘First, because it is my own house; next, because I conceived a passion for it the moment I saw this photograph; and thirdly, perhaps because your opposition has given a zest to the whole thing. I shall establish myself there next December, and you must come out to me after Christmas, Helen. Your beloved Brighton is odious in February and March.’
‘Brighton is always delightful,’ answered I, ‘but of course I shall be charmed to go to you.’
The Valancourt Book of Horror Stories, Volume Two Page 6
