A Night on the Moor and Other Tales of Dread

by R. Murray Gilchrist

  As Basil stood glancing half-wistfully at the two empty receptacles that still remained, his hand moved involuntarily to his breast, and brought forth the miniature of Betty Hooton, the girl whom he had loved forty years ago, and whose rejection of his suit had driven him to the East, there to enter commerce as a Smyrna merchant, and increase by a hundredfold a cadet’s patrimony.

  A black beauty, with thick ringlets, one shading either temple, the others falling to flushed plump cheeks and elegantly-curved neck. Eyes deep blue and languishing, a straight thin nose, upper lip bowshaped - lower lip pouting like a ripe fruit, a chin made surely for no other aim than to nestle in a lover’s palm.

  She wore a bodice of oyster-coloured silk, cut so low that the dint of her back was visible; a crimson scarf drooped from her left shoulder. The right arm fell gracefully from a butterfly sleeve, caught in the middle with a garnet lozenge from which hung one great pearl and two sapphires. This trinket her mother, Anastasia Dornton, had worn in her stage triumphs, ere she had won, modestly and with good repute, the favour of, and soon enough the honourable conjugal estate with, Charles Hooton, seventh Earl of Longstone.

  Basil had kept this, Betty’s only gift to him, always hanging from a thin gold chain over his heart. She was the only woman he had ever loved, and her dismissal of him in his youth had killed all desire for womankind. Yet he had borne no malice, being a gallant gentleman, true as steel, and endowed with a good man’s best gift - the power of bearing grief and physical pain without outward lament. Of the finest blood in England, but, as he was wont to declare, ‘an ugly devil - ugly as Punchinello!’ But such as study physiognomy would have been vastly delighted with his countenance, for all its hooked nose and wry mouth, because of the truth and tenderness of the sunken grey eyes.

  After a while he replaced the miniature and moved again to the staircase. ‘ ’Tis a vastly unwholesome place for the recalling of a woman’s beauty,’ said he - ‘a beauty that, if she herself be not food for worms, must have long since faded in bleached hair and deep wrinkles!’

  A profound depression overcame him as he thought of the past. He had felt but little affection for his dead brother, who had ever wilfully wronged him, and the vicinity of his corse was not accountable for this melancholy humour. Perchance it was the sudden cessation of his journey, taken hurriedly, after four decades of work so strenuous that he had scarce allowed himself breathing space; perchance a stagnancy created by the utter barrenness of his present life. He had dwelt so entirely apart from his own country that, save for his colleagues in London town, he knew none with whom he could claim even the title of acquaintance. A wall of ice had risen between him and his youth; even the old pleasaunce in which he had spent his earliest years seemed almost as unfamiliar as though he had never beheld its vistas before.

  The lean old man hurriedly retraced his steps along the alley and entered the avenue. Between each lichened elm stood the leaden statue of a pagan deity, brought from France more than a century ago. He remembered them as brightly gilded and stately in their erectness; but now all were covered with a purple bloom. Olympus was no longer Olympus - the gods and goddesses had lost all dignity and grown pitifully ludicrous with age. Here and there a jagged gap showed on breast and shoulder; hanging from the thunderbolt of Jove and the quiver of Diana the paper-making wasp had fashioned her nest.

  His melancholy increased to such a degree that he reached the great red-brick house and passed through the open doorway of the hall without casting his eyes over the frontispiece to discover what wrack time had made. An elderly woman, whose head was covered with a crimped linen cap, stood curtseying beside the open gallery that led to the servants’ quarters. She wore a mourning gown, and mittens of fine thread. A kindly, puckered-faced creature.

  ‘I bid you welcome, Sir Basil,’ she said, ‘sure there’s no liberty in taking so much upon myself, since I have served here from the time I were a wench grown.’

  The new master nodded courteously. ‘But that was long after I went away,’ he responded. ‘I have not seen Dalton Constable for forty long years.’

  ‘Dear heart!’ cried the woman, ‘when you were a lad, I were still-room maid - young to the work, but apt to improve. Please you to come this way, master - there’s a meal ready served in the dining-parlour.’

  She conducted him to a vast saloon hung with Lely’s portraits. A table at the further end, covered with damask and embellished with gilt glass and silver, was laid for his use. When he had taken his place, she removed the covers.

  ‘We be under-served here, Sir Basil,’ she said. ‘For years and years, there’s been none save myself and three wenches; and an old groom and keeper who sleep, gun by side, in the plate-room at night. I be Mrs Humble, the housekeeper. I wedded Nathan - him that held the butler’s post when you were young. God rest him - but he’s in Abraham’s bosom, where a man should rest! The last butler Dalton

  Constable ever saw; and he, poor soul, cooled in his linens two-and-twenty years ago.’

  Her garrulous officiousness warmed his heart; when she prepared to retire, he bade her stay longer and tell him of all the changes in the country - of who had died and who had been bom. The question concerning the woman he had loved he dared not ask.

  Mrs Humble was a devout woman, and her rigmarole was besprinkled with many pious ejaculations. Her master found it of pathetic interest. All the lads with whom he had hunted in his boyhood were dead and gone; some families were extinct, others had sunk into utter oblivion.

  ‘There be none left,’ she said at last - ‘none but the ladies Anastasy and Betty Hooton, who still live in Camsdale, and ne’er quit the bounds of their own valley.’

  Basil looked up suddenly. ‘Unwed!’ he said, half to himself. ‘How came it that two such girls should live unmated - two of the fairest creatures ever made?’

  ‘Alack, master,’ replied the housekeeper. ‘Have you ne’er heard that Lady Betty lost her senses soon after your going, and that her sister e’er refused to budge from her side? A harmless, gentle madness, to be sure. Sir Digby, my late master (Heaven be his bed!), ne’er missed an evening without driving over in the chariot. ’Tis said as the playing blood in her veins (madam, the countess, being a stage-actress), warms up at such times. Lord! the serving folk tell the tale that she hath a little theatre for puppets true as life, to do the same thing over and over again.’

  The old man filled his glass to the brim with generous wine. He held the reddened crystal above his head.

  ‘Here’s to her health!’ he cried hoarsely. ‘Here’s to the health of Betty Hooton!’

  Then he drank thirstily to the dregs, and, the tears gushing from his eyes, flung the glass against the mantel, covering the hearth with fragments.

  ‘The chariot - the chariot,’ he said, ‘and at once, for I cannot rest until I have seen her!’

  An hour later, in the blue parlour at Camsdale, after Basil had sat for some minutes in the midst of lac cabinets and tall Nankin vases and sandalwood screens, he saw Lady Anastasia, an ashen white ghost, attired in black paduasoy. She had entered so quietly that he was unaware of her coming until she laid her hand upon his shoulder.

  ‘Ah, Basil,’ she said mournfully, ‘you have come at last! Come to two unfortunate women whose sole virtue is their remembrance of you.’

  He had not forgotten the courtly fashion of his young manhood; he raised her smooth be-ringed fingers to his lips.

  ‘I did not know,’ he said. ‘Had I known, my coming had been a lifetime ago.’

  ‘But even then,’ she said, ‘ ’twould have been too late. When you went away, you bore with you all my sister’s happiness.’

  The old man found the perfumed atmosphere intolerably oppressive; he moved to the oriel (where the moonlight and the dull flickering of haloed candles fought for supremacy), and threw open the lattice. Then he caught Anastasia’s sleeve.

  ‘I cannot understand,’ he said. ‘What does it mean? Betty drove me from her with harsh words - drove
me - who have loved her all the days of my life!’

  She covered her thin face. ‘Do not ask for the whole truth,’ she said. ‘One came to her with lies of you - brought forged proofs of your inconstancy - so cleverly wrought that she might not doubt therein you had spoken of her as a wanton. And he, afterwards, feigning compassion, piqued her into a promise to wed.’

  ‘God!’ groaned Basil. ‘My brother!’

  ‘One summer eve, as they sat together in this very place, the demon of confidence came to him, and in the belief that her love was too great to be shaken, he told her of his baseness. And that night, as she lay stunned - silent as death - within my arms, her wits left her . . . Ah, do not cry out, Basil, we are all old - and she has never known unhappiness since that hour. Her eyes became for him the eyes of a basilisk - from then, until the time of his death, he came here night after night - not missing once in all those years - to gaze upon her and listen to her fond talk.’

  ‘Let me see her!’ he cried. ‘My Betty!’

  ‘First must I forewarn you,’ she replied, ‘that she has not changed as you and I have changed. Time has used her with miraculous kindness - you will find her to outward view as beautiful as when you went away. And she hath a strange recreation - even since his death she hath not ceased to delight in it. The puppet-stage, with which my mother solaced herself after her marriage, stands in the midst of the withdrawing-room; and thereon she plays with mannikins of wood her own piteous tragedy.’

  She took him by the hand and led him up the oaken staircase to a

  State saloon, at whose further end, beneath a canopy of purple velvet, stood the chair of the first Earl of Longstone, who had risen to greatness and riches as the lover of an unmarried Queen. The walls were adorned with tapestry of Flemish weaving; along the frieze vividly coloured beasts and birds and trees and hills capered to the music of Orpheus.

  ‘ ,Tis nigh upon her time of entering,’ said Anastasia. ‘I pray you sit beside me afront her theatre, and together we will watch the play.’

  As she spoke, the hangings of a side-door were thrust aside, and Betty entered, light-footed and merry, and ran towards her toy. The old man’s breath came in gasps; all the muscles of his heart were knotted together. For Anastasia had spoken sober truth, and her sister had lost no jot of her loveliness. Oh, it was strange - strange to see her thus - it was unnatural and beautiful and hurtful. Still with her jetty ringlets, still in lustrous silk and crimson scarf.

  She drew a taper from its sconce, and held it to the wicks of the footlights. This done, she confronted her audience, and began to speak in a whimsically tender voice.

  ‘Good people, she said; ‘if you but have patience, you shall see here the story of Love Betrayed, or the Virgin Deceived, writ by - I know not whom, and played by little creatures with human souls.’

  She hastened to the back of the theatre, and began to jerk two little dolls - dressed as a swain and his sweetheart. The water burst from Basil’s eyes, for the words each spoke were the words he and she had used in the days of their courtship. His affection was so wrought upon that he saw naught foolish in the stilted movements of the puppets as they strutted to and fro, with a background of gaily painted trees, and a foreground of terraced walk and mere.

  The same soft, cooing voice for each - not a sentence, not a word but he already knew by heart...

  Down tumbled the drop-scene, and the worker of the puppets came again to the front.

  ‘The first act’s ended,’ she said, ‘and now I will sing.’

  She took up an ancient lute that lay nearby, and lifted the green riband over her ringlets. Then she sang, very fantastically, with sudden hushings and swellings, the second verse of a lyric of Aphra Behn’s:

  Because Endymion once did move

  Night’s goddess to come down,

  And listen to his tale of love,

  Aim not thou idly at the moon.

  Be it thy pleasure and thy pride

  That, wrecked on stretched desire,

  Thou canst thy fiercest torments hide,

  And silently expire.

  ‘Friends all,’ she continued, gently laying aside the instrument, ‘the love of two folk turns to tragedy. We shall see how a false villain -ay, a false, false villain - bred ill-feeling in the maid, and how she, finding that all his tales were but slanderous lies, took her heart between her hand thus, and broke it clean asunder!’

  Basil could bear the strain no longer; in spite of Anastasia’s hindering grasp, he rose from the settee and went to the back of the theatre, whither she had again retired.

  ‘Betty!’ he faltered. ‘ ,Tis I, Betty - I, your Basil - Basil who hath always loved you!’

  The beauty arched her white neck haughtily. ‘Sir,’ she said, ‘the Lady Elizabeth Hooton, at your command.’

  ‘Nay, Betty, my life, my love! See, here rests the miniature you gave to me’ (he tore open his vest) ‘here against my heart! Each breath of mine hath stirred it, Betty, for more than forty years. No hour hath gone by without a dear thought being yours, my Betty - no dream came but with you in’t. ’Tis I, Betty, your poor, lonely Basil.’

  For one brief moment her eyes were resplendent with the fire of wondering joy, then the veil fell once more.

  ‘There is no Betty,’ she whispered, ‘no Betty and no Basil. The wretched Betty lies buried under the deep grass in the greenwood -at the very spot where she sent away the lad she loved ...

  ‘Good friends - the second act.’

  Bubble Magic

  The last hind had left the booth. The Ambassador, the Page, and Clarinda were spreading supper on the trestled table behind the tattered stage-curtain. Yesternight had been a benefit, and we were now to eat the remnants of the feast. We had played Philip Massinger’s Maid of Honour, and though our acting was stirring enow, few of the country folk had ventured.

  We sat at table in our players’ clothes. I, the master, was Bertoldo; Mary Perceval, Camiola; Mrs Brookwith, the Duchess of Siena. Robert, Ferdinand, and the rest were made up of recruits from Town. Stupid prattle came from the further end; but where we three sat there was naught but whispering. Camiola’s nut-brown hair lay adown her back; my fingers stole amongst it, and made a nest; there was no expression in her colourless - almost haggard - face, save that of passion. She would not taste the viands; but once, when I had drunk, and turned to speak with the Duchess, her hand stole to my beaker, and her lips pressed where mine had pressed.

  Mrs Brookwith’s gorgeous colouring put me in mind of an old-fashioned garden. She was not without beauty; but ’twas the beauty of peonies and Turk’s-caps. Moreover, her eyes were bright and sparkling as the toad’s that lurks beneath such flowers; they hinted of vast knowledge acquired by a placid contemplation of the strange.

  Our talk turned on love. Camiola said with a shudder that, though she had never suffered, such a thing must be horrible, must burn out the heart, must leave a woman naught but an empty shell. The Duchess laughed drily, and passing one plump, beringed hand behind my shoulder, stroked the girl’s neck.

  ‘Dear child,’ she said, ‘when you are old as I, and have passed so oft through the flame, you will know that ’tis not love, but falsity, that burns and destroys.’

  I interrupted her with: ‘I hold love to be nowise great as friendship; a friend who preserves a perfect faith is the best gift Providence bestows.’

  For I was thinking of Norreys, who even that day had written, for the hundredth time proffering help if my affairs were disordered. As children, we were bedfellows, and, though he had heired a great estate, he had ever held me as his bosom friend. Twice already had he rescued me from poverty, calling me Quixote, and taking away all shame. I loved him more than a brother.

  ‘Ah, you have never loved - by some rare chance you have escaped the fire,’ retorted the Duchess, drawing her hand from Camiola’s neck and laying it on my breast. ‘This heart awaits its torture!’ she added.

  Camiola, sighing querulously, threw in: ‘Men cannot
understand women.’

  Just then one drew aside the curtain that oped to the field, and showed us the bright hues of the setting sun. The chain of talk grew brighter and brighter as the ale and wine went round. Unobserved we stole from the table, and went through the court of The Green Man. No sooner had we reached the herb-garden, that lies east of the archway, when the Duchess turned to me, somewhat abruptly.

  ‘You have perchance not forgotten that Earl Russetwell carried me to Italy, and detained me there five years?’ she said ... ‘In that time I gathered forbidden fruits ... I know much of love. Would you that I showed to yourself, Bertoldo, and to our sweet Maid of Honour here, some little trick of the near future?’

  Camiola in haste assented for both, and Mrs Brookwith hurried up the stone stairs to the gallery where lay the women’s chambers, to return with a white silken case, which presently disclosed a tiny pipe of gold and a crystal phial half-filled with rosy liquid.

  ‘Let us remove to a more secret place,’ she said.

  She led the way down the ill-kept alley of box to a lawn, where the yew-fowls had lost all shape. In an arbour adorned with portraits of long-mouldered gamesters we sat, the waning afterglow hanging overhead.

  ‘ ’Tis naught but the blowing of bubbles in magic water,’ she explained. ‘You, Camiola, shall have the first sight. Observe me, and when the bubble attains its largest, peep into the picture.’

  Wherewith she poured into the hollowed palm of her left hand a shallow pool, and bedabbling the bowl, blew and blew until the bubble swelled to the size and form of a citron. She motioned with her head for Camiola to look, and the girl bent forward.

  A cry of rapture leaped from her lips; a rich colour filled her cheeks. The bubble burst, but her inspired loveliness remained. She clasped her hands; she gazed upon me; I read new-born joy in her eyes. She would have spoken, but her heart beat far too quickly. She took up a flower I had culled in the garden, unfastened her laces, and let it fall to her bosom.