The Collected Supernatural and Weird Fiction of E. G. Swain & Ralph Adams Cram

by E. G. Swain

  The entrance of Mr. Batchel, soon after his interview with Selina, found Richpin engaged in a loud and fluent oration. The fluency was achieved mainly by repetition, for the man had but small command of words, but it served none the less to shew the depth of his indignation.

  “I aren’t bin in Frenchman’s Meadow, am I?” he was saying in appeal to his wife—this is the Stoneground way with auxiliary verbs—“What am I got to go there for?” He acknowledged Mr. Batchel’s entrance in no other way than by changing to the third person in his discourse, and he continued without pause—“if she’d let me out o’ nights, I’m got better places to go to than Frenchman’s Meadow. Let policeman stick to where I am bin, or else keep his mouth shut. What call is he got to say I’m bin where I aren’t bin?”

  From this, and much more to the same effect, it was clear that the matter of the meadow was being noised abroad, and even receiving official attention. Mr. Batchel was well aware that no question he could put to Richpin, in his present state, would change the flow of his eloquence, and that he had already learned as much as he was likely to learn. He was content, therefore, to ascertain from Mrs. Richpin that her husband had indeed spent all his evenings at home, with the single exception of the one hour during which Mr. Batchel had employed him at the organ. Having ascertained this, he retired, and left Richpin to talk himself out.

  No further doubt about the story was now possible. It was not twenty-four hours since Mr. Batchel had heard it from the boys at the club, and it had already been confirmed by at least two unimpeachable witnesses. He thought the matter over, as he took his tea, and was chiefly concerned in Richpin’s curious connexion with it. On his account, more than on any other, it had become necessary to make whatever investigation might be feasible, and Mr. Batchel determined, of course, to make the next stage of it in the meadow itself.

  The situation of “Frenchman’s Meadow” made it more conspicuous than any other enclosure in the neighbourhood. It was upon the edge of what is locally known as “high land”; and though its elevation was not great, one could stand in the meadow and look seawards over many miles of flat country, once a waste of brackish water, now a great chess-board of fertile fields bounded by straight dykes of glistening water. The point of view derived another interest from looking down upon a long straight bank which disappeared into the horizon many miles away, and might have been taken for a great railway embankment of which no use had been made.

  It was, in fact, one of the great works of the Dutch engineers in the time of Charles I., and it separated the river basin from a large drained area called the “Middle Level,” some six feet below it. In this embankment, not two hundred yards below “Frenchman’s Meadow,” was one of the huge water gates which admitted traffic through a sluice, into the lower level, and the picturesque thatched cottage of the sluice-keeper formed a pleasing addition to the landscape.

  It was a view with which Mr. Batchel was naturally very familiar. Few of his surroundings were pleasant to the eye, and this was about the only place to which he could take a visitor whom he desired to impress favourably. The way to the meadow lay through a short lane, and he could reach it in five minutes: he was frequently there.

  It was, of course, his intention to be there again that evening: to spend the night there, if need be, rather than let anything escape him. He only hoped he should not find half the parish there also. His best hope of privacy lay in the inclemency of the weather; the day was growing colder, and there was a north-east wind, of which Frenchman’s Meadow would receive the fine edge.

  Mr. Batchel spent the next three hours in dealing with some arrears of correspondence, and at nine o’clock put on his thickest coat and boots, and made his way to the meadow. It became evident, as he walked up the lane, that he was to have company. He heard many voices, and soon recognised the loudest amongst them. Jim Lallement was boasting of the accuracy of his aim: the others were not disputing it, but were asserting their own merits in discordant chorus. This was a nuisance, and to make matters worse, Mr. Batchel heard steps behind him.

  A voice soon bade him “Good evening.”

  To Mr. Batchel’s great relief it proved to be the policeman, who soon overtook him. The conversation began on his side.

  “Curious tricks, sir, these of Richpin’s.”

  “What tricks?” asked Mr. Batchel, with an air of innocence.

  “Why, he’s been walking about Frenchman’s Meadow these three nights, frightening folk and what all.”

  “Richpin has been at home every night, and all night long,” said Mr. Batchel.

  “I’m talking about where he was, not where he says he was,” said the policeman. “You can’t go behind the evidence.”

  “But Richpin has evidence too. I asked his wife.”

  “You know, sir, and none better, that wives have got to obey. Richpin wants to be took for a ghost, and we know that sort of ghost. Whenever we hear there’s a ghost, we always know there’s going to be turkeys missing.”

  “But there are real ghosts sometimes, surely?” said Mr. Batchel.

  “No,” said the policeman, “me and my wife have both looked, and there’s no such thing.”

  “Looked where?” enquired Mr. Batchel.

  “In the ‘Police Duty’ catechism. There’s lunatics, and deserters, and dead bodies, but no ghosts.”

  Mr. Batchel accepted this as final. He had devised a way of ridding himself of all his company, and proceeded at once to carry it into effect. The two had by this time reached the group of boys.

  “These are all stone-throwers,” said he, loudly.

  There was a clatter of stones as they dropped from the hands of the boys.

  “These boys ought all to be in the club instead of roaming about here damaging property. Will you take them there, and see them safely in? If Richpin comes here, I will bring him to the station.”

  The policeman seemed well pleased with the suggestion. No doubt he had overstated his confidence in the definition of the “Police Duty.” Mr. Batchel, on his part, knew the boys well enough to be assured that they would keep the policeman occupied for the next half-hour, and as the party moved slowly away, felt proud of his diplomacy.

  There was no sign of any other person about the field gate, which he climbed readily enough, and he was soon standing in the highest part of the meadow and peering into the darkness on every side.

  It was possible to see a distance of about thirty yards; beyond that it was too dark to distinguish anything. Mr. Batchel designed a zigzag course about the meadow, which would allow of his examining it systematically and as rapidly as possible, and along this course he began to walk briskly, looking straight before him as he went, and pausing to look well about him when he came to a turn. There were no beasts in the meadow—their owners had taken the precaution of removing them; their absence was, of course, of great advantage to Mr. Batchel.

  In about ten minutes he had finished his zigzag path and arrived at the other corner of the meadow; he had seen nothing resembling a man. He then retraced his steps, and examined the field again, but arrived at his starting point, knowing no more than when he had left it. He began to fear the return of the policeman as he faced the wind and set upon a third journey.

  The third journey, however, rewarded him. He had reached the end of his second traverse, and was looking about him at the angle between that and the next, when he distinctly saw what looked like Richpin crossing his circle of vision, and making straight for the sluice. There was no gate on that side of the field; the hedge, which seemed to present no obstacle to the other, delayed Mr. Batchel considerably, and still retains some of his clothing, but he was not long through before he had again marked his man. It had every appearance of being Richpin. It went down the slope, crossed the plank that bridged the lock, and disappeared round the corner of the cottage, where the entrance lay.

  Mr. Batchel had had no opportunity of confirming the gruesome observation of Selina Broughton, but had seen enough to prove t
hat the others had not been romancing. He was not a half-minute behind the figure as it crossed the plank over the lock—it was slow going in the darkness—and he followed it immediately round the corner of the house. As he expected, it had then disappeared.

  Mr. Batchel knocked at the door, and admitted himself, as his custom was. The sluice-keeper was in his kitchen, charring a gate post. He was surprised to see Mr. Batchel at that hour, and his greeting took the form of a remark to that effect.

  “I have been taking an evening walk,” said Mr, Batchel. “Have you seen Richpin lately?”

  “I see him last Saturday week,” replied the sluice-keeper, “not since.”

  “Do you feel lonely here at night?”

  “No,” replied the sluice-keeper, “people drop in at times. There was a man in on Monday, and another yesterday.”

  “Have you had no one today?” said Mr. Batchel, coming to the point.

  The answer showed that Mr. Batchel had been the first to enter the door that day, and after a little general conversation he brought his visit to an end.

  It was now ten o’clock. He looked in at Richpin’s cottage, where he saw a light burning, as he passed. Richpin had tired himself early, and had been in bed since half-past eight. His wife was visibly annoyed at the rumours which had upset him, and Mr. Batchel said such soothing words as he could command, before he left for home.

  He congratulated himself, prematurely, as he sat before the fire in his study, that the day was at an end. It had been cold out of doors, and it was pleasant to think things over in the warmth of the cheerful fire his housekeeper never failed to leave for him. The reader will have no more difficulty than Mr. Batchel had in accounting for the resemblance between Richpin and the man in the meadow. It was a mere question of family likeness. That the ancestor had been seen in the meadow at some former time might perhaps be inferred from its traditional name. The reason for his return, then and now, was a matter of mere conjecture, and Mr. Batchel let it alone.

  The next incident has, to some, appeared incredible, which only means, after all, that it has made demands upon their powers of imagination and found them bankrupt.

  Critics of story-telling have used severe language about authors who avail themselves of the shortcut of coincidence. “That must be reserved, I suppose,” said Mr. Batchel, when he came to tell of Richpin, “for what really happens; and that fiction is a game which must be played according to the rules.”

  “I know,” he went on to say, “that the chances were some millions to one against what happened that night, but if that makes it incredible, what is there left to believe?”

  It was thereupon remarked by someone in the company, that the credible material would not be exhausted.

  “I doubt whether anything happens,” replied Mr. Batchel in his dogmatic way, “without the chances being a million to one against it. Why did they choose such a word? What does ‘happen’ mean?”

  There was no reply: it was clearly a rhetorical question.

  “Is it incredible,” he went on, “that I put into the plate last Sunday the very half-crown my uncle tipped me with in 1881, and that I spent next day?”

  “Was that the one you put in?” was asked by several.

  “How do I know?” replied Mr. Batchel, “but if I knew the history of the half-crown I did put in, I know it would furnish still more remarkable coincidences.”

  All this talk arose out of the fact that at midnight on the eventful day, whilst Mr. Batchel was still sitting by his study fire, he had news that the cottage at the sluice had been burnt down. The thatch had been dry; there was, as we know, a stiff east wind, and an hour had sufficed to destroy all that was inflammable. The fire is still spoken of in Stoneground with great regret. There remains only one building in the place of sufficient merit to find its way on to a postcard.

  It was just at midnight that the sluice-keeper rung at Mr. Batchel’s door. His errand required no apology. The man had found a night-fisherman to help him as soon as the fire began, and with two long sprits from a lighter they had made haste to tear down the thatch, and upon this had brought down, from under the ridge at the south end, the bones and some of the clothing of a man. Would Mr. Batchel come down and see?

  Mr. Batchel put on his coat and returned to the place. The people whom the fire had collected had been kept on the further side of the water, and the space about the cottage was vacant. Near to the smouldering heap of ruin were the remains found under the thatch. The fingers of the right hand still firmly clutched a sheep bone which had been gnawed as a dog would gnaw it.

  “Starved to death,” said the sluice-keeper, “I see a tramp like that ten years ago.”

  They laid the bones decently in an outhouse, and turned the key, Mr. Batchel carried home in his hand a metal cross, threaded upon a cord. He found an engraved figure of Our Lord on the face of it, and the name of Pierre Richepin upon the back. He went next day to make the matter known to the nearest Priest of the Roman Faith, with whom he left the cross. The remains, after a brief inquest, were interred in the cemetery, with the rites of the church to which the man had evidently belonged.

  Mr. Batchel’s deductions from the whole circumstances were curious, and left a great deal to be explained. It seemed as if Pierre Richepin had been disturbed by some premonition of the fire, but had not foreseen that his mortal remains would escape; that he could not return to his own people without the aid of his map, but had no perception of the interval that had elapsed since he had lost it. This map Mr. Batchel put into his pocket-book next day when he went to Thomas Richpin for certain other information about his surviving relatives.

  Richpin had a father, it appeared, living a few miles away in Jakesley Fen, and Mr. Batchel concluded that he was worth a visit. He mounted his bicycle, therefore, and made his way to Jakesley that same afternoon.

  Mr. Richpin was working not far from home, and was soon brought in. He and his wife shewed great courtesy to their visitor, whom they knew well by repute. They had a well-ordered house, and with a natural and dignified hospitality, asked him to take tea with them. It was evident to Mr. Batchel that there was a great gulf between the elder Richpin and his son; the former was the last of an old race, and the latter the first of a new. In spite of the Board of Education, the latter was vastly the worse. The cottage contained some French kickshaws which greatly facilitated the enquiries Mr. Batchel had come to make. They proved to be family relics.

  “My grandfather,” said Mr. Richpin, as they sat at tea, “was a prisoner—he and his brother.”

  “Your grandfather was Pierre Richepin? “asked Mr. Batchel.

  “No! Jules,” was the reply. “Pierre got away.”

  “Shew Mr. Batchel the book,” said his wife.

  The book was produced. It was a Book of Meditations, with the name of Jules Richepin upon the title-page. The fly-leaf was missing. Mr. Batchel produced the map from his pocket-book. It fitted exactly. The slight indentures along the torn edge fell into their place, and Mr. Batchel left the leaf in the book, to the great delight of the old couple, to whom he told no more of the story than he thought fit.

  The Eastern Window

  It may well be that Vermuyden and the Dutchmen who drained the fens did good, and that it was interred with their bones. It is quite certain that they did evil and that it lives after them. The rivers, which these men robbed of their water, have at length silted up, and the drainage of one tract of country is proving to have been achieved by the undraining of another.

  Places like Stoneground, which lie on the banks of these defrauded rivers, are now become helpless victims of Dutch engineering. The water which has lost its natural outlet, invades their lands. The thrifty cottager who once had the river at the bottom of his garden, has his garden more often in these days, at the bottom of the river, and a summer flood not infrequently destroys the whole produce of his ground.

  Such a flood, during an early year in the 20th century, had been unusually disastrous to Stonegro
und, and Mr. Batchel, who, as a gardener, was well able to estimate the losses of his poorer neighbours, was taking some steps towards repairing them.

  Money, however, is never at rest in Stoneground, and it turned out upon this occasion that the funds placed at his command were wholly inadequate to the charitable purpose assigned to them. It seemed as if those who had lost a rood of potatoes could be compensated for no more than a yard.

  It was at this time, when he was oppressed in mind by the failure of his charitable enterprise, that Mr. Batchel met with the happy adventure in which the eastern window of the church played so singular a part. The narrative should be prefaced by a brief description of the window in question. It is a large painted window, of a somewhat unfortunate period of execution. The drawing and colouring leave everything to be desired. The scheme of the window, however, is based upon a wholesome tradition. The five large lights in the lower part are assigned to five scenes in the life of Our Lord, and the second of these, counting from the North, contains a bold erect figure of St. John Baptist, to whom the church is dedicated. It is this figure alone, of all those contained in the window, that is concerned in what we have to relate.

  It has already been mentioned that Mr. Batchel had some knowledge of music. He took an interest in the choir, from whose practices he was seldom absent; and was quite competent, in the occasional absence of the choirmaster, to act as his deputy. It is customary at Stoneground for the choirmaster, in order to save the sexton a journey, to extinguish the lights after a choir practice and to lock up the church. These duties, accordingly, were performed by Mr. Batchel when the need arose.

  It will be of use to the reader to have the procedure in detail. The large gas-meter stood in an aisle of the church, and it was Mr. Batchel’s practice to go round and extinguish all the lights save one, before turning off the gas at the meter. The one remaining light, which was reached by standing upon a choir seat, was always that nearest the door of the chancel, and experience proved that there was ample time to walk from the meter to that light before it died out. It was therefore an easy matter to turn of the last light, to find the door without its aid, and thence to pass out, and close the church for the night.