by Grant Allen
Hedda and Yolande took their places in the procession. Maisie stood between the two, with hair floating on the air; she looked like a novice who goes up to take the veil, accompanied and cheered by two elder sisters.
The ghostly pageant began to move. Unseen music followed it with fitful gusts of melody. They passed down the main corridor, between shadowy Doric or Ionic pillars which grew dimmer and ever dimmer again in the distance as they approached, with slow steps, the earthward portal.
At the gate, the High Priest pushed against the valves with his hand. They opened outward.
He passed into the moonlight. The attendants thronged after him. As each wild figure crossed the threshold the same strange sight as before met Maisie’s eyes. For a second of time each ghostly body became self-luminous, as with some curious phosphorescence; and through each, at the moment of passing the portal, the dim outline of a skeleton loomed briefly visible. Next instant it had clothed itself as with earthly members.
Maisie reached the outer air. As she did so, she gasped. For a second, its chilliness and freshness almost choked her. She was conscious now that the atmosphere of the vault, though pleasant in its way, and warm and dry, had been loaded with fumes as of burning incense, and with somnolent vapours of poppy and mandragora. Its drowsy ether had cast her into a lethargy. But after the first minute in the outer world, the keen night air revived her. Snow lay still on the ground a little deeper than when she first came out, and the moon rode lower; otherwise, all was as before, save that only one or two lights still burned here and there in the great house on the terrace. Among them she could recognise her own room, on the ground floor in the new wing, by its open window.
The procession made its way across the churchyard towards the tower. As it wound among the graves an owl hooted. All at once Maisie remembered the lines that had so chilled her a few short hours before in the drawing-room —
‘The glow-worm o’er grave and stone Shall light thee steady; The owl from the steeple sing, “Welcome, proud lady!”’
But, marvellous to relate, they no longer alarmed her. She felt rather that a friend was welcoming her home; she clung to Yolande’s hand with a gentle pressure.
As they passed in front of the porch, with its ancient yew-tree, a stealthy figure glided out like a ghost from the darkling shadow. It was a woman, bent and bowed, with quivering limbs that shook half palsied. Maisie recognised old Bessie. ‘I knew she would come!’ the old hag muttered between her toothless jaws. ‘I knew Wolverden Tower would yet be duly fasted!’
She put herself, as of right, at the head of the procession. They moved on to the tower, rather gliding than walking. Old Bessie drew a rusty key from her pocket, and fitted it with a twist into the brand-new lock. ‘What turned the old will turn the new,’ she murmured, looking round and grinning. Maisie shrank from her as she shrank from not one of the Dead; but she followed on still into the ringers’ room at the base of the tower.
Thence a staircase in the corner led up to the summit. The High Priest mounted the stair, chanting a mystic refrain, whose runic sounds were no longer intelligible to Maisie. As she reached the outer air, the Tongue of the Dead seemed to have become a mere blank of mingled odours and murmurs to her. It was like a summer breeze, sighing through warm and resinous pinewoods. But Yolande and Hedda spoke to her yet, to cheer her, in the language of the living. She recognised that as revenants they were still in touch with the upper air and the world of the embodied.
They tempted her up the stair with encouraging fingers. Maisie followed them like a child, in implicit confidence. The steps wound round and round, spirally, and the staircase was dim; but a supernatural light seemed to fill the tower, diffused from the bodies or souls of its occupants. At the head of all, the High Priest still chanted as he went his unearthly litany; magic sounds of chimes seemed to swim in unison with his tune as they mounted. Were those floating notes material or spiritual? They passed the belfry; no tongue of metal wagged; but the rims of the great bells resounded and reverberated to the ghostly symphony with sympathetic music. Still they passed on and on, upward and upward. They reached the ladder that alone gave access to the final story. Dust and cobwebs already clung to it. Once more Maisie drew back. It was dark overhead, and the luminous haze began to fail them. Her friends held her hands with the same kindly persuasive touch as ever. ‘I cannot!’ she cried, shrinking away from the tall, steep ladder. ‘Oh, Yolande, I cannot!’
‘Yes, dear,’ Yolande whispered in a soothing voice. ‘You can. It is but ten steps, and I will hold your hand tight. Be brave and mount them!’
The sweet voice encouraged her. It was like heavenly music. She knew not why she should submit, or, rather, consent; but none the less she consented. Some spell seemed cast over her. With tremulous feet, scarcely realising what she did, she mounted the ladder and went up four steps of it.
Then she turned and looked down again. Old Bessie’s wrinkled face met her frightened eyes. It was smiling horribly. She shrank back once more, terrified. ‘I can’t do it,’ she cried, ‘if that woman comes up! I’m not afraid of you, dear’ — she pressed Yolande’s hand— ‘but she, she is too terrible!’
Hedda looked back and raised a warning finger. ‘Let the woman stop below,’ she said; ‘she savours too much of the evil world. We must do nothing to frighten the willing victim.’
The High Priest by this time, with his ghostly fingers, had opened the trap-door that gave access to the summit. A ray of moonlight slanted through the aperture. The breeze blew down with it. Once more Maisie felt the stimulating and reviving effect of the open air. Vivified by its freshness, she struggled up to the top, passed out through the trap, and found herself standing on the open platform at the summit of the tower.
The moon had not yet quite set. The light on the snow shone pale green and mysterious. For miles and miles around she could just make out, by its aid, the dim contour of the downs, with their thin white mantle, in the solemn silence. Range behind range rose faintly shimmering. The chant had now ceased; the High Priest and his acolytes were mingling strange herbs in a mazar-bowl or chalice. Stray perfumes of myrrh and of cardamoms were wafted towards her. The men in leopards’ skins burnt smouldering sticks of spikenard. Then Yolande led the postulant forward again, and placed her close up to the new white parapet. Stone heads of virgins smiled on her from the angles. ‘She must front the east,’ Hedda said in a tone of authority: and Yolande turned her face towards the rising sun accordingly. Then she opened her lips and spoke in a very solemn voice. ‘From this new-built tower you fling yourself,’ she said, or rather intoned, ‘that you may serve mankind, and all the powers that be, as its guardian spirit against thunder and lightning. Judged a virgin, pure and unsullied in deed and word and thought, of royal race and ancient lineage — a Cymry of the Cymry — you are found worthy to be intrusted with this charge and this honour. Take care that never shall dart or thunderbolt assault this tower, as She that is below you takes care to preserve it from earthquake and ruin, and She that is midway takes care to preserve it from battle and tempest. This is your charge. See well that you keep it.’
She took her by both hands. ‘Mary Llewelyn,’ she said, ‘you willing victim, step on to the battlement.’
Maisie knew not why, but with very little shrinking she stepped as she was told, by the aid of a wooden footstool, on to the eastward-looking parapet. There, in her loose white robe, with her arms spread abroad, and her hair flying free, she poised herself for a second, as if about to shake out some unseen wings and throw herself on the air like a swift or a swallow.
‘Mary Llewelyn,’ Yolande said once more, in a still deeper tone, with ineffable earnestness, ‘cast yourself down, a willing sacrifice, for the service of man, and the security of this tower against thunderbolt and lightning.’
Maisie stretched her arms wider, and leaned forward in act to leap, from the edge of the parapet, on to the snow-clad churchyard.
V
One second more and th
e sacrifice would have been complete. But before she could launch herself from the tower, she felt suddenly a hand laid upon her shoulder from behind to restrain her. Even in her existing state of nervous exaltation she was aware at once that it was the hand of a living and solid mortal, not that of a soul or guardian spirit. It lay heavier upon her than Hedda’s or Yolande’s. It seemed to clog and burden her. With a violent effort she strove to shake herself free, and carry out her now fixed intention of self-immolation, for the safety of the tower. But the hand was too strong for her. She could not shake it off. It gripped and held her.
She yielded, and, reeling, fell back with a gasp on to the platform of the tower. At the selfsame moment a strange terror and commotion seemed to seize all at once on the assembled spirits. A weird cry rang voiceless through the shadowy company. Maisie heard it as in a dream, very dim and distant. It was thin as a bat’s note; almost inaudible to the ear, yet perceived by the brain or at least by the spirit. It was a cry of alarm, of fright, of warning. With one accord, all the host of phantoms rushed hurriedly forward to the battlements and pinnacles. The ghostly High Priest went first, with his wand held downward; the men in leopards’ skins and other assistants followed in confusion. Theirs was a reckless rout. They flung themselves from the top, like fugitives from a cliff, and floated fast through the air on invisible pinions. Hedda and Yolande, ambassadresses and intermediaries with the upper air, were the last to fly from the living presence. They clasped her hand silently, and looked deep into her eyes. There was something in that calm yet regretful look that seemed to say, ‘Farewell! We have tried in vain to save you, sister, from the terrors of living.’
The horde of spirits floated away on the air, as in a witches’ Sabbath, to the vault whence it issued. The doors swung on their rusty hinges, and closed behind them. Maisie stood alone with the hand that grasped her on the tower.
The shock of the grasp, and the sudden departure of the ghostly band in such wild dismay, threw Maisie for a while into a state of semi-unconsciousness. Her head reeled round; her brain swam faintly. She clutched for support at the parapet of the tower. But the hand that held her sustained her still. She felt herself gently drawn down with quiet mastery, and laid on the stone floor close by the trap-door that led to the ladder.
The next thing of which she could feel sure was the voice of the Oxford undergraduate. He was distinctly frightened and not a little tremulous. ‘I think,’ he said very softly, laying her head on his lap, ‘you had better rest a while, Miss Llewelyn, before you try to get down again. I hope I didn’t catch you and disturb you too hastily. But one step more, and you would have been over the edge. I really couldn’t help it.’
‘Let me go,’ Maisie moaned, trying to raise herself again, but feeling too faint and ill to make the necessary effort to recover the power of motion. ‘I want to go with them! I want to join them!’
‘Some of the others will be up before long,’ the undergraduate said, supporting her head in his hands; ‘and they’ll help me to get you down again. Mr. Yates is in the belfry. Meanwhile, if I were you, I’d lie quite still, and take a drop or two of this brandy.’
He held it to her lips. Maisie drank a mouthful, hardly knowing what she did. Then she lay quiet where he placed her for some minutes. How they lifted her down and conveyed her to her bed she scarcely knew. She was dazed and terrified. She could only remember afterward that three or four gentlemen in roughly huddled clothes had carried or handed her down the ladder between them. The spiral stair and all the rest were a blank to her.
VI
When she next awoke she was lying in her bed in the same room at the Hall, with Mrs. West by her side, leaning over her tenderly.
Maisie looked up through her closed eyes and just saw the motherly face and grey hair bending above her. Then voices came to her from the mist, vaguely: ‘Yesterday was so hot for the time of year, you see!’ ‘Very unusual weather, of course, for Christmas.’ ‘But a thunderstorm! So strange! I put it down to that. The electrical disturbance must have affected the poor child’s head.’ Then it dawned upon her that the conversation she heard was passing between Mrs. West and a doctor.
She raised herself suddenly and wildly on her arms. The bed faced the windows. She looked out and beheld — the tower of Wolverden church, rent from top to bottom with a mighty rent, while half its height lay tossed in fragments on the ground in the churchyard.
‘What is it?’ she cried wildly, with a flush as of shame.
‘Hush, hush!’ the doctor said. ‘Don’t trouble! Don’t look at it!’
‘Was it — after I came down?’ Maisie moaned in vague terror.
The doctor nodded. ‘An hour after you were brought down,’ he said, ‘a thunderstorm broke over it. The lightning struck and shattered the tower. They had not yet put up the lightning-conductor. It was to have been done on Boxing Day.’
A weird remorse possessed Maisie’s soul. ‘My fault!’ she cried, starting up. ‘My fault, my fault! I have neglected my duty!’
‘Don’t talk,’ the doctor answered, looking hard at her. ‘It is always dangerous to be too suddenly aroused from these curious overwrought sleeps and trances.’
‘And old Bessie?’ Maisie exclaimed, trembling with an eerie presentiment.
The doctor glanced at Mrs. West. ‘How did she know?’ he whispered. Then he turned to Maisie. ‘You may as well be told the truth as suspect it,’ he said slowly. ‘Old Bessie must have been watching there. She was crushed and half buried beneath the falling tower.’
‘One more question, Mrs. West,’ Maisie murmured, growing faint with an access of supernatural fear. ‘Those two nice girls who sat on the chairs at each side of me through the tableaux — are they hurt? Were they in it?’
Mrs. West soothed her hand. ‘My dear child,’ she said gravely, with quiet emphasis, ‘there were no other girls. This is mere hallucination. You sat alone by yourself through the whole of the evening.’
JANET’S NEMESIS
[You will say at first, ‘A very old story!’ Nay, not so. A psychological study of what would really happen, if a familiar incident of early fiction were to occur in our century.]
‘Under no circumstances,’ said the surgeon, in a very decided voice, ‘will it be possible for Lady Remenham to take charge of her own infant.’
‘In that case,’ the Earl answered, somewhat downcast, ‘I suppose we shall have to look out for a wet-nurse.’
‘Of course,’ the surgeon replied. ‘You can’t expect the baby to live upon nothing, can you?’
Lord Remenham was annoyed. In the first place, he did not like to hear his son and heir — then two hours old — cavalierly described in quite ordinary language as ‘the baby.’ To be sure, the infant viscount exactly resembled most other babies of those tender years — or rather minutes. He was red and mottled and extremely pulpy-looking; and his appearance in no way suggested his exalted station. On the contrary, his face was marked by that comparative absence of any particular nose and that unnecessary prominence of two watery big eyes, which suggest our consanguinity with the negro and the monkey. But more than that, Lord Remenham was annoyed at this failure, on Gwendoline’s part, to perform the full duties of complete maternity which her husband expected of her. Remenham was only thirty, but he was austere and doctrinaire to a degree that would not have done dishonour to half a century. He had taken a first class in law and modern history. He was strong on the necessity for keeping up the physical standard of the race in general, and our old nobility in particular, through the medium of its mothers. With this laudable end in view, being a Balliol man himself, he had married a lawn-tennis-playing, cross-country-riding, good-looking young woman, Gwendoline Blake by name, the daughter of a neighbouring squire; and he looked to her to raise him up a family of sons and daughters of fine and sturdy old English vigour. That Gwendoline should thus break down at the first demand made upon her annoyed and surprised him. The race must be going to the dogs indeed, if even girls like Gwendoline cou
ldn’t be relied upon for the performance of the simplest and most obvious maternal functions.
‘Have you anybody you could suggest as a nurse for Lord Hurley?’ Remenham inquired, in his chilliest voice. He wished to let the local doctor see he resented the imputation that the new viscount was a mere baby.
‘Most fortunate coincidence!’ the doctor answered. ‘I had a case last night. The very thing. She didn’t contemplate it; but I believe the poor girl would be glad of the extra money. Very destitute indeed, with nothing to depend upon.’
‘Married, I hope?’ Remenham observed, raising his eyebrows slightly.
The doctor pursed his lips. ‘We can’t have everything in this world,’ he answered, after a brief pause. ‘Wet-nurses, as your unaided perspicacity must have observed, spring chiefly from the class who become mothers before they become wives.’
Remenham gazed at him doubtfully. He had always a suspicion that the doctor was chaffing him. ‘Can she come here at once?’ he asked, with increased stiffness of manner.
‘Come here at once?’ the doctor echoed. ‘Why, it was only last night she was confined, my lord. You don’t expect Englishwomen to rival North American squaws, do you? No, no, she can’t come. The baby must go to her.’
‘For how long?’ Remenham faltered.
‘A month, I suppose. We are most of us human. At the end of that time the young woman, no doubt, can take up her abode here.’
