The Collected Supernatural and Weird Fiction of Sabine Baring-Gould

by Sabine Baring-Gould

  Maser Eberhart had a way of making friends too; but then they were not the ordinary friends “people down below” make. You shall hear who they were. On the top of the tower below the broach of the spire, were four carved figures, life-size; one was a horse, another a dragon, a third an eagle, the fourth a monk, and the frost had taken his nose off. These statues had their mouths wide open, and were intended to spout the water off from the spire; but they never did, the rain always ran off another way down an ugly lead pipe. Yellow lichens marbled these grotesques all over, even over their faces.

  The monk turned west, and at sunset a red light covered him. He looked very terrible then, as if dipped in blood. It was not to be expected that Master Eberhart should care much for the three animals, at least not more than the people below would for their horses—they haven’t got dragons or eagles—or for their guinea-pigs and fancy pigeons. But it was quite another matter with regard to the monk: the Sacristan loved him dearly, and had long conversations with him only the talking was all on one side, but that was the pleasanter.

  On a sunny day, it was so agreeable to sit on the leads, leaning against the battlements, right over against the monk, and discuss the world below: a genial light irradiated the stone face, and it looked quite smiling; if it had not lost the nose, it would have been even handsome. On a moon-bright night also, when the lights were going out, one after another, in the windows far below, like sparks on a bit of tinder, the Sacristan loved to kneel in the shadow of the stone man, whose cowl and mutilated face would be cutting the moon’s disc, and chant clearly some beautiful psalm, finishing with his hymn “Te lucis ante terminim.” The old man thought sometimes that the shooting lips of the figure moved; but, or course, we who live on the earth, know well enough that it was only his fancy. For a long time Master Eberhart did not know his friend’s name, as he had never told him, but he found it out at last; for one day the priest of S. Sebaldus came up lo visit him, bringing under his arm a big book bound in hogskin, and having a quantity of leaves in it.

  The Sacristan had never seen more; he thought there must be about a thousand five hundred and something over. The priest talked to the old man a great deal, chiefly about some Egyptian saint whose life he was going to read to him. The Sacristan loved stories, so he listened with all his cars; the life was that of

  S. Simon Stylites, who lived—I don’t know how long—on the top of a pillar, ate nothing but leeks, and was never once blown off, however high the wind was. As he heard the account, a clear gleam of light shot into the old man’s brain, and looking up through the little door at the top of the stairs, at the monk who was just visible, nodded friendly to him, with a “Good morrow, Father Simon!” After that day, the Sacristan always called the gargoyle man “Father Simon”.

  Master Eberhart had his notions concerning things in general; they were bright and expansive, as the view from his belfry; but as in that he looked over the rising gables of the church below, each topped with a cross, so in every view he took of earthly matters, the cross was in them. It was quite wonderful how clear and panoramic his ideas were; quaint fancies surrounded them, and they were like the gargoyles, from among which he saw the earth. We do not get these broad theories below, for somehow, a neighbour’s garden wall, or a granary fable, or sometimes merely a twig, debars us from taking a general sweep of the horizon.

  The old man was one day sitting on the leads, looking up to his stone monk. “I think,” he said, “that the people down below are very self-sufficient, they fancy that all Creation is made to do them service; for that purpose called into being, and may be trimmed and pruned just as suits their wayward fancies; as if the handiwork of God were not made first to do Him praise and glory, and only secondly to rejoice the heart of man. I wish the folk down on earth would know their Benedicite a little better, and remember that all God’s works praise him! Do you not agree with me, father Simon? I know you do; why—a scud of rain cannot break over this fair spire, and the water trickle down these runnels, but the men down there think it is sent just to clear their gutters and sewers; as if there were not first the yellow lichen stain to rejoice and the pretty moss to make glad before it ever reaches them.”

  A ripple of golden sunlight ran over the weathered face of the gargoyle: “Heaven knows,” sighed the old man, “I do not, the exact way in which all the works of God praise Him; perhaps it may be in being always cheerful; perhaps in fulfilling what their mission is; perhaps in having no thought of themselves; but being beautiful; they work so steadily till they have done all they can, and till they are perfectly beautiful—and how cheerful they always are! There are those men down below! They seek their own interests, their self-advancement, and, if they be the least religious, their own feelings, forgetting all about the duty of praise; and that lifeless—I mean what they would call lifeless—things which cannot praise any other way, praise by lining their duty.”

  A bird perched on the monk’s cowl, and sent forth a stream of song; “There! There!” exclaimed the Sacristan—and he was undoubtedly going on to moralise, when, for the first time, he noticed a long crack at the back of the old carved spout.

  “Bless me,” gasped the good man in alarm, “Father Simon is breaking from the spire: what shall I do? The next high wind or frost, and he will be off—horrible! into the naughty world below. I will save him from that: what shall I do?”

  Master Eberhart rushed down the stairs; and catching the rope, sent forth peal after peal on the alarm bell. The folk on earth said, “There surely must be a whole village on fire somewhere”—but it was only the gargoyle that was cracked. Up the stairs ran the sexton to know what was the matter; and the terrified Sacristan implored him to send a mason and his men at once, that his friend the monk might be saved. The sexton growled and went down the tower, he was quite disappointed that that was all; he had made up his mind that Altdorf was in flames. What men we are!

  Well! next day there came the mason and one man; and they pulled down the stone man, and laid him on the leads. “You had better bring him into my room,” said Master Eberhart.

  “What shall we do next?” asked the mason, when he had done so.

  “Put him in my visitor’s chair, wait one moment—let me move my cash box.” The Sacristan pulled a tin coffer containing all his savings from the seat, and laid it on the table; then the gargoyle was lifted into the place.

  “When shall he be put up again?” asked the old man.

  “Put up!” exclaimed the mason. “He ain’t worth the expense. What’s the good of an ugly bit of stone like that, up aloft? Why, he might have tumbled and welcome, but that people feared for their heads.”

  “Not put back again!” groaned the Sacristan; “Never mind my box, leave it alone,” said he sharply, to the mason’s man, who was lifting it. “I don’t care what it costs, I’ll pay for him; and if I haven’t enough, why the monk will wait till my death, and all my savings shall go to put him back again; he shall be my monument.” The mason laughed, and would have brought his hammer down on the head of the monk, but the Sacristan withheld his hand.

  “You haven’t got enough to pay for replacing that thing,” said the mason’s man.

  “I do not know that,” answered the old man. “What would it cost?”

  “Why there’s a new block to be let into the spire, and the figure to be rivetted with iron clamps.”

  “Iron clamps!” moaned the Sacristan.

  “Don’t know what it would come to exactly,” replied the mason. “Good evening, master.”

  Eberhart sat down to supper, in his slope-backed chair, on one side of the table; on the other, in the visitor’s chair, the stone friar squatted on his haunches, hands on knees, head thrust forward, the mouth protruding and wide open, the cowl half drawn over the dull eyes; the nose, I said before, was gone. The wind moaned at the window, but that it always did; the little fire burned brightly; and Master Eberhart looked lovingly and with a serene brow on his guest. “I never have a meal quite to myself,
” said he. “There’s a mouse or two generally comes out at supper time, and a robin is at the window of a morning; it is very strange that my mice do not come tonight! I cannot eat all by myself, I should feel as if doing wrong, not to share with some creature. Father Simon, will you have some?” he laid a piece of bread before him, but the courtesy passed without any acknowledgement.

  “I always say my prayers after supper,” said the Sacristan, “and then to bed; would that you could join!”

  Then he cleared the victuals from his table, moved to it his book of devotions, swept away the crumbs, and knelt down. Long and earnestly did the old man pray, his silver hair trailing over his thin fingers. He said his prayers aloud and sang a psalm or two on his knees, then remained silent for a moment or two. A shadow fell along his book; something cold touched his head; he felt two heavy hands on his hair—like a priest’s, blessing him; then they were withdrawn and Master Eberhart rose joyously from his knees. “That is just as it ought to have been,” murmured he in his happy heart.

  Afterwards he undressed and went to bed. It might have been three hours after this that the old man awoke; hearing a heavy tread about the floor, he opened his eyes. The moon lighted up the interior of the room, shining in at one of the four windows: in the corner stood Father Simon, going down the staircase into the belfry. Shortly after. Master Eberhart heard him groping among the bells, every touch of his fingers sounding on them, for those fingers were stone; then up he came again. The old man chuckled, and said to himself “Father Simon is curious to know how the bells are hung and worked; he has heard them so very long without having seen them.” The figure was again in the room; crossed it and coming up to the bedside laid itself down on it.

  The old Sacristan did feel a little startled, the weight seemed so great, bending down the outside of the bed; and, as he put his hand to the figure, it was so cold, so bitterly cold; but he drove away these foolish fears, and said, “Father, if you are chilly take the coverlid”; the statue remained immovable, so the old man sitting up, folded the counterpane over his bedfellow, then turning his face to the wall, tried to sleep. Now and then, however, he cast a furtive back-glance at the monk. The moon was on his face; that was cold, white and rigid with deep shadows in the eye sockets, the monstrous mouth gaping wide.

  Master Eberhart dozed off, and when morning dawned, the figure was crouching in the visitor’s chair, looking before it out of the opposite window. The day passed, as days usually passed in the lower top; at half-past seven the old man went down to hear Mass, after which he received his bread, milk, and leeks at the door. Breakfast followed; but the bird was not at the window ledge, as was its wont; nor did the mice appear all day. In the evening, the fire was lighted, and Master Eberhart warmed himself at the blaze; he would have moved the monk to the fire, only he was not strong enough.

  At nine a bell rung in a distant church tower; they had no clock in S. Sebaldus’ steeple, but that of S. Lorenz had one. The Sacristan wiped his table, brought out his book and said his evening prayers. Again the shadow fell across the page, and two cold hands were laid in benediction on his head. Strengthened heart and soul, the old man rose from his knees, undressed by the fire; for some time he remained sitting before it, meditating, till at last he grew sleepy (people generally do get sleepy sitting over the grate), and crept to bed. Ten o’clock struck faintly and sweetly in the distant tower, and then the chimes began to play ‘Willkommen du seliger Abend, ’ plaintively, “I am thankful we have no chimes in S. Sebaldus,” muttered the Sacristan, half dozing. “They are like emperors playing spellikens. Bells were made to be pealed, not to be hammered about with little knockers.”

  Somehow, now that he was in bed, he could not sleep, first he turned his face to the wall, then the other way; then with great misgivings tried his back. In that position he may have slept for half an hour or an hour; I do not know, nor did he; but he was again awake, and his eyes opening fell on the fireplace. Then he brisked up thoroughly, for he saw, seated before the hearth, the monk, his hands on his knees, the crimson glare of the embers seeming to saturate his maimed face, cowl, and robe with blood, red, red blood. He had the blue grey of the room for a background, and through the window, the indigo sky, in which sparkled one bright frosty star.

  The foregoing night, Eberhart had felt but little fear; but now, a cold shudder quivered his old flesh; it was so awful, the face of his friend was changed, the brow seemed to be contracted over eyes no longer dull, but burning as iron from a forge; the vast mouth was closed and the lips firmly set. The features were no longer grotesque, but resolute, inflexible, determined; that was what paralysed the Sacristan. The monk had some errand to perform; he saw it in that unwavering face, on which the reflection of the embers was steady, however it might flicker on cowl and robe.

  The clock of S. Lorenz struck twelve, and then the chimes played a simple hymn, now sounding clearly as the wind bore the notes, then feebler as it died away. A falling star glided past the opposite window without haste. The bright star was beyond the window frame, another appeared. A slight clatter from below reached the Sacristan’s ears; an owl must have got in among the bells; but for that stone figure he would have risen to drive the bird out. Slowly the monk rose from his seat and walked deliberately to the head of the stair ladder, stationing himself a little on one side, slightly back. On the other side there was but a narrow strip of flooring to the wall, sufficiently wide for a chest to stand, on which was placed the Sacristan’s cash box.

  Again a noise below. “Well,” said the old man, half audibly, “Father Simon will not hurt me, I know; and I must see what is going on among the bells; those owls and jackdaws”—he put one leg out of the bed, “No—! I hear a step on the stair.” The monk turned his head cautiously round and beckoned with his stone finger. Master Eberhart understood his meaning and settled himself in bed again. There was a stealthy tread on the stair. Surprised and terrified the old man sat up in bed. Thirteen-fourteen-fifteen; whoever it might be, he must be near the top: there!—a head rose through the opening in the floor, and Eberhart recognised the mason’s man by the firelight. The shadow of the slope-backed armchair crossed the corner where the old man sat so as to conceal him.

  The fellow crept nearly to the top; a large knife was in one of his hands; his eyes roved about the room, seeking something in the obscurity: in an instant they kindled up; he saw, and put out his hand to grasp the money coffer. A heavy tread behind him made him turn sharply round, and a fearful shriek broke from him, as his eyes encountered the stone monk leaning towards him, the cold eyes fixed on his, the granite hands extended, the knees bent as if for a leap. The mason stood benumbed with horror the knife fell from his fingers and clattered down the steps, till it struck a bell. The gargoyle stooped further forward, sloping towards him; the cold hand touched his throat: in a moment those fingers collapsed; the figure became rigid; there was a gurgle, a fall, a furious bounding and crashing down the ladder; one wild jangle on a tenor bell, droning off fainter, fainter, faint, lost.

  Not a sound to be heard, but the breath of the wind on the window panes, and its hum through traceried battlements over head, an Æliolian wail. Then, scarcely audible, came the horn of the watch from the great square; a bat dashed against the glass; all was still again. One o’clock struck far off in S. Lorenz tower: something moved on the bed, it was only a mouse, it scrambled down the coverlid and trotted across the floor. The last embers grew cold. A moth fluttered against the window top, and would not be still; the death watch ticked in an old beam; the cinders fell together in the grate! Morning came at last: “Thank God” sighed the Sacristan. The chair was in front of the extinguished fire; the cash box safe; no gargoyle-monk to be seen. “It cannot have been a dream,” faltered Master Eberhart. Then he rose from his pallet, slowly dressed, said his prayers, and hesitated at the top of the stairs, for he feared to descend. First he peeped down, but there was only sufficient light to distinguish huge rounded shapes of bells and massive rafters.
“will wait until it is a little lighter,” muttered he.

  The sun rose, bars of yellow shone through the luffer-boards on the bells. “I must go and ring for Mass,” said the old man; “that is a duty, I must go now;” so down he went. In the belfry, under one of the largest bells. lay a heap:—the stone monk on top, crouching, one hand on his knee, the other clenched at the mason’s throat, the large mouth gaping as of old; and the man— he lay, his feet doubled under his back, his hands clutching the stone arm, the head slung unnaturally on one side, for his neck was broken. The gargoyle too, was snapped in half.

  The old man said gravely to himself, “I dare say that all creatures in nature, or in art, whatever they may be, cheerful flowers, happy birds, or only bits of stone, may become to us angels of good, if we only love them with true heart and reverence; but then we must love them because they are true, and good, and not because we may see in them reflections of our own selves, our feelings, and passions.”

  The “Bold Venture”

  (A tale from A Book of Ghosts)

  The little fisher-town of Portstephen comprised two strings of houses facing each other at the bottom of a narrow valley, down which the merest trickle of a stream decanted into the harbour. The street was so narrow that it was at intervals alone that sufficient space was accorded for two wheeled vehicles to pass one another, and the roadway was for the most part so narrow that each house door was set back in the depth of the wall, to permit the foot-passenger to step into the recess to avoid being overrun by the wheels of a cart that ascended or descended the street.

  The inhabitants lived upon the sea and its produce. Such as were not fishers were mariners, and but a small percentage remained that were neither—the butcher, the baker, the smith, and the doctor; and these also lived by the sea, for they lived upon the sailors and fishermen.