Mr. Beaumont still stood in the porch; the servants had returned to the house, and he was alone. It was a mild winter’s night. He flung a cloak over his matador’s costume and stepped into the open air. “I sha’n’t be missed for five minutes,” he said to himself, “while I smoke a cigarette,” and he walked briskly along a broad path some thirty yards from the house, from which he had a perfect view of the front of Harbledon Hall. And very pretty its cheerful brightness looked against the dark background of star-set sky. Brilliant rays of light shot from the undraped windows, and those that had the blinds drawn down showed the outline of objects in the room thrown upon them in shadow, as clearly as from a magic-lantern.
Involuntarily he raised his eyes to the window of Mrs. Stackpoole’s sitting-room, and stood rooted to the spot. Two figures as clearly defined as silhouettes were visible on the pure square of the blind the shadows of an old man and a young man struggling together. From the shape of the heads Greorge Beaumont saw that they wore tie wigs, and there was the clearly cut shadow of the ruffles at the wrists, and the younger and taller man wore a large Steinkirk with richly-laced ends round his neck. At first he thought that they were guests dressed in the costume of the early Georgian period, though how they had gone upstairs into that room, or why there was a deadly struggle between them, he did not know. But wonder and speculation was swallowed up in terrified interest as he watched the course of the brief conflict. The elder and shorter man, who stooped considerably, appeared to be unarmed, and seized the younger man by the throat, when he shook himself free, stepped quickly back, drew his sword, and, plunging forward on his right foot, ran his opponent through the body. He staggered backward and fell out of sight below the level of the window, and there remained only the shadow of the younger man in clear profile on the blind. He stood for a minute looking downward, and George Beaumont had time to observe the finely-cut features of a total stranger. Then he saw that he wiped the blade of his sword, turned and walked away, and his shadow passed out of sight, leaving the window-blind a blank, luminous square.
Indoors at the same time Mr. Stackpoole had been waked from his short sleep by a sound in his wife’s sitting-room overhead, and he sprang to his feet with every faculty concentrated in listening. A noise as of chairs pushed back and upset on the polished floor, and a scuffling of feet as though two men were struggling together. Then a moment of silence, a loud stamp, and heavy fall that seemed to shake the ceiling, followed by deep groans. “Good Grod! What can be the matter?” cried Mr. Stackpoole, and he rushed from the room into the hall. The front door stood open, though the inner glass doors were closed, and neither his son-in-law nor any servants were there. He stopped to call nobody, but ran upstairs to his wife’s room just as his daughter came quickly down from the storey above with a white and terrified face. “Oh, Papa, someone has just frightened me so, but whoever he is he is in there! I saw him go into Mamma’s room a few minutes ago, and I’m so glad you’ve come, for I dare not follow him!” and without asking Ella of whom she was speaking, Mr. Stackpoole flung the door wide open and rushed into the room. No one was there. Not a chair or table displaced, and the electric light illuminating every corner of the room forbade the possibility of anyone being in hiding.
“It is the most extraordinary thing!” he exclaimed, wiping the perspiration of terror from his brow as he spoke; “I would not have your mother know of it for the world!”
“Have you seen him too?” said his daughter faintly.
“Seen whom, child? Seen what? No, I’ve seen nothing, but I’ve heard enough to last me my lifetime. God forbid that I should hear it again!” and he looked about the room and under the table, fairly stupefied with amazement.
“He passed me on the stairs just as I came out of the night nursery,” said Mrs. Beaumont anxious to tell her experience without waiting to hear her father’s. “A tall young man ran quickly by me dressed in a blue coat, with ruffles at the wrists and a great laced cravat, and a wig tied with a ribbon at the back. He carried a long thin sword in his hand. At first I thought it was Arthur Newton, who wore a powdered wig like his this evening, but I remembered his coat was black and he left early. When I saw his face it was a stranger’s, and he looked cruel and passionate. I followed him till I saw him go into this room and shut the door after him.”
“Then where the devil is he now?” said Mr. Stackpoole. “This is some miserable practical joke, but I’ll get to the bottom of it and be even with them yet I’ll get to the bottom of it!” and as he spoke the door that he had taken the precaution to close burst open, and his son-in-law entered in his matador’s dress, pale and breathless, looking as if the bull had turned and given him chase.
“Oh, George, have you seen him too?” said his wife.
“Did you hear anything?” asked Mr. Stackpoole. “Sit down, man; you are trembling like a leaf!”
“There were two of them, an old man and a young man, in this room a minute ago! In God’s name, who were they, and why did not you stop them before murder was done?” he said excitedly.
Mr. Stackpoole grew quiet and self-collected at the sight of his son-in-law’s agitation. “Pull yourself together, George, and tell me what you mean. There is something up tonight that needs explaining.”
“But where are they? They were in this room, and if you were with them you must have witnessed what happened, or if you only came upstairs just now you must have met the young man leaving the room. The old man will never stir again,” and he lifted the tablecloth and looked under the table.
“How come you to speak confidently of who was in this room a few minutes ago, when you were downstairs all the while?” asked Mr. Stackpoole.
“I was smoking a cigarette in the garden after seeing the Westons off, walking on the broad path, when I looked up at Mamma’s sitting-room window and saw the shadow of two men on the blind, shown up by the electric light as clear and sharp as in a magic-lantern. I saw their profiles perfectly, but I did not know their faces. They wore wigs tied behind, and ruffles at their wrists, and the younger, taller man, as I saw by his shadow, wore a laced Steinkirk round his neck. They struggled together, and the old man grasped the young man by the throat, but he tore himself free, drew his sword, and ran him through the body. He fell below the level of the window out of my sight, and the younger man stood for a minute, wiped his sword, then moved away, and left the blind a blank sheet of white.”
“Good God! and I heard it all in my room below the struggle and the fall, and deep groans!” said Mr. Stackpoole.
“And I met the young man if it was anything human and he passed me on the stairs!” said his daughter, seizing her father by the arm. “Oh, Papa, Harbledon Hall is haunted; people were right about it! Do let us leave this dreadful place tomorrow!” And the concluding notes of the sad Waldteufel waltz sighed through the house as she spoke.
Mr. Stackpoole shook his head. “I don’t see how that is to be done, for your mother must not be frightened. For heaven’s sake try to look as if nothing had happened. We shall be missed downstairs; I’ll go, and you two must manage to bid our guests good-night decently, and not to alarm those who remain till tomorrow. We must rouse no suspicions. George, fetch Ella a glass of champagne; it will do her good.”
“Oh, don’t leave me alone!” cried Mrs. Beaumont, like a frightened child.
“Then I’ll send wine up for you both,” said her father, “and mind you must follow me directly.”
Mr. Stackpoole rejoined his guests, who had not missed him, and were in the midst of the last dance with as much freshness and enjoyment as if it had been the first in the evening. At length all the guests had departed except those composing the house party, and the ladies soon retired, leaving the gentlemen to have a smoke in the billiard-room.
“You don’t look very well, Beaumont,” said a young man dressed as a Tyrolean peasant, as he lit a cigar and looked up at his
friend’s pale face.
“It’s nothing, only waltzing makes me giddy,” and he mixed himself some brandy and soda.
One by one the guests bade good-night and left the room, till there only remained Mr. Stackpoole, his son-in-law, and Mr. Liston, a gentleman with very long legs, wearing tights to display them to advantage.
“Did your father-in-law know when he took Harbledon Hall that it was supposed to be haunted?” he said in a low voice to Mr. Beaumont. Mr. Stackpoole happened to hear the question, and replied to it himself.
“We heard some foolish gossip on the subject, for of course no place stands empty so long without legends being invented to account for the fact. But I am not the man to listen to vulgar chatter. I took the house, and have been highly delighted with it.” And Mr. Beaumont could only admire his father-in-law’s admirable self-possession.
“Just so, and the electric light is the true cure for the supposed supernatural. Of course you know how suddenly Sir Roland Shawe left the place?”
“Oh, yes, we’ve heard all about that,” said Mr. Stackpoole, forcing a laugh.
“Do you know I doubt whether you have ever heard all about it; at least, if you have, you must be a cheerful sort of person if you can laugh at it,” said Mr. Liston.
“Why, of course, the whole thing was a foolish practical joke. Something connected with a magic-lantern, if I remember rightly.”
“Magic-lantern! I never even heard the word mentioned. No; if you care to hear the truth about it, I think I can tell it you. I’ve lived in the county all my life, and I know the story of Harbledon Hall by heart. I only wonder you don’t. I should not tell you now if I thought it would make you nervous; but since you’ve put in the electric light and done up the house in such cheerful modern style the whole place is changed and anyone might enjoy living here.”
“Let us hear the story,” said Mr. Stackpoole abruptly.
“I see I’ve roused your curiosity. The story goes that some hundred and fifty years ago there lived in this house a certain father and son who hated one another like the devil, and it is needless to say that there was a woman in the case and a fortune at stake. The old man must have been an uncommonly bad lot, and he is said to have grossly insulted the young lady his son was about to marry, having in the first instance proposed to her himself and been refused. The two men had a deadly quarrel about it in this very house, and the upshot was that the son, mad with passion, ran his father through the heart and killed him on the spot. There, I sha’n’t say anything more about it if it is too much for you,” said Mr. Liston, struck by the white faces before him.
“Go on, go on,” said Mr. Stackpoole.
“Well, one winter’s night, now eight years ago, as Sir Roland Shawe was coming home late, walking across the garden, he looked up at the window of a room on the first floor where a light was burning, and he saw on the blind, in clear outline, the shadows of the old man and his son struggling together, and he saw the young man run his father through the body with his rapier.”
“I cannot bear it! I cannot bear it!” said Greorge Beaumont, pale as death and looking ready to faint.
“You could but say that if you had seen the grim shadows yourself. It certainly is a horrid story, and though I can’t say that I believe in ghosts myself, I can offer no explanations of the details I have given you. Sir Roland believed it, and he was a clear-headed, matter-of-fact sortof person. Other members of his family, too, saw and heard unaccountable things that night. One of his sons who was sitting up late for his father met the shadow of an evil-looking fellow dressed in a blue coat and wearing a powdered tie-wig, hurrying along an upper passage, carrying a naked rapier in his hand. And Lady Shawe was waked by a sound in the room next hers, which was the room where the shadows were seen on the blind a sound of struggling and upsetting of chairs, followed by a heavy fall and deep groans. Now, if only one person had thought that he had heard or seen unaccountable things, Sir Roland would have made the best of it and stayed on at Harbledon Hall; but, by Jove! when three rational beings are each an eye or ear witness it becomes intolerable! Whether you believe in ghosts or not, you can’t put up with a thing like that!”
“By Heaven, you can’t, that’s true!” said Mr. Stackpoole, wiping his moist brow. “And now, Liston, that you have told me this, I’ll tell you something in return. I and my family leave Harbledon Hall tomorrow for the precise reason that drove Sir Roland Shawe out of it eight years ago.”
“Never!”
“As sure as I am alive we leave here tomorrow! I must find some reason for our sudden flight, but go we must, and I cannot have my wife alarmed.”
“I would not spend another night in the house for the world!” said Beaumont.
“But, my dear Mr. Stackpoole, I hope that nothing that I have said leads you to make this extraordinary resolution. Your imagination is excited by what you have heard; there cannot possibly be any cause why you should leave this charming place that you have just fitted up to your own taste,” said Mr. Listen soothingly.
“The story you have told us has only helped to explain what we already know. I tell you that this very night, not a couple of hours ago, in the blaze of the electric light and with the house full of company, Beaumont, my daughter, and myself have seen and heard the sights and sounds that drove Sir Roland Shawe out of Harbledon Hall; and we leave tomorrow or rather today, for it is nearly six o’clock now never to spend another night under this accursed roof!” and Mr. Stackpoole’s voice shook as he spoke. “I have only to request,” he added, “that you will treat this communication as strictly confidential, for neither Beaumont nor I shall care to speak or to be spoken to about what has occurred tonight.”
Where was Mr. Stackpoole’s intelligent curiosity on the subject of ghosts, and what had become of his courage? The one had been satisfied and the other daunted, and he had not the slightest desire to remain and investigate the mystery.
At late breakfast Mrs. Stackpoole was shocked by the appearance of her family. It would have been difficult to say wldch was most pale and haggard her husband, her daughter, or her son-in-law. They made the poor excuse that late hours did not suit them and that dancing knocked them up, and she told them that they looked like very young children who had been to their first pantomime the night before. When the last guest was gone Mrs. Stackpoole saw that there was something seriously disturbing her husband, and was at a loss to account for his changed humour.
“My dear, we will go up to town this afternoon with George and Ella,” he said with quick decision.
“Impossible,” replied his wife, calmly. “You, of course, can go if you like, but I really cannot.”
“Oh, do come with us, Mamma! You know how much Papa wishes it,” said her daughter.
“Yes, do come with us,” urged her son-in-law with unwonted ardour; “it is so long since we met,” forgetting that they had spent the last month together.
Mrs. Stackpoole laughed. “There is evidently some deep-laid plot among you three to hurry me off. Well, if you will be any the happier for my coming with you I’ll do so, though it is most inconvenient to leave home in this sudden way,” said the good-tempered lady.
And they travelled up to London that day, never to return to Harbledon Hall. Mr. Stackpoole so managed that his wife did not know his real reason for giving up the most charming house they had ever lived in. He preferred that she should attribute it to his restlessness and caprice, anything rather than that her nerves should be shaken by hearing the truth.
He consulted a fashionable physician, first giving him a hint that he wished to be ordered off to the South of France immediately, and the hint being taken, he told his long-suffering wife that Dr. Blank had recommended him to go abroad at once, and in two days they were en route for Marseilles. Mrs. Stackpoole was accustomed to her husband’s impulsive, angular movements, so that it did not
greatly disturb her; but when a week later he said that he had decided to give up Harbledon Hall, and to look for a place somewhere in the eastern counties which were as yet untrodden ground to him, she shed tears of present disappointment and prospective fatigue. When the much-enduring lady had dried her eyes and her husband had enumerated to her in detail every reason but the real one for which he was leaving their beautiful home, she said, “My dear, if I did not know better, I should be forced to believe that you too had seen the ghost that frightened Sir Roland Shawe out of Harbledon Hall eight years ago!”
NO. 5 BRANCH LINE: THE ENGINEER, by Amelia Ann Blanford Edwards
His name, sir, was Matthew Price; mine is Benjamin Hardy. We were born within a few days of each other; bred up in the same village; taught at the same school. I cannot remember the time when we were not close friends. Even as boys, we never knew what it was to quarrel. We had not a thought, we had not a possession, that was not in common. We would have stood by each other, fearlessly, to the death. It was such a friendship as one reads about sometimes in books: fast and firm as the great Tors upon our native moorlands, true as the sun in the heavens.
The name of our village was Chadleigh. Lifted high above the pasture flats which stretched away at our feet like a measureless green lake and melted into mist on the furthest horizon, it nestled, a tiny stone-built hamlet, in a sheltered hollow about midway between the plain and the plateau. Above us, rising ridge beyond ridge, slope beyond slope, spread the mountainous moor-country, bare and bleak for the most part, with here and there a patch of cultivated field or hardy plantation, and crowned highest of all with masses of huge grey crag, abrupt, isolated, hoary, and older than the deluge. These were the Tors—Druids’ Tor, King’s Tor, Castle Tor, and the like; sacred places, as I have heard, in the ancient time, where crownings, burnings, human sacrifices, and all kinds of bloody heathen rites were performed. Bones, too, had been found there, and arrowheads, and ornaments of gold and glass. I had a vague awe of the Tors in those boyish days, and would not have gone near them after dark for the heaviest bribe.
The Third Ghost Story Megapack Page 38
