I had just recovered from a troublesome throat affection, and under
the doctor’s orders had moved out of town for a spell of fresh air
and quieter surroundings, selecting the little village of Canewdon,
in South-East Essex, as my retreat. I had always had an eye on the
village, first making its acquaintance whilst yachting off the coast
and in the River Crouch, where my boat had its permanent berth.
Canewdon is actually little more than a straggling hamlet four miles
by road to the north of Rochford, and about nine from Southend-on-Sea.
It required only a very short residence there for me to find that the
secluded little place considered it had its own corner in history, and
a very pretty turn in folk-lore and superstition as well. To begin
with, Canewdon claims King Canute as one of its founders, and its
domestic romances and tragedies would make a presentable volume in the
hands of a scribbling antiquary. It had, however, something more than
mere history, and far less to my liking, for me to feed my imagination
upon, as I was soon to discover.
[Illustration: THE OLD COTTAGE AT CANEWDON IN WHICH THE AUTHOR RESIDED.
_From a Photograph._]
After a good look round I settled upon a comfortable old cottage, with
a small garden traversed by a brook, only a very short distance from
the ancient, square-towered church. Into this, having taken it at a
very moderate rental, I moved a small amount of furniture, my books,
and other paraphernalia, and prepared to settle down to the life of
a hermit for a time. The woman who came from close by to “do” for me
looked upon me, I fancy, as something of a curiosity, but, for some
reason I had not then discovered, she seemed a little uneasy at my
solitary existence. She would remark that I must be lonely, or that it
was unlikely that I should stop in the place very long. I put all this
down to a friendly disposition, coupled with a desire to draw me out as
to my place in the larger world I had dropped from so suddenly.
For the first day or two matters went smoothly enough, and I began to
feel that my choice of locality had been a lucky and inexpensive one.
Then something occurred which startled me sufficiently to make me alter
my opinion.
I always used the little kitchen at meal-times for convenience’ sake,
and one night I remained there reading until very late, the kitchen
being lit only by one small lamp at my back. I had just closed my
book--it was about one o’clock--and was summoning the effort required
to take me bedwards, when I noticed a very slight movement of the iron
latch upon the door leading into the back garden. My thoughts naturally
flew to burglars. The locality was lonely, and no doubt my coming had
been duly talked over in the village with all the exaggeration and
surmise an out-of-the-way place is capable of.
I was, of course, considerably startled, and sat watching the latch
slowly rise, evidently actuated by a very delicate and even pressure
from without. The door itself was bolted at both top and bottom, and
when the latch had risen clear of the hasp I fully expected to hear the
bolts rattle as the person outside put his weight against the door to
try it. But nothing of the sort happened; the latch, after remaining
suspended for a moment, fell back again into place as slowly and evenly
as it had risen.
Startled and puzzled as I was, I still held to my belief that this
must be a timid attempt at robbery, and that, finding the back door
locked, the intruder would try the front one also. Nor was I wrong,
for I had scarcely slipped quietly into the sitting-room and taken up
my position when the latch there began to rise in precisely the same
manner. This door possessed only one bolt, and that at the bottom, so
that the door, an old and ill-fitting one, would show the slightest
pressure at once. But none was placed upon it, and the latch fell into
place as evenly and noiselessly as before. By this time I must confess
to being slightly scared, and when a chair banged heavily on the floor
and a loud shout of “Who’s that?” brought no sound of a retreating
shuffle on the cobble-stones outside, I had to summon all my remaining
courage to unbar and fling open the door. Not a soul or a sound met me
as I stepped outside. The night was a light one in early September, so
that a retreating figure could have been followed by the eye for twenty
or thirty yards. After a careful look round the garden I went to bed
nonplussed at the weirdness of the whole affair.
The following day brought another intruder--a material one this time.
I found that during the morning a travelling caravan had taken a pitch
just outside my hedge; and its owner turned out to be an Oxford man,
who, with his wife, was leading a vagabond life about the shires. He
was an extremely well-read man, and we soon got on the best of terms,
exchanging books and opinions, till he inspanned for pastures new a
week later. The night before he left I was treated to another queer
happening.
We had been talking and reading in my tiny sitting-room till about
eleven o’clock, when my vagabond friend bade me a sleepy “Good night”
and opened the front door. He had, however, only just put his foot on
the cobbles when he stepped backwards with a sharp exclamation, and a
scared look on his face.
“What’s up?” I asked.
“It’s awfully queer,” he replied; “I could have sworn I saw a face
looking straight at me close to that bush”--he pointed to the privet
hedge at the left of the door--“but there didn’t seem to be any body to
it. I’m certainly not drunk, but I may have been dreaming.”
After my recent experience, which I had not thought it worth while
to mention to such a hard-headed soul as my chance companion, I felt
anything but comfortable. We were both rather ashamed of our brief
lapse from common sense, and laughed the incident off as best we might.
The following day found me in all the doubtful glory of my solitude
once more, and I must confess to having been thankful when an
invitation reached me that same evening, from friends at Fambridge, for
a few days’ fishing.
I have never suffered from that popular present-day malady known as
“nerves,” possibly because of an open-air existence with plenty of
exercise, but, though I had only been there a short time, the cottage
and the locality now seemed to have become almost uncanny to me. Had
I mixed more with the inhabitants, I should have discovered, as I did
later, that this strange feeling was not without some foundation.
The few days I spent in Fambridge put all thought of the two queer
incidents out of my mind, which will show that the subsequent events
were not the outcome of an overtaxed imagination or a course of long
brooding upon disquieting phenomena.
It must have been about nine o’clock in the evening that my Fambridge
friend put a little Welsh pony into his governess-car to drive me back
the four odd miles to my cottage. The night was fine, but there were
clouds about and no moon, so that objects outside the radius of the
lamps were hard to distinguish. The pony had already had a fairly hard
day of it along the coast, but he was a sturdy little beast and pulled
like a steam-engine, rattling us down to the outskirts of Canewdon in
excellent time.
We had been bowling along, talking about the day’s sport, and were
now rapidly nearing a stile leading to a footpath upon the left of
the road, which takes one by a short cut across a field, over another
stile, into the churchyard, and so into the village High Street. We
had barely reached the stile when the pony pulled up short, reared,
and refused to go another step in that direction. The pony, always a
strong and willing little chap, had never done such a thing in his life
before, and my friend was not only puzzled but annoyed. A sound beating
had no more effect than words of encouragement; there the little beggar
stuck, his four legs splayed out, the picture of all that was most
stubborn in nature, whilst we two sat in the car trying to devise some
plan by which to budge him.
My friend was at last obliged to ask me to take the short cut I have
just spoken of instead of being driven round by the road the remaining
mile and a half to my cottage. I was, of course, willing enough. The
short cut would take me barely ten minutes, and I had very little
to carry; so, bidding him “Good night,” I jumped out. As I came from
behind the trap I noticed a tiny flickering light a few yards ahead,
upon the left-hand side of the road, but it was very dim and did not
arrest my attention sufficiently to make any impression on the mind. I
was able to lead the pony round without any difficulty, and when his
head faced Fambridge he seemed to recover his spirits at once, and the
red points behind the lamps receded at a rattling pace up the road.
When these had disappeared I turned again to climb the stile, but
became at once uneasily conscious of something unusual a little way
ahead of me.
The spot the pony had refused at was a good deal shadowed by large
elms, and these, together with the cloudy sky, made the road still
more obscure. The small light, which I had taken little notice of at
first--thinking it probably one of the village lights showing through
the trees--was still ahead; only, instead of being upon the left of
the road, it was now upon the right. For a few seconds I stood looking
at it, feeling very much like turning tail and bolting down the road.
The flame, for it was no other, showed greeny--white against the black
background and shivered in a strange, eerie way.
The most extraordinary part of the business was that it seemed to come
from nothing visible, but to appear, as it were, burning in space three
or four feet above the road.
[Illustration: “THIS MYSTERIOUS SOMETHING TOOK THREE RAPID STRIDES
ACROSS THE ROAD AND DISAPPEARED.”]
I had, of course, read ghost stories in which “corpse candles” and
ghostly lights of one sort and another figured largely, but I had never
expected to come across one, and this could be translated in no other
way.[2] The close proximity of the churchyard, with the square tower of
the church itself showing through the trees, added too much colour to
the scene to my liking; but, scared though I was, a certain fascination
took hold of me, and I advanced a step or two in order to examine the
phenomenon at closer range. I had scarcely taken two paces, however,
when the clouds parted a little, giving a better light beneath the
trees, and at the same moment the weird flame flickered wildly and
went out.
[Footnote 2: The light somewhat resembled the _ignis fatuus_, or
will-o’-the-wisp, but was larger and greener in colour. Moreover, there
was no pond or marshy ground anywhere near the road.]
But this was not to be the end of my ghostly experience. The stronger
light brought many roadside objects into prominence, and the moment
the flame disappeared I became conscious of an indistinct black blotch
against the lighter background of the hedge. It was, of course, too
dark for me to be certain of its exact shape, even had I been in a calm
enough state of mind to take in details; but in any case I was allowed
only a momentary glimpse, for whilst I stood with the breath caught in
my throat, this mysterious something took three rapid strides across
the road and disappeared without a sound into the thick hawthorn hedge
opposite.
At this stage I must confess to having lost all control of myself.
Without another look I took to my heels and ran, as though all the
powers of darkness were behind me.
The scare I had got made me quite oblivious of my direction, but I
suppose natural instinct guided me, for I found myself at last, almost
pumped out, trotting into the little High Street of Canewdon by the
road along which I should have driven, and no doubt in far better time.
I had no relish, in my then state of mind, for another lonely night in
the cottage, although it stood only fifty yards away, so I made my way
to the Chequers, the only inn the village possessed, and asked for a
bed.
My recent arrival in the place had given me little time to become
acquainted with the village notables, but I fancy the landlady knew me
by sight, and no doubt thought the request strange. In any case her
“Certainly, sir,” was followed by a close scrutiny. “You’re looking
very queer, sir,” she added; “has anything happened?”
Surrounded by more human elements, I began to feel thoroughly ashamed
of myself, and rather doubted the wisdom of giving the narrative away;
but the thought that, perhaps, being a resident, she might be able to
throw some light upon my weird experience finally decided me to make a
clean breast of the whole affair; and I promptly did so in the little
inn-parlour.
I had barely got half-way through the incident upon the road when she
sat back in her chair, and said in a quiet, almost matter-of-fact
tone:--
“You’ve seen the headless woman, sir.”
“The headless woman?” I asked, startled. “Who’s she?”
“I may as well tell you,” she replied, “though we don’t talk of it much
here. Have you noticed a wooden house painted white, and standing alone
about a hundred yards this way from the stile on the Fambridge road?”