I’ll keep it till after dinner. It really is rather odd.”
So when we were settled after dinner he began to report, faithfully,
as he said, the dialogue that had taken place. Mitchell, not far off
eighty years old, was in his elbow-chair. The married daughter with
whom he lived was in and out preparing for tea.
After the usual salutations: “Mitchell, I want you to tell me something
about the Wood.”
“What Wood’s that, Master Reginald?”
“Betton Wood. Do you remember it?”
Mitchell slowly raised his hand and pointed an accusing forefinger. “It
were your father done away with Betton Wood, Master Reginald, I can
tell you that much.”
“Well, I know it was, Mitchell. You needn’t look at me as if it were my
fault.”
“Your fault? No, I says it were your father done it, before your time.”
“Yes, and I dare say if the truth was known, it was your father that
advised him to do it, and I want to know why.”
Mitchell seemed a little amused. “Well,” he said, “my father were
woodman to your father and your grandfather before him, and if he
didn’t know what belonged to his business, he’d oughter done. And if
he did give advice that way, I suppose he might have had his reasons,
mightn’t he now?”
“Of course he might, and I want you to tell me what they were.”
“Well now, Master Reginald, whatever makes you think as I know what his
reasons might ’a been I don’t know how many year ago?”
“Well, to be sure, it is a long time, and you might easily have
forgotten, if ever you knew. I suppose the only thing is for me to go
and ask old Ellis what he can recollect about it.”
That had the effect I hoped for.
“Old Ellis!” he growled. “First time ever I hear anyone say old Ellis
were any use for any purpose. I should ’a thought you know’d better
than that yourself, Master Reginald. What do you suppose old Ellis can
tell you better’n what I can about Betton Wood, and what call have
he got to be put afore me, I should like to know. His father warn’t
woodman on the place: he were ploughman--that’s what he was, and so
anyone could tell you what knows; anyone could tell you that, I says.”
“Just so, Mitchell, but if you know all about Betton Wood and won’t
tell me, why, I must do the next best I can, and try and get it out of
somebody else; and old Ellis has been on the place very nearly as long
as you have.”
“That he ain’t, not by eighteen months! Who says I wouldn’t tell you
nothing about the Wood? I ain’t no objection; only it’s a funny kind
of a tale, and ’taint right to my thinkin’ it should be all about the
Parish. You, Lizzie, do you keep in your kitchen a bit. Me and Master
Reginald wants to have a word or two private. But one thing I’d like
to know, Master Reginald, what come to put you upon asking about it
to-day?”
“Oh! well, I happened to hear of an old saying about something that
walks in Betton Wood. And I wondered if that had anything to do with
its being cleared away: that’s all.”
“Well, you was in the right, Master Reginald, however you come to hear
of it, and I believe I can tell you the rights of it better than anyone
in this Parish, let alone old Ellis. You see it came about this way:
that the shortest road to Allen’s Farm laid through the Wood, and when
we was little my poor mother she used to go so many times in the week
to the farm to fetch a quart of milk, because Mr Allen what had the
farm then under your father, he was a good man, and anyone that had a
young family to bring up, he was willing to allow ’em so much in the
week. But never you mind about that now. And my poor mother she never
liked to go through the Wood, because there was a lot of talk in the
place, and sayings like what you spoke about just now. But every now
and again, when she happened to be late with her work, she’d have to
take the short road through the Wood, and as sure as ever she did,
she’d come home in a rare state. I remember her and my father talking
about it, and he’d say, ‘Well, but it can’t do you no harm, Emma,’ and
she’d say, ‘Oh! but you haven’t an idear of it, George. Why, it went
right through my head,’ she says, ‘and I came over all bewildered-like,
and as if I didn’t know where I was. You see, George,’ she says, ‘it
ain’t as if you was about there in the dusk. You always goes there in
the daytime, now don’t you?’ and he says: ‘Why, to be sure I do, do
you take me for a fool?’ And so they’d go on. And time passed by, and
I think it wore her out, because, you understand, it warn’t no use
to go for the milk not till the afternoon, and she wouldn’t never
send none of us children instead, for fear we should get a fright.
Nor she wouldn’t tell us about it herself. ‘No,’ she says, ‘it’s bad
enough for me. I don’t want no one else to go through it, nor yet hear
talk about it.’ But one time I recollect she says, ‘Well, first it’s
a rustling-like all along in the bushes, coming very quick, either
towards me or after me according to the time, and then there comes
this scream as appears to pierce right through from the one ear to the
other, and the later I am coming through, the more like I am to hear
it twice over; but thanks be, I never yet heard it the three times.’
And then I asked her, and I says: ‘Why, that seems like someone walking
to and fro all the time, don’t it?’ and she says, ‘Yes, it do, and
whatever it is she wants, I can’t think’: and I says, ‘Is it a woman,
mother?’ and she says, ‘Yes, I’ve heard it is a woman.’
“Anyway, the end of it was my father he spoke to your father, and told
him the Wood was a bad wood. ‘There’s never a bit of game in it, and
there’s never a bird’s nest there,’ he says, ‘and it ain’t no manner
of use to you.’ And after a lot of talk, your father he come and see
my mother about it, and he see she warn’t one of these silly women as
gets nervish about nothink at all, and he made up his mind there was
somethink in it, and after that he asked about in the neighbourhood,
and I believe he made out somethink, and wrote it down in a paper what
very like you’ve got up at the Court, Master Reginald. And then he gave
the order, and the Wood was stubbed up. They done all the work in the
daytime, I recollect, and was never there after three o’clock.”
“Didn’t they find anything to explain it, Mitchell? No bones or
anything of that kind?”
“Nothink at all, Master Reginald, only the mark of a hedge and ditch
along the middle, much about where the quickset hedge run now, and with
all the work they done, if there had been anyone put away there, they
was bound to find ’em. But I don’t know whether it done much good,
after all. People here don’t seem to like the place no better than they
did afore.”
“That’s about what I got out of Mitchell,” said Philipson, “and as far
as any explanation goes, it leaves us very much where we were. I must
see if I can’t find that paper.”
“Why didn’t your father ever tell you about the business?” I said.
“He died before I went to school, you know, and I imagine he didn’t
want to frighten us children by any such story. I can remember being
shaken and slapped by my nurse for running up that lane towards the
Wood when we were coming back rather late one winter afternoon: but in
the daytime no one interfered with our going into the Wood if we wanted
to--only we never did want.”
“Hm!” I said, and then, “Do you think you’ll be able to find that paper
that your father wrote?”
“Yes,” he said, “I do. I expect it’s no further away than that
cupboard behind you. There’s a bundle or two of things specially put
aside, most of which I’ve looked through at various times, and I know
there’s one envelope labelled Betton Wood: but as there was no Betton
Wood any more, I never thought it would be worth while to open it, and
I never have. We’ll do it now, though.”
“Before you do,” I said (I was still reluctant, but I thought this was
perhaps the moment for my disclosure), “I’d better tell you I think
Mitchell was right when he doubted if clearing away the Wood had put
things straight.” And I gave the account you have heard already: I
need not say Philipson was interested. “Still there?” he said. “It’s
amazing. Look here, will you come out there with me now, and see what
happens?”
“I will do no such thing,” I said, “and if you knew the feeling, you’d
be glad to walk ten miles in the opposite direction. Don’t talk of it.
Open your envelope, and let’s hear what your father made out.”
He did so, and read me the three or four pages of jottings which it
contained. At the top was written a motto from Scott’s _Glenfinlas_,
which seemed to me well-chosen:
“Where walks, they say, the shrieking ghost.”
Then there were notes of his talk with Mitchell’s mother, from which
I extract only this much. “I asked her if she never thought she saw
anything to account for the sounds she heard. She told me, no more
than once, on the darkest evening she ever came through the Wood; and
then she seemed forced to look behind her as the rustling came in the
bushes, and she thought she saw something all in tatters with the two
arms held out in front of it coming on very fast, and at that she ran
for the stile, and tore her gown all to flinders getting over it.”
Then he had gone to two other people whom he found very shy of talking.
They seemed to think, among other things, that it reflected discredit
on the parish. However, one, Mrs Emma Frost, was prevailed upon to
repeat what her mother had told her. “They say it was a lady of title
that married twice over, and her first husband went by the name of
Brown, or it might have been Bryan (“Yes, there were Bryans at the
Court before it came into our family,” Philipson put in), and she
removed her neighbour’s landmark: leastways she took in a fair piece
of the best pasture in Betton Parish what belonged by rights to two
children as hadn’t no one to speak for them, and they say years after
she went from bad to worse, and made out false papers to gain thousands
of pounds up in London, and at last they was proved in law to be false,
and she would have been tried and put to death very like, only she
escaped away for the time. But no one can’t avoid the curse that’s laid
on them that removes the landmark, and so we take it she can’t leave
Betton before someone take and put it right again.”
At the end of the paper there was a note to this effect. “I regret
that I cannot find any clue to previous owners of the fields adjoining
the Wood. I do not hesitate to say that if I could discover their
representatives, I should do my best to indemnify them for the wrong
done to them in years now long past: for it is undeniable that the
Wood is very curiously disturbed in the manner described by the people
of the place. In my present ignorance alike of the extent of the land
wrongly appropriated, and of the rightful owners, I am reduced to
keeping a separate note of the profits derived from this part of the
estate, and my custom has been to apply the sum that would represent
the annual yield of about five acres to the common benefit of the
Parish and to charitable uses: and I hope that those who succeed me may
see fit to continue this practice.”
So much for the elder Mr Philipson’s paper. To those who, like myself,
are readers of the State Trials it will have gone far to illuminate
the situation. They will remember how between the years 1678 and 1684
the Lady Ivy, formerly Theodosia Bryan, was alternately Plaintiff and
Defendant in a series of trials in which she was trying to establish
a claim against the Dean and Chapter of St Paul’s for a considerable
and very valuable tract of land in Shadwell: how in the last of those
trials, presided over by L.C.J. Jeffreys, it was proved up to the hilt
that the deeds upon which she based her claim were forgeries executed
under her orders: and how, after an information for perjury and forgery
was issued against her, she disappeared completely--so completely,
indeed, that no expert has ever been able to tell me what became of her.
Does not the story I have told suggest that she may still be heard of
on the scene of one of her earlier and more successful exploits?
* * * * *
“That,” said my friend, as he folded up his papers, “is a very faithful
record of my one extraordinary experience. And now----”
But I had so many questions to ask him, as for instance, whether his
friend had found the proper owner of the land, whether he had done
anything about the hedge, whether the sounds were ever heard now, what
was the exact title and date of his pamphlet, etc., etc., that bed-time
came and passed, without his having an opportunity to revert to the
Literary Supplement of the _Times_.
A VIEW FROM A HILL
How pleasant it can be, alone in a first-class railway carriage, on the
first day of a holiday that is to be fairly long, to dawdle through a
bit of English country that is unfamiliar, stopping at every station.
You have a map open on your knee, and you pick out the villages that
lie to right and left by their church towers. You marvel at the
complete stillness that attends your stoppage at the stations, broken
only by a footstep crunching the gravel. Yet perhaps that is best
experienced after sundown, and the traveller I have in mind was making
his leisurely progress on a sunny afternoon in the latter half of June.
He was in the depths of the country. I need not particularise further
than to say that if you divided the map of England into four quarters,
he would have been found in the south-western of them.
He was a man of academic pursuits, and his term was just over. He was
on his way to meet a new friend, older than himself. The two of them
had met first on an official enquiry in town, had found that they had
many tastes and habits in common, liked each other, and the result was
an invitation from Squire Richards to Mr Fanshawe which was now taking
effect.
The journey ended about five o’clock. Fanshawe was told by a cheerful
country porter that the car from the Hall had been up to the station
and left a message that something had to be fetched from half-a-mile
farther on, and would the gentleman please to wait a few minutes till
it came back? “But I see,” continued the porter, “as you’ve got your
bysticle, and very like you’d find it pleasanter to ride up to the
’All yourself. Straight up the road ’ere, and then first turn to the
left--it ain’t above two mile--and I’ll see as your things is put in
the car for you. You’ll excuse me mentioning it, only I thought it
were a nice evening for a ride. Yes, sir, very seasonable weather for
the haymakers: let me see, I have your bike ticket. Thank you, sir;
much obliged: you can’t miss your road, etc., etc.”
The two miles to the Hall were just what was needed, after the day in
the train, to dispel somnolence and impart a wish for tea. The Hall,
when sighted, also promised just what was needed in the way of a quiet
resting-place after days of sitting on committees and college-meetings.
It was neither excitingly old nor depressingly new. Plastered walls,
sash-windows, old trees, smooth lawns, were the features which Fanshawe
noticed as he came up the drive. Squire Richards, a burly man of sixty
odd, was awaiting him in the porch with evident pleasure.
“Tea first,” he said, “or would you like a longer drink? No? All right,
tea’s ready in the garden. Come along, they’ll put your machine away. I
always have tea under the lime-tree by the stream on a day like this.”
Nor could you ask for a better place. Midsummer afternoon, shade and
scent of a vast lime-tree, cool, swirling water within five yards. It
was long before either of them suggested a move. But about six, Mr
Richards sat up, knocked out his pipe, and said: “Look here, it’s cool
enough now to think of a stroll, if you’re inclined? All right: then
what I suggest is that we walk up the park and get on to the hillside,
where we can look over the country. We’ll have a map, and I’ll show you
where things are; and you can go off on your machine, or we can take
the car, according as you want exercise or not. If you’re ready, we can
start now and be back well before eight, taking it very easy.”
“I’m ready. I should like my stick, though, and have you got any
field-glasses? I lent mine to a man a week ago, and he’s gone off Lord
knows where and taken them with him.”
Mr Richards pondered. “Yes,” he said, “I have, but they’re not things
I use myself, and I don’t know whether the ones I have will suit you.
They’re old-fashioned, and about twice as heavy as they make ’em now.
You’re welcome to have them, but _I_ won’t carry them. By the way, what
do you want to drink after dinner?”
Protestations that anything would do were overruled, and a satisfactory
settlement was reached on the way to the front hall, where Mr Fanshawe
found his stick, and Mr Richards, after thoughtful pinching of his
lower lip, resorted to a drawer in the hall-table, extracted a key,
crossed to a cupboard in the panelling, opened it, took a box from the
shelf, and put it on the table. “The glasses are in there,” he said,
“and there’s some dodge of opening it, but I’ve forgotten what it is.
You try.” Mr Fanshawe accordingly tried. There was no keyhole, and the
box was solid, heavy and smooth: it seemed obvious that some part of it
would have to be pressed before anything could happen. “The corners,”
said he to himself, “are the likely places; and infernally sharp
corners they are too,” he added, as he put his thumb in his mouth
after exerting force on a lower corner.
“What’s the matter?” said the Squire.
“Why, your disgusting Borgia box has scratched me, drat it,” said
Fanshawe. The Squire chuckled unfeelingly. “Well, you’ve got it open,
anyway,” he said.
“So I have! Well, I don’t begrudge a drop of blood in a good cause, and
here are the glasses. They _are_ pretty heavy, as you said, but I think
I’m equal to carrying them.”
“Ready?” said the Squire. “Come on then; we go out by the garden.”
So they did, and passed out into the park, which sloped decidedly
upwards to the hill which, as Fanshawe had seen from the train,
dominated the country. It was a spur of a larger range that lay behind.
On the way, the Squire, who was great on earthworks, pointed out
various spots where he detected or imagined traces of war-ditches and
the like. “And here,” he said, stopping on a more or less level plot
with a ring of large trees, “is Baxter’s Roman villa.” “Baxter?” said
Mr Fanshawe.
“I forgot; you don’t know about him. He was the old chap I got those
glasses from. I believe he made them. He was an old watch-maker down
in the village, a great antiquary. My father gave him leave to grub
about where he liked; and when he made a find he used to lend him a
man or two to help him with the digging. He got a surprising lot of
things together, and when he died--I dare say it’s ten or fifteen years
ago--I bought the whole lot and gave them to the town museum. We’ll
run in one of these days, and look over them. The glasses came to me
with the rest, but of course I kept them. If you look at them, you’ll
see they’re more or less amateur work--the body of them; naturally the
lenses weren’t his making.”
“Yes, I see they are just the sort of thing that a clever workman in a
different line of business might turn out. But I don’t see why he made
them so heavy. And did Baxter actually find a Roman villa here?”
“Yes, there’s a pavement turfed over, where we’re standing: it was too
rough and plain to be worth taking up, but of course there are drawings
of it: and the small things and pottery that turned up were quite good
of their kind. An ingenious chap, old Baxter: he seemed to have a
quite out-of-the-way instinct for these things. He was invaluable to
our archæologists. He used to shut up his shop for days at a time, and
wander off over the district, marking down places, where he scented
anything, on the ordnance map; and he kept a book with fuller notes of
the places. Since his death, a good many of them have been sampled, and
there’s always been something to justify him.”
“What a good man!” said Mr Fanshawe.
“Good?” said the Squire, pulling up brusquely.
“I meant useful to have about the place,” said Mr Fanshawe. “But was he
a villain?”
“I don’t know about that either,” said the Squire; “but all I can say
is, if he was good, he wasn’t lucky. And he wasn’t liked: I didn’t like
him,” he added, after a moment.
“Oh?” said Fanshawe, interrogatively.
“No, I didn’t; but that’s enough about Baxter: besides, this is the
stiffest bit, and I don’t want to talk and walk as well.”
Indeed it was hot, climbing a slippery grass slope that evening. “I
told you I should take you the short way,” panted the Squire, “and I
wish I hadn’t. However, a bath won’t do us any harm when we get back.
Here we are, and there’s the seat.”
A small clump of old Scotch firs crowned the top of the hill; and, at
the edge of it, commanding the cream of the view, was a wide and solid
seat, on which the two disposed themselves, and wiped their brows, and
regained breath.
“Now, then,” said the Squire, as soon as he was in a condition to talk
connectedly, “this is where your glasses come in. But you’d better take
a general look round first. My word! I’ve never seen the view look
better.”
Writing as I am now with a winter wind flapping against dark windows
and a rushing, tumbling sea within a hundred yards, I find it hard to
summon up the feelings and words which will put my reader in possession
of the June evening and the lovely English landscape of which the
Squire was speaking.
Across a broad level plain they looked upon ranges of great hills,
whose uplands--some green, some furred with woods--caught the light of
a sun, westering but not yet low. And all the plain was fertile, though
the river which traversed it was nowhere seen. There were copses, green
wheat, hedges and pasture-land: the little compact white moving cloud
marked the evening train. Then the eye picked out red farms and grey
houses, and nearer home scattered cottages, and then the Hall, nestled
under the hill. The smoke of chimneys was very blue and straight. There
was a smell of hay in the air: there were wild roses on bushes hard by.
It was the acme of summer.
After some minutes of silent contemplation, the Squire began to point
out the leading features, the hills and valleys, and told where the
towns and villages lay. “Now,” he said, “with the glasses you’ll be
able to pick out Fulnaker Abbey. Take a line across that big green
field, then over the wood beyond it, then over the farm on the knoll.”
“Yes, yes,” said Fanshawe. “I’ve got it. What a fine tower!”
“You must have got the wrong direction,” said the Squire; “there’s not
much of a tower about there that I remember, unless it’s Oldbourne
Church that you’ve got hold of. And if you call that a fine tower,
you’re easily pleased.”
“Well, I do call it a fine tower,” said Fanshawe, the glasses still at
his eyes, “whether it’s Oldbourne or any other. And it must belong to a
largish church--it looks to me like a central tower; four big pinnacles
at the corners, and four smaller ones between. I must certainly go over
there. How far is it?”
“Oldbourne’s about nine miles, or less,” said the Squire. “It’s a long
time since I’ve been there, but I don’t remember thinking much of it.
Now I’ll show you another thing.”
Fanshawe had lowered the glasses, and was still gazing in the Oldbourne
direction. “No,” he said, “I can’t make out anything with the naked
eye. What was it you were going to show me?”
“A good deal more to the left--it oughtn’t to be difficult to find. Do
you see a rather sudden knob of a hill with a thick wood on top of it?
It’s in a dead line with that single tree on the top of the big ridge.”
“I do,” said Fanshawe, “and I believe I could tell you without much
difficulty what it’s called.”
“Could you now?” said the Squire. “Say on.”
“Why, Gallows Hill,” was the answer.
“How did you guess that?”
“Well, if you don’t want it guessed, you shouldn’t put up a dummy
gibbet and a man hanging on it.”
“What’s that?” said the Squire abruptly. “There’s nothing on that hill
but wood.”
“On the contrary,” said Fanshawe, “there’s a largish expanse of grass
on the top and your dummy gibbet in the middle; and I thought there was
something on it when I looked first. But I see there’s nothing--or is
there? I can’t be sure.”
“Nonsense, nonsense, Fanshawe, there’s no such thing as a dummy gibbet,
or any other sort, on that hill. And it’s thick wood--a fairly young
plantation. I was in it myself not a year ago. Hand me the glasses,
though I don’t suppose I can see anything.” After a pause: “No, I
thought not: they won’t show a thing.”