miles away. “Well, it’s very odd,” he said, “it does look exactly like
a wood without the glass.” He took it again. “That _is_ one of the
oddest effects. The gibbet is perfectly plain, and the grass field, and
there even seem to be people on it, and carts, or _a_ cart, with men
in it. And yet when I take the glass away, there’s nothing. It must
be something in the way this afternoon light falls: I shall come up
earlier in the day when the sun’s full on it.”
“Did you say you saw people and a cart on that hill?” said the Squire
incredulously. “What should they be doing there at this time of day,
even if the trees have been felled? Do talk sense--look again.”
“Well, I certainly thought I saw them. Yes, I should say there were a
few, just clearing off. And now--by Jove, it does look like something
hanging on the gibbet. But these glasses are so beastly heavy I can’t
hold them steady for long. Anyhow, you can take it from me there’s
no wood. And if you’ll show me the road on the map, I’ll go there
to-morrow.”
The Squire remained brooding for some little time. At last he rose and
said, “Well, I suppose that will be the best way to settle it. And now
we’d better be getting back. Bath and dinner is my idea.” And on the
way back he was not very communicative.
They returned through the garden, and went into the great hall to
leave sticks, etc., in their due place. And here they found the aged
butler Patten evidently in a state of some anxiety. “Beg pardon, Master
Henry,” he began at once, “but someone’s been up to mischief here,
I’m much afraid.” He pointed to the open box which had contained the
glasses.
“Nothing worse than that, Patten?” said the Squire. “Mayn’t I take out
my own glasses and lend them to a friend? Bought with my own money, you
recollect? At old Baxter’s sale, eh?”
Patten bowed, unconvinced. “O, very well, Master Henry, as long as you
know who it was. Only I thought proper to name it, for I didn’t think
that box’d been off its shelf since you first put it there; and, if
you’ll excuse me, after what happened....” The voice was lowered, and
the rest was not audible to Fanshawe. The Squire replied with a few
words and a gruff laugh, and called on Fanshawe to come and be shown
his room. And I do not think that anything else happened that night
which bears on my story.
Except, perhaps, the sensation which invaded Fanshawe in the small
hours that something had been let out which ought not to have been
let out. It came into his dreams. He was walking in a garden which
he seemed half to know, and stopped in front of a rockery made of
old wrought stones, pieces of window tracery from a church, and even
bits of figures. One of these moved his curiosity: it seemed to be a
sculptured capital with scenes carved on it. He felt he must pull it
out, and worked away, and, with an ease that surprised him, moved the
stones that obscured it aside, and pulled out the block. As he did so,
a tin label fell down by his feet with a little clatter. He picked it
up and read on it: “On no account move this stone. Yours sincerely, J.
Patten.” As often happens in dreams, he felt that this injunction was
of extreme importance; and with an anxiety that amounted to anguish he
looked to see if the stone had really been shifted. Indeed it had;
in fact he could not see it anywhere. The removal had disclosed the
mouth of a burrow, and he bent down to look into it. Something stirred
in the blackness, and then, to his intense horror, a hand emerged--a
clean right hand in a neat cuff and coat-sleeve, just in the attitude
of a hand that means to shake yours. He wondered whether it would not
be rude to let it alone. But, as he looked at it, it began to grow
hairy and dirty and thin, and also to change its pose and stretch
out as if to take hold of his leg. At that he dropped all thought of
politeness, decided to run, screamed and woke himself up.
This was the dream he remembered; but it seemed to him (as, again, it
often does) that there had been others of the same import before, but
not so insistent. He lay awake for some little time, fixing the details
of the last dream in his mind, and wondering in particular what the
figures had been which he had seen or half seen on the carved capital.
Something quite incongruous, he felt sure; but that was the most he
could recall.
Whether because of the dream, or because it was the first day of his
holiday, he did not get up very early; nor did he at once plunge into
the exploration of the country. He spent a morning, half lazy, half
instructive, in looking over the volumes of the County Archæological
Society’s transactions, in which were many contributions from Mr
Baxter on finds of flint implements, Roman sites, ruins of monastic
establishments; in fact, most departments of archæology. They were
written in an odd, pompous, only half-educated style. If the man had
had more early schooling, thought Fanshawe, he would have been a very
distinguished antiquary; or he might have been (he thus qualified his
opinion a little later), but for a certain love of opposition and
controversy, and, yes, a patronising tone as of one possessing superior
knowledge, which left an unpleasant taste. He might have been a very
respectable artist. There was an imaginary restoration and elevation of
a priory church which was very well conceived. A fine pinnacled central
tower was a conspicuous feature of this; it reminded Fanshawe of that
which he had seen from the hill, and which the Squire had told him
must be Oldbourne. But it was not Oldbourne; it was Fulnaker Priory.
“Oh, well,” he said to himself, “I suppose Oldbourne Church may have
been built by Fulnaker monks, and Baxter has copied Oldbourne tower.
Anything about it in the letterpress? Ah, I see it was published after
his death,--found among his papers.”
After lunch the Squire asked Fanshawe what he meant to do.
“Well,” said Fanshawe, “I think I shall go out on my bike about four as
far as Oldbourne and back by Gallows Hill. That ought to be a round of
about fifteen miles, oughtn’t it?”
“About that,” said the Squire, “and you’ll pass Lambsfield and
Wanstone, both of which are worth looking at. There’s a little glass at
Lambsfield and the stone at Wanstone.”
“Good,” said Fanshawe, “I’ll get tea somewhere, and may I take the
glasses? I’ll strap them on my bike, on the carrier.”
“Of course, if you like,” said the Squire. “I really ought to have some
better ones. If I go into the town to-day, I’ll see if I can pick up
some.”
“Why should you trouble to do that, if you can’t use them yourself?”
said Fanshawe.
“Oh, I don’t know; one ought to have a decent pair; and--well, old
Patten doesn’t think those are fit to use.”
“Is he a judge?”
“He’s got some tale: I don’t know: something about old Baxter. I’ve
promised to let him tell me about it. It seems very much on his mind
since last night.”
“Why that? Did he have a nightmare like me?”
“He had something: he was looking an old man this morning, and he said
he hadn’t closed an eye.”
“Well, let him save up his tale till I come back.”
“Very well, I will if I can. Look here, are you going to be late? If
you get a puncture eight miles off and have to walk home, what then? I
don’t trust these bicycles: I shall tell them to give us cold things to
eat.”
“I shan’t mind that, whether I’m late or early. But I’ve got things to
mend punctures with. And now I’m off.”
* * * * *
It was just as well that the Squire had made that arrangement about
a cold supper, Fanshawe thought, and not for the first time, as he
wheeled his bicycle up the drive about nine o’clock. So also the Squire
thought and said, several times, as he met him in the hall, rather
pleased at the confirmation of his want of faith in bicycles than
sympathetic with his hot, weary, thirsty, and indeed haggard, friend.
In fact, the kindest thing he found to say was: “You’ll want a long
drink to-night? Cider-cup do? All right. Hear that, Patten? Cider-cup,
iced, lots of it.” Then to Fanshawe, “Don’t be all night over your
bath.”
By half-past nine they were at dinner, and Fanshawe was reporting
progress, if progress it might be called.
“I got to Lambsfield very smoothly, and saw the glass. It is very
interesting stuff, but there’s a lot of lettering I couldn’t read.”
“Not with glasses?” said the Squire.
“Those glasses of yours are no manner of use inside a church--or inside
anywhere, I suppose, for that matter. But the only places I took ’em
into were churches.”
“H’m! Well, go on,” said the Squire.
“However, I took some sort of a photograph of the window, and I dare
say an enlargement would show what I want. Then Wanstone; I should
think that stone was a very out-of-the-way thing, only I don’t know
about that class of antiquities. Has anybody opened the mound it stands
on?”
“Baxter wanted to, but the farmer wouldn’t let him.”
“Oh, well, I should think it would be worth doing. Anyhow, the next
thing was Fulnaker and Oldbourne. You know, it’s very odd about that
tower I saw from the hill. Oldbourne Church is nothing like it, and of
course there’s nothing over thirty feet high at Fulnaker, though you
can see it had a central tower. I didn’t tell you, did I? that Baxter’s
fancy drawing of Fulnaker shows a tower exactly like the one I saw.”
“So you thought, I dare say,” put in the Squire.
“No, it wasn’t a case of thinking. The picture actually _reminded_
me of what I’d seen, and I made sure it was Oldbourne, well before I
looked at the title.”
“Well, Baxter had a very fair idea of architecture. I dare say what’s
left made it easy for him to draw the right sort of tower.”
“That may be it, of course, but I’m doubtful if even a professional
could have got it so exactly right. There’s absolutely nothing left at
Fulnaker but the bases of the piers which supported it. However, that
isn’t the oddest thing.”
“What about Gallows Hill?” said the Squire. “Here, Patten, listen to
this. I told you what Mr Fanshawe said he saw from the hill.”
“Yes, Master Henry, you did; and I can’t say I was so much surprised,
considering.”
“All right, all right. You keep that till afterwards. We want to hear
what Mr Fanshawe saw to-day. Go on, Fanshawe. You turned to come back
by Ackford and Thorfield, I suppose?”
“Yes, and I looked into both the churches. Then I got to the turning
which goes to the top of Gallows Hill; I saw that if I wheeled my
machine over the field at the top of the hill I could join the home
road on this side. It was about half-past six when I got to the top
of the hill, and there was a gate on my right, where it ought to be,
leading into the belt of plantation.”
“You hear that, Patten? A belt, he says.”
“So I thought it was--a belt. But it wasn’t. You were quite right,
and I was hopelessly wrong. I _cannot_ understand it. The whole top
is planted quite thick. Well, I went on into this wood, wheeling and
dragging my bike, expecting every minute to come to a clearing, and
then my misfortunes began. Thorns, I suppose; first I realised that the
front tyre was slack, then the back. I couldn’t stop to do more than
try to find the punctures and mark them; but even that was hopeless. So
I ploughed on, and the farther I went, the less I liked the place.”
“Not much poaching in that cover, eh, Patten?” said the Squire.
“No, indeed, Master Henry: there’s very few cares to go----”
“No, I know: never mind that now. Go on, Fanshawe.”
“I don’t blame anybody for not caring to go there. I know I had all
the fancies one least likes: steps crackling over twigs behind me,
indistinct people stepping behind trees in front of me, yes, and even
a hand laid on my shoulder. I pulled up very sharp at that and looked
round, but there really was no branch or bush that could have done it.
Then, when I was just about at the middle of the plot, I was convinced
that there was someone looking down on me from above--and not with any
pleasant intent. I stopped again, or at least slackened my pace, to
look up. And as I did, down I came, and barked my shins abominably on,
what do you think? a block of stone with a big square hole in the top
of it. And within a few paces there were two others just like it. The
three were set in a triangle. Now, do you make out what they were put
there for?”
“I think I can,” said the Squire, who was now very grave and absorbed
in the story. “Sit down, Patten.”
It was time, for the old man was supporting himself by one hand, and
leaning heavily on it. He dropped into a chair, and said in a very
tremulous voice, “You didn’t go between them stones, did you, sir?”
“I did _not_,” said Fanshawe, emphatically. “I dare say I was an
ass, but as soon as it dawned on me where I was, I just shouldered
my machine and did my best to run. It seemed to me as if I was in an
unholy evil sort of graveyard, and I was most profoundly thankful that
it was one of the longest days and still sunlight. Well, I had a horrid
run, even if it was only a few hundred yards. Everything caught on
everything: handles and spokes and carrier and pedals--caught in them
viciously, or I fancied so. I fell over at least five times. At last I
saw the hedge, and I couldn’t trouble to hunt for the gate.”
“There _is_ no gate on my side,” the Squire interpolated.
“Just as well I didn’t waste time, then. I dropped the machine over
somehow and went into the road pretty near head-first; some branch or
something got my ankle at the last moment. Anyhow, there I was out of
the wood, and seldom more thankful or more generally sore. Then came
the job of mending my punctures. I had a good outfit and I’m not at all
bad at the business; but this was an absolutely hopeless case. It was
seven when I got out of the wood, and I spent fifty minutes over one
tyre. As fast as I found a hole and put on a patch, and blew it up, it
went flat again. So I made up my mind to walk. That hill isn’t three
miles away, is it?”
“Not more across country, but nearer six by road.”
“I thought it must be. I thought I couldn’t have taken well over the
hour over less than five miles, even leading a bike. Well, there’s my
story: where’s yours and Patten’s?”
“Mine? I’ve no story,” said the Squire. “But you weren’t very far out
when you thought you were in a graveyard. There must be a good few of
them up there, Patten, don’t you think? They left ’em there when they
fell to bits, I fancy.”
Patten nodded, too much interested to speak. “Don’t,” said Fanshawe.
“Now then, Patten,” said the Squire, “you’ve heard what sort of a time
Mr Fanshawe’s been having. What do you make of it? Anything to do with
Mr Baxter? Fill yourself a glass of port, and tell us.”
“Ah, that done me good, Master Henry,” said Patten, after absorbing
what was before him. “If you really wish to know what were in my
thoughts, my answer would be clear in the affirmative. Yes,” he went
on, warming to his work, “I should say as Mr Fanshawe’s experience of
to-day were very largely doo to the person you named. And I think,
Master Henry, as I have some title to speak, in view of me ’aving been
many years on speaking terms with him, and swore in to be jury on the
Coroner’s inquest near this time ten years ago, you being then, if you
carry your mind back, Master Henry, travelling abroad, and no one ’ere
to represent the family.”
“Inquest?” said Fanshawe. “An inquest on Mr Baxter, was there?”
“Yes, sir, on--on that very person. The facts as led up to that
occurrence was these. The deceased was, as you may have gathered, a
very peculiar individual in ’is ’abits--in my idear, at least, but all
must speak as they find. He lived very much to himself, without neither
chick nor child, as the saying is. And how he passed away his time was
what very few could orfer a guess at.”
“He lived unknown, and few could know when Baxter ceased to be,” said
the Squire to his pipe.
“I beg pardon, Master Henry, I was just coming to that. But when I say
how he passed away his time--to be sure we know ’ow intent he was in
rummaging and ransacking out all the ’istry of the neighbourhood and
the number of things he’d managed to collect together--well, it was
spoke of for miles round as Baxter’s Museum, and many a time when he
might be in the mood, and I might have an hour to spare, have he showed
me his pieces of pots and what not, going back by his account to the
times of the ancient Romans. However, you know more about that than
what I do, Master Henry: only what I was a-going to say was this, as
know what he might and interesting as he might be in his talk, there
was something about the man--well, for one thing, no one ever remember
to see him in church nor yet chapel at service-time. And that made
talk. Our rector he never come in the house but once. ‘Never ask me
what the man said’: that was all anybody could ever get out of _him_.
Then how did he spend his nights, particularly about this season of the
year? Time and again the labouring men’d meet him coming back as they
went out to their work, and he’d pass ’em by without a word, looking,
they says, like someone straight out of the asylum. They see the whites
of his eyes all round. He’d have a fish-basket with him, that they
noticed, and he always come the same road. And the talk got to be that
he’d made himself some business, and that not the best kind--well, not
so far from where you was at seven o’clock this evening, sir.
“Well, now, after such a night as that, Mr Baxter he’d shut up the
shop, and the old lady that did for him had orders not to come in;
and knowing what she did about his language, she took care to obey
them orders. But one day it so happened, about three o’clock in the
afternoon, the house being shut up as I said, there come a most fearful
to-do inside, and smoke out of the windows, and Baxter crying out
seemingly in an agony. So the man as lived next door he run round to
the back premises and burst the door in, and several others come too.
Well, he tell me he never in all his life smelt such a fearful--well,
odour, as what there was in that kitchen-place. It seem as if Baxter
had been boiling something in a pot and overset it on his leg. There
he laid on the floor, trying to keep back the cries, but it was more
than he could manage, and when he seen the people come in--oh, he was
in a nice condition: if his tongue warn’t blistered worse than his
leg it warn’t his fault. Well, they picked him up, and got him into a
chair, and run for the medical man, and one of ’em was going to pick
up the pot, and Baxter, he screams out to let it alone. So he did,
but he couldn’t see as there was anything in the pot but a few old
brown bones. Then they says ‘Dr Lawrence’ll be here in a minute, Mr
Baxter; he’ll soon put you to rights.’ And then he was off again. He
must be got up to his room, he couldn’t have the doctor come in there
and see all that mess--they must throw a cloth over it--anything--the
table-cloth out of the parlour; well, so they did. But that must have
been poisonous stuff in that pot, for it was pretty near on two months
afore Baxter were about agin. Beg pardon, Master Henry, was you going
to say something?”
“Yes, I was,” said the Squire. “I wonder you haven’t told me all this
before. However, I was going to say I remember old Lawrence telling me
he’d attended Baxter. He was a queer card, he said. Lawrence was up in
the bedroom one day, and picked up a little mask covered with black
velvet, and put it on in fun and went to look at himself in the glass.
He hadn’t time for a proper look, for old Baxter shouted out to him
from the bed: ‘Put it down, you fool! Do you want to look through a
dead man’s eyes?’ and it startled him so that he did put it down, and
then he asked Baxter what he meant. And Baxter insisted on him handing
it over, and said the man he bought it from was dead, or some such
nonsense. But Lawrence felt it as he handed it over, and he declared
he was sure it was made out of the front of a skull. He bought a
distilling apparatus at Baxter’s sale, he told me, but he could never
use it: it seemed to taint everything, however much he cleaned it. But
go on, Patten.”
“Yes, Master Henry, I’m nearly done now, and time, too, for I don’t
know what they’ll think about me in the servants’ ’all. Well, this
business of the scalding was some few years before Mr Baxter was took,
and he got about again, and went on just as he’d used. And one of the
last jobs he done was finishing up them actual glasses what you took
out last night. You see he’d made the body of them some long time, and
got the pieces of glass for them, but there was somethink wanted to
finish ’em, whatever it was, I don’t know, but I picked up the frame
one day, and I says: ‘Mr Baxter, why don’t you make a job of this?’
And he says, ‘Ah, when I’ve done that, you’ll hear news, you will:
there’s going to be no such pair of glasses as mine when they’re filled
and sealed,’ and there he stopped, and I says: ‘Why, Mr Baxter, you
talk as if they was wine bottles: filled and sealed--why, where’s the
necessity for that?’ ‘Did I say filled and sealed?’ he says, ‘O, well,
I was suiting my conversation to my company.’ Well, then come round
this time of year, and one fine evening, I was passing his shop on my
way home, and he was standing on the step, very pleased with hisself,
and he says: ‘All right and tight now: my best bit of work’s finished,
and I’ll be out with ’em to-morrow.’ ‘What, finished them glasses?’ I
says, ‘might I have a look at them?’ ‘No, no,’ he says, ‘I’ve put ’em
to bed for to-night, and when I do show ’em you, you’ll have to pay for
peepin’, so I tell you.’ And that, gentlemen, were the last words I
heard that man say.
“That were the 17th of June, and just a week after, there was a funny
thing happened, and it was doo to that as we brought in ‘unsound mind’
at the inquest, for barring that, no one as knew Baxter in business
could anyways have laid that against him. But George Williams, as lived
in the next house, and do now, he was woke up that same night with a
stumbling and tumbling about in Mr Baxter’s premises, and he got out
o’ bed, and went to the front window on the street to see if there was
any rough customers about. And it being a very light night, he could
make sure as there was not. Then he stood and listened, and he hear Mr
Baxter coming down his front stair one step after another very slow,
and he got the idear as it was like someone bein’ pushed or pulled
down and holdin’ on to everythin’ he could. Next thing he hear the
street door come open, and out come Mr Baxter into the street in his
day-clothes, ’at and all, with his arms straight down by his sides,
and talking to hisself, and shakin’ his head from one side to the
other, and walking in that peculiar way that he appeared to be going
as it were against his own will. George Williams put up the window,
and hear him say: ‘O mercy, gentlemen!’ and then he shut up sudden as
if, he said, someone clapped his hand over his mouth, and Mr Baxter
threw his head back, and his hat fell off. And Williams see his face
looking something pitiful, so as he couldn’t keep from calling out to
him: ‘Why, Mr Baxter, ain’t you well?’ and he was goin’ to offer to
fetch Dr Lawrence to him, only he heard the answer: ‘’Tis best you mind
your own business. Put in your head.’ But whether it were Mr Baxter
said it so hoarse-like and faint, he never could be sure. Still there
weren’t no one but him in the street, and yet Williams was that upset
by the way he spoke that he shrank back from the window and went and
sat on the bed. And he heard Mr Baxter’s step go on and up the road,
and after a minute or more he couldn’t help but look out once more and
he see him going along the same curious way as before. And one thing he
recollected was that Mr Baxter never stopped to pick up his ’at when
it fell off, and yet there it was on his head. Well, Master Henry,
that was the last anybody see of Mr Baxter, leastways for a week or
more. There was a lot of people said he was called off on business, or
made off because he’d got into some scrape, but he was well-known for
miles round, and none of the railway-people nor the public-house people
hadn’t seen him; and then ponds was looked into and nothink found; and
at last one evening Fakes the keeper come down from over the hill to
the village, and he says he seen the Gallows Hill planting black with
birds, and that were a funny thing, because he never see no sign of a
creature there in his time. So they looked at each other a bit, and
first one says: ‘I’m game to go up,’ and another says: ‘So am I, if you
are,’ and half a dozen of ’em set out in the evening time, and took Dr
Lawrence with them, and you know, Master Henry, there he was between
them three stones with his neck broke.”