out a cry. I made a spring backwards in the first moment of surprise and
horror, and in doing so came sharply against the same rough masonry and
brambles that had struck me before. This new sound came upwards from the
ground,--a low, moaning, wailing voice, full of suffering and pain. The
contrast between it and the hoot of the owl was indescribable,--the one
with a wholesome wildness and naturalness that hurt nobody; the other, a
sound that made one’s blood curdle, full of human misery. With a great
deal of fumbling,--for in spite of everything I could do to keep up my
courage my hands shook,--I managed to remove the slide of my lantern. The
light leaped out like something living, and made the place visible in a
moment. We were what would have been inside the ruined building had
anything remained but the gable-wall which I have described. It was close
to us, the vacant door-way in it going out straight into the blackness
outside. The light showed the bit of wall, the ivy glistening upon it in
clouds of dark green, the bramble-branches waving, and below, the open
door,--a door that led to nothing. It was from this the voice came which
died out just as the light flashed upon this strange scene. There was a
moment’s silence, and then it broke forth again. The sound was so near,
so penetrating, so pitiful, that, in the nervous start I gave, the light
fell out of my hand. As I groped for it in the dark my hand was clutched
by Bagley, who, I think, must have dropped upon his knees; but I was too
much perturbed myself to think much of this. He clutched at me in the
confusion of his terror, forgetting all his usual decorum. “For God’s
sake, what is it, sir?” he gasped. If I yielded, there was evidently an
end of both of us. “I can’t tell,” I said, “any more than you; that’s
what we’ve got to find out. Up, man, up!” I pulled him to his feet. “Will
you go round and examine the other side, or will you stay here with the
lantern?” Bagley gasped at me with a face of horror. “Can’t we stay
together, Colonel?” he said; his knees were trembling under him. I pushed
him against the corner of the wall, and put the light into his hands.
“Stand fast till I come back; shake yourself together, man; let nothing
pass you,” I said. The voice was within two or three feet of us; of that
there could be no doubt.
I went myself to the other side of the wall, keeping close to it. The
light shook in Bagley’s hand, but, tremulous though it was, shone out
through the vacant door, one oblong block of light marking all the
crumbling corners and hanging masses of foliage. Was that something dark
huddled in a heap by the side of it? I pushed forward across the light in
the door-way, and fell upon it with my hands; but it was only a
juniper-bush growing close against the wall. Meanwhile, the sight of my
figure crossing the door-way had brought Bagley’s nervous excitement to a
height: he flew at me, gripping my shoulder. “I’ve got him, Colonel!
I’ve got him!” he cried, with a voice of sudden exultation. He thought it
was a man, and was at once relieved. But at that moment the voice burst
forth again between us, at our feet,--more close to us than any separate
being could be. He dropped off from me, and fell against the wall, his
jaw dropping as if he were dying. I suppose, at the same moment, he saw
that it was me whom he had clutched. I, for my part, had scarcely more
command of myself. I snatched the light out of his hand, and flashed it
all about me wildly. Nothing,--the juniper-bush which I thought I had
never seen before, the heavy growth of the glistening ivy, the brambles
waving. It was close to my ears now, crying, crying, pleading as if for
life. Either I heard the same words Roland had heard, or else, in my
excitement, his imagination got possession of mine. The voice went on,
growing into distinct articulation, but wavering about, now from one
point, now from another, as if the owner of it were moving slowly back
and forward. “Mother! mother!” and then an outburst of wailing. As my
mind steadied, getting accustomed (as one’s mind gets accustomed to
anything), it seemed to me as if some uneasy, miserable creature was
pacing up and down before a closed door. Sometimes--but that must have
been excitement--I thought I heard a sound like knocking, and then
another burst, “Oh, mother! mother!” All this close, close to the space
where I was standing with my lantern, now before me, now behind me: a
creature restless, unhappy, moaning, crying, before the vacant door-way,
which no one could either shut or open more.
“Do you hear it, Bagley? do you hear what it is saying?” I cried,
stepping in through the door-way. He was lying against the wall, his eyes
glazed, half dead with terror. He made a motion of his lips as if to
answer me, but no sounds came; then lifted his hand with a curious
imperative movement as if ordering me to be silent and listen. And how
long I did so I cannot tell. It began to have an interest, an exciting
hold upon me, which I could not describe. It seemed to call up visibly a
scene any one could understand,--a something shut out, restlessly
wandering to and fro; sometimes the voice dropped, as if throwing itself
down, sometimes wandered off a few paces, growing sharp and clear. “Oh,
mother, let me in! oh, mother, mother, let me in! oh, let me in!” Every
word was clear to me. No wonder the boy had gone wild with pity. I tried
to steady my mind upon Roland, upon his conviction that I could do
something, but my head swam with the excitement, even when I partially
overcame the terror. At last the words died away, and there was a sound
of sobs and moaning. I cried out, “In the name of God, who are you?” with
a kind of feeling in my mind that to use the name of God was profane,
seeing that I did not believe in ghosts or anything supernatural; but I
did it all the same, and waited, my heart giving a leap of terror lest
there should be a reply. Why this should have been I cannot tell, but I
had a feeling that if there was an answer it would be more than I could
bear. But there was no answer; the moaning went on, and then, as if it
had been real, the voice rose a little higher again, the words
recommenced, “Oh, mother, let me in! oh, mother, let me in!” with an
expression that was heart-breaking to hear.
_As if it had been real_! What do I mean by that? I suppose I got less
alarmed as the thing went on. I began to recover the use of my senses,--I
seemed to explain it all to myself by saying that this had once happened,
that it was a recollection of a real scene. Why there should have seemed
something quite satisfactory and composing in this explanation I cannot
tell, but so it was. I began to listen almost as if it had been a play,
forgetting Bagley, who, I almost think, had fainted, leaning against the
wall. I was startled out of this strange spectatorship that had fallen
upon me by the sudden rush of something which made my heart jump once
more, a large black figure in the door-way waving its arms. “Come in!
come in! come in!” it shouted out hoarsely at the top of a deep bass
voice, and then poor Bagley fell down senseless across the threshold. He
was less sophisticated than I,--he had not been able to bear it any
longer. I took him for something supernatural, as he took me, and it was
some time before I awoke to the necessities of the moment. I remembered
only after, that from the time I began to give my attention to the man, I
heard the other voice no more. It was some time before I brought him to.
It must have been a strange scene: the lantern making a luminous spot in
the darkness, the man’s white face lying on the black earth, I over him,
doing what I could for him, probably I should have been thought to be
murdering him had any one seen us. When at last I succeeded in pouring a
little brandy down his throat, he sat up and looked about him wildly.
“What’s up?” he said; then recognizing me, tried to struggle to his feet
with a faint “Beg your pardon, Colonel.” I got him home as best I could,
making him lean upon my arm. The great fellow was as weak as a child.
Fortunately he did not for some time remember what had happened. From the
time Bagley fell the voice had stopped, and all was still.
* * * * *
“You’ve got an epidemic in your house, Colonel,” Simson said to me next
morning. “What’s the meaning of it all? Here’s your butler raving about a
voice. This will never do, you know; and so far as I can make out, you
are in it too.”
“Yes, I am in it, Doctor. I thought I had better speak to you. Of course
you are treating Roland all right, but the boy is not raving, he is as
sane as you or me. It’s all true.”
“As sane as--I--or you. I never thought the boy insane. He’s got cerebral
excitement, fever. I don’t know what you’ve got. There’s something very
queer about the look of your eyes.”
“Come,” said I, “you can’t put us all to bed, you know. You had better
listen and hear the symptoms in full.”
The Doctor shrugged his shoulders, but he listened to me patiently. He
did not believe a word of the story, that was clear; but he heard it all
from beginning to end. “My dear fellow,” he said, “the boy told me just
the same. It’s an epidemic. When one person falls a victim to this sort
of thing, it’s as safe as can be,--there’s always two or three.”
“Then how do you account for it?” I said.
“Oh, account for it!--that’s a different matter; there’s no accounting
for the freaks our brains are subject to. If it’s delusion, if it’s some
trick of the echoes or the winds,--some phonetic disturbance or other--”
“Come with me to-night, and judge for yourself,” I said.
Upon this he laughed aloud, then said, “That’s not such a bad idea; but
it would ruin me forever if it were known that John Simson was
ghost-hunting.”
“There it is,” said I; “you dart down on us who are unlearned with your
phonetic disturbances, but you daren’t examine what the thing really is
for fear of being laughed at. That’s science!”
“It’s not science,--it’s common-sense,” said the Doctor. “The thing has
delusion on the front of it. It is encouraging an unwholesome tendency
even to examine. What good could come of it? Even if I am convinced, I
shouldn’t believe.”
“I should have said so yesterday; and I don’t want you to be convinced or
to believe,” said I. “If you prove it to be a delusion, I shall be very
much obliged to you for one. Come; somebody must go with me.”
“You are cool,” said the Doctor. “You’ve disabled this poor fellow of
yours, and made him--on that point--a lunatic for life; and now you want
to disable me. But, for once, I’ll do it. To save appearance, if you’ll
give me a bed, I’ll come over after my last rounds.”
It was agreed that I should meet him at the gate, and that we should
visit the scene of last night’s occurrences before we came to the house,
so that nobody might be the wiser. It was scarcely possible to hope that
the cause of Bagley’s sudden illness should not somehow steal into the
knowledge of the servants at least, and it was better that all should be
done as quietly as possible. The day seemed to me a very long one. I had
to spend a certain part of it with Roland, which was a terrible ordeal
for me, for what could I say to the boy? The improvement continued, but
he was still in a very precarious state, and the trembling vehemence with
which he turned to me when his mother left the room filled me with alarm.
“Father?” he said quietly. “Yes, my boy, I am giving my best attention to
it; all is being done that I can do. I have not come to any
conclusion--yet. I am neglecting nothing you said,” I cried. What I could
not do was to give his active mind any encouragement to dwell upon the
mystery. It was a hard predicament, for some satisfaction had to be given
him. He looked at me very wistfully, with the great blue eyes which shone
so large and brilliant out of his white and worn face. “You must trust
me,” I said. “Yes, father. Father understands,” he said to himself, as if
to soothe some inward doubt. I left him as soon as I could. He was about
the most precious thing I had on earth, and his health my first thought;
but yet somehow, in the excitement of this other subject, I put that
aside, and preferred not to dwell upon Roland, which was the most curious
part of it all.
That night at eleven I met Simson at the gate. He had come by train, and
I let him in gently myself. I had been so much absorbed in the coming
experiment that I passed the ruins in going to meet him, almost without
thought, if you can understand that. I had my lantern; and he showed me a
coil of taper which he had ready for use. “There is nothing like light,”
he said, in his scoffing tone. It was a very still night, scarcely a
sound, but not so dark. We could keep the path without difficulty as we
went along. As we approached the spot we could hear a low moaning, broken
occasionally by a bitter cry. “Perhaps that is your voice,” said the
Doctor; “I thought it must be something of the kind. That’s a poor brute
caught in some of these infernal traps of yours; you’ll find it among the
bushes somewhere.” I said nothing. I felt no particular fear, but a
triumphant satisfaction in what was to follow. I led him to the spot
where Bagley and I had stood on the previous night. All was silent as a
winter night could be,--so silent that we heard far off the sound of the
horses in the stables, the shutting of a window at the house. Simson
lighted his taper and went peering about, poking into all the corners. We
looked like two conspirators lying in wait for some unfortunate
traveller; but not a sound broke the quiet. The moaning had stopped
before we came up; a star or two shone over us in the sky, looking down
as if surprised at our strange proceedings. Dr. Simson did nothing but
utter subdued laughs under his breath. “I thought as much,” he said. “It
is just the same with tables and all other kinds of ghostly apparatus; a
sceptic’s presence stops everything. When I am present nothing ever comes
off. How long do you think it will be necessary to stay here? Oh, I don’t
complain; only when _you_ are satisfied, _I_ am--quite.”
I will not deny that I was disappointed beyond measure by this result. It
made me look like a credulous fool. It gave the Doctor such a pull over
me as nothing else could. I should point all his morals for years to
come; and his materialism, his scepticism, would be increased beyond
endurance. “It seems, indeed,” I said, “that there is to be no--”
“Manifestation,” he said, laughing; “that is what all the mediums say. No
manifestations, in consequence of the presence of an unbeliever.” His
laugh sounded very uncomfortable to me in the silence; and it was now
near midnight. But that laugh seemed the signal; before it died away the
moaning we had heard before was resumed. It started from some distance
off, and came towards us, nearer and nearer, like some one walking along
and moaning to himself. There could be no idea now that it was a hare
caught in a trap. The approach was slow, like that of a weak person, with
little halts and pauses. We heard it coming along the grass straight
towards the vacant door-way. Simson had been a little startled by the
first sound. He said hastily, “That child has no business to be out so
late.” But he felt, as well as I, that this was no child’s voice. As it
came nearer, he grew silent, and, going to the door-way with his taper,
stood looking out towards the sound. The taper being unprotected blew
about in the night air, though there was scarcely any wind. I threw the
light of my lantern steady and white across the same space. It was in a
blaze of light in the midst of the blackness. A little icy thrill had
gone over me at the first sound, but as it came close, I confess that my
only feeling was satisfaction. The scoffer could scoff no more. The light
touched his own face, and showed a very perplexed countenance. If he was
afraid, he concealed it with great success, but he was perplexed. And
then all that had happened on the previous night was enacted once more.
It fell strangely upon me with a sense of repetition. Every cry, every
sob seemed the same as before. I listened almost without any emotion at
all in my own person, thinking of its effect upon Simson. He maintained a
very bold front, on the whole. All that coming and going of the voice
was, if our ears could be trusted, exactly in front of the vacant, blank
door-way, blazing full of light, which caught and shone in the glistening
leaves of the great hollies at a little distance. Not a rabbit could have
crossed the turf without being seen; but there was nothing. After a time,
Simson, with a certain caution and bodily reluctance, as it seemed to me,
went out with his roll of taper into this space. His figure showed
against the holly in full outline. Just at this moment the voice sank, as
was its custom, and seemed to fling itself down at the door. Simson
recoiled violently, as if some one had come up against him, then turned,
and held his taper low, as if examining something. “Do you see anybody?”
I cried in a whisper, feeling the chill of nervous panic steal over me at
this action. “It’s nothing but a--confounded juniper-bush,” he said. This
I knew very well to be nonsense, for the juniper-bush was on the other
side. He went about after this round and round, poking his taper
everywhere, then returned to me on the inner side of the wall. He scoffed
no longer; his face was contracted and pale. “How long does this go on?”
he whispered to me, like a man who does not wish to interrupt some one
who is speaking. I had become too much perturbed myself to remark whether
the successions and changes of the voice were the same as last night. It
suddenly went out in the air almost as he was speaking, with a soft
reiterated sob dying away. If there had been anything to be seen, I
should have said that the person was at that moment crouching on the
ground close to the door.
We walked home very silent afterwards. It was only when we were in sight
of the house that I said, “What do you think of it?” “I can’t tell what
to think of it,” he said quickly. He took--though he was a very temperate
man--not the claret I was going to offer him, but some brandy from the
tray, and swallowed it almost undiluted. “Mind you, I don’t believe a
word of it,” he said, when he had lighted his candle; “but I can’t tell
what to think,” he turned round to add, when he was half-way upstairs.
All of this, however, did me no good with the solution of my problem. I
was to help this weeping, sobbing thing, which was already to me as
distinct a personality as anything I knew; or what should I say to
Roland? It was on my heart that my boy would die if I could not find some
way of helping this creature. You may be surprised that I should speak of
it in this way. I did not know if it was man or woman; but I no more
doubted that it was a soul in pain than I doubted my own being; and it
was my business to soothe this pain,--to deliver it, if that was
possible. Was ever such a task given to an anxious father trembling for
his only boy? I felt in my heart, fantastic as it may appear, that I must
fulfill this somehow, or part with my child; and you may conceive that
rather than do that I was ready to die. But even my dying would not have
advanced me, unless by bringing me into the same world with that seeker
at the door.
* * * * *
Next morning Simson was out before breakfast, and came in with evident
signs of the damp grass on his boots, and a look of worry and weariness,
which did not say much for the night he had passed. He improved a little
after breakfast, and visited his two patients,--for Bagley was still an
invalid. I went out with him on his way to the train, to hear what he
had to say about the boy. “He is going on very well,” he said; “there are
no complications as yet. But mind you, that’s not a boy to be trifled
with, Mortimer. Not a word to him about last night.” I had to tell him
then of my last interview with Roland, and of the impossible demand he
had made upon me, by which, though he tried to laugh, he was much
discomposed, as I could see. “We must just perjure ourselves all round,”
he said, “and swear you exorcised it;” but the man was too kind-hearted
to be satisfied with that. “It’s frightfully serious for you, Mortimer. I
can’t laugh as I should like to. I wish I saw a way out of it, for your
sake. By the way,” he added shortly, “didn’t you notice that juniper-bush
on the left-hand side?” “There was one on the right hand of the door. I
noticed you made that mistake last night.” “Mistake!” he cried, with a
curious low laugh, pulling up the collar of his coat as though he felt
the cold,--“there’s no juniper there this morning, left or right. Just go
and see.” As he stepped into the train a few minutes after, he looked
back upon me and beckoned me for a parting word. “I’m coming back
to-night,” he said.
I don’t think I had any feeling about this as I turned away from that
common bustle of the railway which made my private preoccupations feel so
strangely out of date. There had been a distinct satisfaction in my mind
before, that his scepticism had been so entirely defeated. But the more
serious part of the matter pressed upon me now. I went straight from the
railway to the manse, which stood on a little plateau on the side of the
river opposite to the woods of Brentwood. The minister was one of a class
which is not so common in Scotland as it used to be. He was a man of good
family, well educated in the Scotch way, strong in philosophy, not so
strong in Greek, strongest of all in experience,--a man who had “come
across,” in the course of his life, most people of note that had ever
been in Scotland, and who was said to be very sound in doctrine, without
infringing the toleration with which old men, who are good men, are
generally endowed. He was old-fashioned; perhaps he did not think so much
about the troublous problems of theology as many of the young men, nor
ask himself any hard questions about the Confession of Faith; but he
understood human nature, which is perhaps better. He received me with a
cordial welcome.
“Come away, Colonel Mortimer,” he said; “I’m all the more glad to see
you, that I feel it’s a good sign for the boy. He’s doing well?--God be
praised,--and the Lord bless him and keep him. He has many a poor body’s
prayers, and that can do nobody harm.”
“He will need them all, Dr. Moncrieff,” I said, “and your counsel too.”
And I told him the story,--more than I had told Simson. The old clergyman
listened to me with many suppressed exclamations, and at the end the
water stood in his eyes.
“That’s just beautiful,” he said. “I do not mind to have heard anything
like it; it’s as fine as Burns when he wished deliverance to one--that is
prayed for in no kirk. Ay, ay! so he would have you console the poor lost
spirit? God bless the boy! There’s something more than common in that,
Colonel Mortimer. And also the faith of him in his father!--I would like
to put that into a sermon.” Then the old gentleman gave me an alarmed
look, and said, “No, no; I was not meaning a sermon; but I must write it
down for the ‘Children’s Record.’” I saw the thought that passed through
his mind. Either he thought, or he feared I would think, of a funeral
sermon. You may believe this did not make me more cheerful.
I can scarcely say that Dr. Moncrieff gave me any advice. How could any
one advise on such a subject? But he said, “I think I’ll come too. I’m an
old man; I’m less liable to be frightened than those that are further off
the world unseen. It behooves me to think of my own journey there. I’ve
no cut-and-dry beliefs on the subject. I’ll come too; and maybe at the
moment the Lord will put into our heads what to do.”