On an evening after Easter Day, I sat at a table in a homeward bound
steamer's smoking-room, where half a dozen of us told ghost stories. As
our party broke up a man, playing Patience in the next alcove, said to
me: “I didn't quite catch the end of that last story about the Curse on
the family's first-born.”
“It turned out to be drains,” I explained. “As soon as new ones were put
into the house the Curse was lifted, I believe. I never knew the people
myself.”
“Ah! I've had my drains up twice; I'm on gravel too.”
“You don't mean to say you've a ghost in your house? Why didn't you join
our party?”
“Any more orders, gentlemen, before the bar closes?” the steward
interrupted.
“Sit down again, and have one with me,” said the Patience player. “No,
it isn't a ghost. Our trouble is more depression than anything else.”
“How interesting? Then it's nothing any one can see?”
“It's--it's nothing worse than a little depression. And the odd part is
that there hasn't been a death in the house since it was built--in 1863.
The lawyer said so. That decided me--my good lady, rather--and he made me
pay an extra thousand for it.”
“How curious. Unusual, too!” I said.
“Yes; ain't it? It was built for three sisters--Moultrie was the
name--three old maids. They all lived together; the eldest owned it. I
bought it from her lawyer a few years ago, and if I've spent a pound
on the place first and last, I must have spent five thousand. Electric
light, new servants' wing, garden--all that sort of thing. A man and his
family ought to be happy after so much expense, ain't it?” He looked at
me through the bottom of his glass.
“Does it affect your family much?”
“My good lady--she's a Greek, by the way--and myself are middle-aged. We
can bear up against depression; but it's hard on my little girl. I say
little; but she's twenty. We send her visiting to escape it. She almost
lived at hotels and hydros, last year, but that isn't pleasant for her.
She used to be a canary--a perfect canary--always singing. You ought to
hear her. She doesn't sing now. That sort of thing's unwholesome for the
young, ain't it?”
“Can't you get rid of the place?” I suggested.
“Not except at a sacrifice, and we are fond of it. Just suits us three.
We'd love it if we were allowed.”
“What do you mean by not being allowed?”
“I mean because of the depression. It spoils everything.”
“What's it like exactly?”
“I couldn't very well explain. It must be seen to be appreciated, as the
auctioneers say. Now, I was much impressed by the story you were telling
just now.”
“It wasn't true,” I said.
“My tale is true. If you would do me the pleasure to come down and spend
a night at my little place, you'd learn more than you would if I talked
till morning. Very likely 'twouldn't touch your good self at all.
You might be--immune, ain't it? On the other hand, if this
influenza,--influence does happen to affect you, why, I think it will be
an experience.”
While he talked he gave me his card, and I read his name was L. Maxwell
M'Leod, Esq., of Holmescroft. A City address was tucked away in a
corner.
“My business,” he added, “used to be furs. If you are interested in
furs--I've given thirty years of my life to 'em.”
“You're very kind,” I murmured.
“Far from it, I assure you. I can meet you next Saturday afternoon
anywhere in London you choose to name, and I'll be only too happy to
motor you down. It ought to be a delightful run at this time of year--the
rhododendrons will be out. I mean it. You don't know how truly I mean
it. Very probably--it won't affect you at all. And--I think I may say I
have the finest collection of narwhal tusks in the world. All the best
skins and horns have to go through London, and L. Maxwell M'Leod, he
knows where they come from, and where they go to. That's his business.”
For the rest of the voyage up-channel Mr. M'Leod talked to me of the
assembling, preparation, and sale of the rarer furs; and told me things
about the manufacture of fur-lined coats which quite shocked me. Somehow
or other, when we landed on Wednesday, I found myself pledged to spend
that week-end with him at Holmescroft.
On Saturday he met me with a well-groomed motor, and ran me out, in an
hour and a half, to an exclusive residential district of dustless roads
and elegantly designed country villas, each standing in from three to
five acres of perfectly appointed land. He told me land was selling at
eight hundred pounds the acre, and the new golf links, whose Queen
Anne pavilion we passed, had cost nearly twenty-four thousand pounds to
create.
Holmescroft was a large, two-storied, low, creeper-covered residence.
A verandah at the south side gave on to a garden and two tennis courts,
separated by a tasteful iron fence from a most park-like meadow of five
or six acres, where two Jersey cows grazed. Tea was ready in the shade
of a promising copper beech, and I could see groups on the lawn of
young men and maidens appropriately clothed, playing lawn tennis in the
sunshine.
“A pretty scene, ain't it?” said Mr. M'Leod. “My good lady's sitting
under the tree, and that's my little girl in pink on the far court. But
I'll take you to your room, and you can see 'em all later.”
He led me through a wide parquet-floored hall furnished in pale lemon,
with huge Cloisonnée vases, an ebonized and gold grand piano, and banks
of pot flowers in Benares brass bowls, up a pale oak staircase to a
spacious landing, where there was a green velvet settee trimmed with
silver. The blinds were down, and the light lay in parallel lines on the
floors.
He showed me my room, saying cheerfully: “You may be a little tired. One
often is without knowing it after a run through traffic. Don't come down
till you feel quite restored. We shall all be in the garden.”
My room was rather warm, and smelt of perfumed soap. I threw up the
window at once, but it opened so close to the floor and worked so
clumsily that I came within an ace of pitching out, where I should
certainly have ruined a rather lop-sided laburnum below. As I set about
washing off the journey's dust, I began to feel a little tired. But, I
reflected, I had not come down here in this weather and among these new
surroundings to be depressed; so I began to whistle.
And it was just then that I was aware of a little grey shadow, as it
might have been a snowflake seen against the light, floating at an
immense distance in the background of my brain. It annoyed me, and I
shook my head to get rid of it. Then my brain telegraphed that it was
the forerunner of a swift-striding gloom which there was yet time to
escape if I would force my thoughts away from it, as a man leaping for
life forces his body forward and away from the fall of a wall. But the
gloom overtook me before I could take in the meaning of the message. I
moved toward the bed, every nerve already aching with the foreknowledge
of the pain that was to be dealt it, and sat down, while my amazed and
angry soul dropped, gulf by gulf, into that horror of great darkness
which is spoken of in the Bible, and which, as auctioneers say, must be
experienced to be appreciated.
Despair upon despair, misery upon misery, fear after fear, each causing
their distinct and separate woe, packed in upon me for an unrecorded
length of time, until at last they blurred together, and I heard a click
in my brain like the click in the ear when one descends in a diving
bell, and I knew that the pressures were equalised within and without,
and that, for the moment, the worst was at an end. But I knew also that
at any moment the darkness might come down anew; and while, I dwelt on
this speculation precisely as a man torments a raging tooth with his
tongue, it ebbed away into the little grey shadow on the brain of its
first coming, and once more I heard my brain, which knew what would
recur, telegraph to every quarter for help, release or diversion.
The door opened, and M'Leod reappeared. I thanked him politely, saying
I was charmed with my room, anxious to meet Mrs. M'Leod, much refreshed
with my wash, and so on and so forth. Beyond a little stickiness at
the corners of my mouth, it seemed to me that I was managing my words
admirably; the while that I myself cowered at the bottom of unclimbable
pits. M'Leod laid his hand on my shoulder, and said “You've got it now
already, ain't it?”
“Yes,” I answered. “It's making me sick!”
“It will pass off when you come outside. I give you my word it will then
pass off. Come!”