that crept over me. There was something so uncanny in the whole
proceeding. Now, I have already said I was not a superstitious man, and
I think I may also assert that I was by no means lacking in courage.
Nevertheless, for the moment I was the prey to a feeling of absolute
funk. Then suddenly I thought that a trick was being tried upon me, and
anger got the better of my funk. I seized the poker from the fireplace,
rushed to the panel, got it open with some little difficulty, and
peered into the darkness, but saw nothing; listened intently, but heard
nothing. Next I snatched a candle from the table and proceeded down
the passage, but found no living thing, and the doors were properly
fastened. Returning to the dining-room, I sat down to think, and came
to the conclusion that I had been the victim of a trick of the brain,
and laughed at my own folly. But when a quarter of an hour later I went
upstairs to my bedroom I experienced an unaccountable and absolutely
unusual feeling of nervousness. The next day my first impulse was
to tell my wife of the remarkable incident of the night previous;
my second to do nothing of the sort, but keep it a locked secret in
my own breast. A week later my daughter Phyllis had been with me in
the library. She was a clever shorthand writer, and had been taking
some important letters down from my dictation. As the clock on the
mantelpiece chimed out midnight I told her to cease work and go to her
bed. She wished me good-night, and trotted off.
A few minutes passed, then the door of the library was flung violently
open, and Phyllis, half fainting, looking ghastly pale, and with a
‘scared-to-death’ appearance of face, rushed in and clung wildly to me.
‘What’s the matter, child; what’s the matter?’ I cried in alarm;
but she remained speechless. Moments, perhaps minutes, slipped by,
during which I kept urging her to speak. She found her voice at last
sufficient to jerk out in a breathless way:
‘Oh, pa, I’ve had such a fright. When I got up to the first landing
such a strange-looking man was standing there. I was about to ask him
what he was doing, when he raised his hand in a sort of warning way and
disappeared.’
I laughed, but it wasn’t a genuine laugh, and I pretended to speak
lightly, as I said:
‘My dear child, I’ve been over-working you and your poor tired brain
has seen visions. Come, let me take you upstairs to your room. You must
try and get a good night’s rest. You will be all right to-morrow.’
She gave me a look that was full of meaning. She said with her eyes
as plainly as possible, ‘Don’t try to turn it off in that way. I have
seen what I have seen.’ She had mastered her feelings by this time,
and though she spoke no words, she went upstairs with me until we
reached the first landing, which was lighted in the daytime by a long
stained-glass window. Edging a little closer to me, she whispered,
‘This was where I saw him.’
‘Nonsense, nonsense,’ I answered, though I was far from believing it
was nonsense, but I wanted to reassure her. I escorted her to her
door, saw that her lamp was burning, then kissed her good-night and
descended, and as I went down the last flight of stairs I turned
suddenly, for I was sure I heard footsteps. And close behind me was
a weird-looking man dressed in the costume of a gentleman of Charles
II.’s reign. He appeared to be about sixty-five years of age. Long,
grey, ringleted hair hung about his shoulders. His face wore an
expression of awful anguish.
For a moment I experienced a shock, but I quickly recovered myself and
tried to grasp him, but he was as unsubstantial as the air, and the
uncanniness of the whole business made me involuntarily shrink back.
Then he raised his hands, and drawing down the large lace collar from
his neck, he bared his throat, showing me a tremendous gash that had
severed the windpipe, and from which the blood seemed to pour in a
stream. It was a fearsome sight, I must confess, and I had never before
in the whole course of my existence experienced such an utterly ‘gone’
and helpless feeling as I did in the presence of that supernatural
visitant, and before I had pulled myself together, as the saying is,
the weird spectre raised his hand, pointed upward with an extended
finger, and in an instant had disappeared.
I returned to my library and flung myself into a chair, and I asked
myself seriously whether the incidents of the last quarter of an hour
were not the result of some morbid condition of my own brain. That is
to say, I was disposed to doubt whether my daughter had really rushed
pale and fainting into the room, as I have described, or whether it
wasn’t a figment of my own imagination. But here let me say that I had
always been regarded as an unimaginative person, with, as I have before
said, a scientific mind, which required hard, stern facts to convince
it. How was it then I had come to see visions?
I asked myself this question, and mentally argued the whole thing
out, trying to explain away the vision; but, firstly, there were the
mysterious hand and the sliding panel, and now here was a man of a
bygone age who had horrified me by showing me his throat gashed, and
rent, and bleeding.
I don’t know really how long I sat revolving the problem in my brain,
but I do know that I crept up to bed at last feeling terribly fagged
mentally and physically.
I slept far beyond my usual hour the following morning. My family had
already breakfasted, but Phyllis came and sat with me, and recounted
her previous night’s experiences. There was an unwonted paleness in her
pretty face and a scared look in her eyes. I felt it wise not to say
anything to her about what I myself had seen; but, moved by a sudden
impulse, I said I was going up to London by the next train and would
take her with me.
It was no unusual thing for me to be called away from home at a
moment’s notice, so that my wife was not surprised. Phyllis expressed
her delight at going, and two hours later we were seated in the up
express. On arriving at our destination, I quartered Phyllis at the
house of my sister, while I went to an hotel where I was in the habit
of staying when in town. The following day I called on an old and
esteemed medical friend--a man not only eminent as a physician, but
famous as an author of several erudite works dealing with all forms
of mental disease. I detailed the experiences of myself and daughter
to him, and he looked very grave and puzzled, but before venturing to
express any opinion he said he would like to see Phyllis. So I drove
off at once to my sister’s, and took Phyllis back with me, and without
entering into any particulars I simply remarked that I wanted the
doctor to see her. She expressed surprise by her face, but remained
silent. On arriving at the doctor’s house I requested her to tell him
what she had seen, which she did in a plain, intelligent way. My friend
appeared more than ever puzzled, and, having sent Phyllis out of the
room, he delivered himself somewhat as follows:
‘Well, now, my dear fellow, the facts of the case are these. Both you
and Phyllis are more impressionable than you imagine, and you have
gone through a great deal of excitement lately in connection with your
new quarters. Last night you overtaxed the girl’s brain, and what she
thought she saw was a pure fancy. Her sudden appearance in your room
in a state of nervous agitation, her story, her manner, made a great
impression on you, and what she told you she had seen suggested the
same thing to you.’
‘But how about the hand and the sliding panel?’ I asked.
‘The result also of a morbid condition of the mind,’ he answered.
‘Fancy, fancy, all fancy, my dear sir. Now you and Phyllis go and make
a little journey somewhere. A trip to the South of France, a month at
Monte Carlo, will do you all the good in the world.’
I left my friend’s house far from satisfied. I knew he was sincere in
his belief, but he was wrong in his diagnosis. Nevertheless, I began to
think of carrying out his suggestion and visiting the Riviera. No doubt
I should have done that if it hadn’t been for the fact that three days
later I received a telegram from home, summoning me back at once, as my
wife had been taken ill.
I began to fear now that Rislip was to prove a curse instead of a
blessing to me; and, depressed by an anxiety I had never known before,
I caught the next train out. Phyllis, of course, accompanied me, and
we reached Rislip about ten o’clock at night. I learnt that my wife
had had a fit. The cause nobody knew, but she told me. She had been
sitting in the dining-room alone, when she felt a draught as I had
done. Then to her horror she saw a deathly-white hand sliding the panel
back. Suddenly a quaintly-dressed man, with a haggard, anguished face,
appeared before her, and, baring his throat, displayed it gashed and
bleeding as he had done to me. She was conscious of uttering a loud,
shrill scream of terror. Then all was blank until she awoke to find a
doctor attending her.
As she finished telling me her story, she expressed great anxiety lest
her brain was giving way, and she only grew calm when I assured her
that I had seen what she had seen, and that Phyllis had also met the
ghostly man on the stairs. My medical friend’s theory would not now
hold water, because my wife had been ignorant of my own and Phyllis’s
experiences, so that she was not influenced by a recital which might
have set up a morbid set of conditions in her own brain.
Up to this time I had always regarded spiritualism so-called as
abominable quackery, and it always made me angry when I heard of the
antics and silly pranks which the spirits called up at the _séances_
the professional humbugs indulged in. But now I myself had seen a
spirit, my daughter had also seen it, and my wife had seen it. We all
three claimed to be people of common sense, free from morbid taint,
and not given to conjuring up bogeys out of every shadow that came
in our path. And yet it seemed to me that the spirit that had made
itself manifest unto us had behaved in a very idiotic way, for if it
had a grievance why did it try to frighten us all to death. Of course,
the matter was too serious to be pooh-poohed with a scornful laugh
and a sceptical toss of the head. The statement of three persons, not
quite fools, could not be ignored. I began to feel deeply interested
in the psychological problem that was suggested to me, and after much
cogitation I mentally asked myself whether the ghostly visitor had any
particular reason for pointing upward. Anyway, I was prompted to try
and find out, and made my way to the top of the house, where there was
a range of garrets. Here I began to pry about in a very inquisitive
way, and after long and patient searching for I knew not what, I
chanced to strike a portion of the wall in a back garret with a stick
I carried, and was rather astonished to find that it gave out a hollow
sound. I rapped it again. The same sound; but a yard on either side and
there was solidity.
I lost no time in getting the assistance of two of my men servants. I
simply told them that I had accidentally discovered what I believed
to be a door, and, prompted now more by curiosity than anything else,
I, with their help, tore off the paper, then a lining of canvas, then
more paper, till we got to some wood that had once been painted. Close
examination revealed that it was a door, and not without considerable
trouble we got it open, disclosing a deep recess. Lights were
procured, and from out the recess we dragged a heavy mass of dusty and
time-stained metal. It was apparently a bundle of lead rolled up. We
unrolled it, and brought to light a quantity of human bones, including
a singularly well preserved skull, to which a mass of hair still
adhered.
What my feelings were I will not attempt to describe. Of course the
servants were amazed. I sent them to their duties, again cautioning
them to say nothing at present of our find. My next step was to lodge
information with the county police, and in due course the inevitable
coroner’s inquiry was held, but elicited nothing beyond the medical
opinion that the bones must have been where they were found for
generations. Whose bones they were no one could even conjecture. Why
they had been wrapped in lead, and hidden in the secret cupboard was
no less inscrutable. The coroner’s jury could return but one verdict.
The remains were those of some person unknown, and how he had met his
death it was impossible to say. The bones were ordered to be buried in
consecrated ground, and with Christian burial, and that was done. At my
own expense I placed a slab over the grave, bearing this line:
‘Sacred to the memory of a stranger. Date of birth and death unknown.’
With the finding and burial of those bones the spectre of Rislip Abbey
departed, and troubled us no more.
Now, the story I have told you is a true one. There is the independent
testimony of my wife and daughter to corroborate mine. My theory is
that in some far-off time a brutal crime had been committed, and the
murdered man’s body had been rolled in a sheet of lead and thrust in
the secret closet; but while the murderers could confine his body they
could not confine his spirit. Though why, after so many generations had
passed, I should have been selected to bring the matter to light I know
not, and cannot even possibly suggest a theory, nor can the mystery
of the crime be cleared up. Who the murdered man was, and why he was
murdered, will never be known until the secrets of all hearts are
revealed in the burning light of the Judgment Day.
X
THE CAVE OF BLOOD
THE STORY OF A DOUBLE CRIME
On the south-west coast of the Principality of Wales stands a romantic
little village, inhabited chiefly by the poorer class of people,
consisting of small farmers and oyster dredgers, whose estates are the
wide ocean, and whose ploughs are the small craft in which they glide
over its interminable fields in search of the treasures which they
wring from its bosom. It is built on the very top of a hill, commanding
on one side a view of an immense bay, and on the other of the peaceful
green fields and valleys, cultivated by the greater number of its quiet
inhabitants. At the period of this story distinctions were unknown in
the village--every man was the equal of his neighbour.
But though rank and its unpolished distinctions were strange in the
village, the superiority of talent was felt and acknowledged almost
without a pause or a murmur. There was one who was as a king amongst
them, by the mere force of a mightier spirit than those with whom he
sojourned had been accustomed to feel among them. He was a dark and
moody man--a stranger--evidently of a higher order than those around
him, who had but a few months before, without any apparent object,
settled among them. Where he came from no one knew. He was a mystery,
and evidently knew how to keep his secrets to himself. He was not
rich, but followed no occupation. He lived frugally, but quite alone,
and his sole employments were to read during the day and wander out,
unaccompanied, into the fields or by the beach during the night. He was
a strange, silent, fearsome sort of man, with a certain uncanniness in
his appearance that commanded respect no less than fear. It soon became
a common belief that this man possessed miraculous powers, not only as
a healer of human ailments, but as a prophet. It was, therefore, not to
be wondered at that in that little community of simple fisher-folk he
was looked up to as a superior being, who not only held the power of
life and death in his hands, but was able to draw aside the veil that
screened the future.
Sometimes he would relieve a suffering child or rheumatic old man by
medicinal herbs, reprove idleness and drunkenness in the youth, and
predict to all the good and evil consequences of their conduct. And in
his success in some cases, his foresight in others, and his wisdom in
all, won for him a high reputation among the cottagers, to which his
taciturn habits contributed not a little, for, with the vulgar as with
the educated, no talker was ever seriously taken for a magician, though
a silent man is often decided to be a wise one.
There was but one person at all disposed to rebel against the despotic
sovereignty which John Morgan--such was the name he chose to be known
by--was silently establishing over the quiet village, and that was
precisely the person most likely to effect a revolution. She was a
beautiful young woman, the glory and boast of the village, who had been
the favourite of, and to a certain degree educated by, the late lady
of the manor; but the lady had died, and her _protégée_, with a full
consciousness of her intellectual superiority, had returned to her
native village, where she determined to have an empire of her own which
no rival should dispute. She laughed at the girls and women folk who
listened to the predictions of Morgan, and she refused her smiles to
the young men who consulted him upon their affairs and their prospects;
and as the beautiful Ruth was generally beloved, the silent Morgan was
soon in danger of being abandoned by all save doting men and paralytic
women, and feeling himself an outcast in the village.
But it was soon made clear that Morgan had no intention of allowing
pretty Ruth to oust him from his position. He had essayed to rule
the village, and he was resolved to retain his hold over the people.
He knew, too, that from another point of view this ascendency was
necessary to his purposes, and as he had failed to establish it by
wisdom and benevolence, he determined to try the effect of fear. The
character of the people with whom he sojourned was admirably calculated
to assist his projects. His predictions were now uttered more clearly,
and his threats denounced in sterner tones and stronger and plainer
words, and when he predicted that old William Williams, who had been
stricken with the palsy, would die at the turn of the tide, three
days from that on which he spoke, and that the light little boat of
gay Griffy Morris, which sailed from the Bay on a bright winter’s
morning, would never again make the shore--the man died, and the storm
arose, even as he said--men’s hearts died within them, and they bowed
down before his words, as if he had been their general fate and the
individual destiny of each.
Ruth’s beautiful face grew pale for a moment as she heard of these
things; in the next her spirit returned, and she told some friend that
she was going to Morgan to have her fortune told, and she would prove
to everyone that he was an impostor. She had no difficulty in getting
up a party of young men and women to accompany her, and she set off for
Morgan’s house with the avowed intention of ‘unmasking and humiliating
him.’ It was rather remarkable, seeing that the man had never done her
any harm, that she should have taken such a prejudice against him.
When they reached his residence they made it very evident that they
intended to insult him. They made jests at his expense, and rudely
and satirically alluded to his professed powers of prophecy. Had Ruth
been more observant and less self-conscious, she could not have failed
to note that Morgan was far removed above the common-place, and was
possessed of mental powers far above anyone else in the village. He
was greatly annoyed by her insulting manner and intentional rudeness,
but he concealed his feelings, though he silently resolved to humble
her pride. ‘I will make him tell my fortune,’ she said. His credit
was at stake; he must daunt his enemy, or surrender to her power; he
foretold sorrows and joys to the listening throng, and he made one of
the young men present and Ruth herself feel exceedingly uncomfortable
by revealing a secret which they themselves thought no human soul knew
beside themselves. Then for the first time Ruth began to think she had
made a mistake, and had underrated her opponent. Nevertheless, her
self-possession did not desert her, and in an easy, flippant manner,
in which there was a challenge as well as a sneer, she bade him read
her future. Morgan remained silent for some moments, and steadily
gazed at her. He had a large book before him, which he opened, shut,
opened again, and again looked sadly and fearfully upon her; she tried
to smile, but felt startled--she knew not why; the bright, inquiring
glance of her dark eye could not change Morgan’s manner. Her smile
could not melt, nor even temper, the hardness of his deep-seated
malice; he again looked sternly, and then coldly uttered these slow,
soul-withering words, ‘Woman, you are doomed to be a murderess!’ At
first she sneered at his prediction, and then laughed at him; but with
greater solemnity, and speaking as if he were inspired, he exclaimed,
‘I tell you, Ruth, you will become a murderess! I see blood upon your
hands and blood upon your face, and the black stain of awful guilt upon
your immortal soul.’
Her arrogance was subdued, her haughty spirit overcome, and with
something liked a groan she hurried away. But from that day she found
that she was a marked woman. The superstitious villagers shunned her,
and she became, as it were, an outcast.
Abhorring Morgan, she yet felt drawn towards him, and while she sat
by his side felt as if he alone could avert the evil destiny which he
himself had foretold. With him only was she seen to smile; elsewhere,
sad, silent, stern; it seemed as if she were ever occupied in nerving
her mind for that which she had to do, and she grew melancholy and
morbid.
But there were moments when her naturally strong spirit, not yet
wholly subdued, struggled against her conviction, and endeavoured to
find modes of averting her fate; it was in one of these, perhaps, that
she gave her hand to a wooer, from a distant part of the country, a
mariner, who either had not heard or did not regard the prediction,
upon condition that he should remove her far from her native village
to the home of his family and friends, for she sometimes felt as if
the decree which had gone forth against her could not be fulfilled
except upon the spot where she had heard it, and that her heart would
be lighter if men’s eyes would again look upon her in kindliness and
she no longer sat beneath the glare of those that knew so well the
secret of her soul. Thus thinking, she quitted the village with her
husband; and the tormentor, who had poisoned her repose, soon after
her departure, left the village as secretly and as suddenly as he had
entered it.
But, though Ruth could depart from his corporeal presence, and look
upon his cruel visage no more, yet the eye of her soul was fixed upon
his shadow, and his airy form, the creation of her sorrow, still
sat by her side; the blight that he had breathed upon her peace had
withered her heart, and it was in vain that she sought to forget or
banish the recollection from her brain. Men and women smiled upon her
as before in the days of her joy, the friends of her husband welcomed
her to their bosoms, but they could give no peace to her heart; she
shrunk from their friendship, she shivered equally at their neglect,
she dreaded any cause that might lead to that which, it had been said,
she must do; nightly she sat alone and thought, she dwelt upon the
characters of those around her, and shuddered that in some she saw
violence and selfishness enough to cause injury, which she might be
supposed to resent to blood. Against the use of actual violence she had
disabled herself; she had never struck a blow--her small hand would
have suffered injury in the attempt; she did not understand the use of
firearms, she was ignorant of what were poisons, and a knife she never
allowed herself, even for the most necessary purposes. How, then, could
she slay? At times she took comfort from thoughts like these, and at
others she was plunged in the darkness of despair.
Her husband went forth to and returned from the voyages which made
up the avocation and felicity of his life, without noticing the
deep-rooted sorrow of his wife. He was a common man, and of a common
mind; his eye had not seen the awful beauty of her whom he had chosen;
his spirit had not felt her power; and, if he had marked, he would not
have understood her grief; so she ministered to him as a duty. She was
a silent and obedient wife, but she saw him come home without joy,
and witnessed his departure without regret; he neither added to nor
diminished her sorrow. But destiny had one solitary blessing in store
for the victim of its decrees--a child was born to the hapless Ruth, a
lovely little girl soon slept upon her bosom, and, coming as it did,
the one lone and lovely rosebud in her desolate garden, she welcomed it
with a kindlier hope.