When the rumours first began, I can't tell you. They must have had a
beginning: but no one recollected when the beginning was. It was said
that curious noises were heard in the neighbourhood of Sandstone Torr.
One spoke of it, and another spoke of it, at intervals of perhaps a
month apart, until people grew _accustomed_ to hearing of the strange
sounds that went shrieking round the Torr on a windy night. Dovey, the
blacksmith, going up to the Torr on some errand, declared he had heard
them at mid-day: but he was not generally believed.
The Torr was so remote from the ordinary routes of traffic, that the
noises were not likely to be heard often, even allowing that there were
noises to hear. Shut in by trees, and in a lonely spot, people had no
occasion to pass it. The narrow lane, by which it was approached from
Church Dykely, led to nowhere else; on other sides it was surrounded
by fields. Stephen Radcliffe was asked about these noises; but he
positively denied having heard any, except those caused by the wind.
_That_ shrieked around the house as if so many witches were at work, he
said, and it always had as long as he could remember. Which was true.
Stephen's inheritance of all the money on the death of his young
half-brother Francis--young, compared with him--seemed to have been
only the signal for him and his wife to become more unsociable, and
they were bad enough before. They shut themselves up in the Torr,
with that sister of hers, Eunice Gibbon, who acted as their servant,
and saw no one. Neither visitors nor tradespeople were encouraged
there; they preferred to live without help from any one: butcher or
baker or candlestick maker. The produce of the farm supplied ordinary
daily needs, and anything else that might be wanted was fetched from
the village by Eunice Gibbon--as tall and strapping a woman as Mrs.
Stephen, and just as grim and silent. Even the postman had orders to
leave any letters that might arrive, addressed to the Torr, at Church
Dykely post-office to be called for. Possibly it was a sense of their
own unfitness for society that caused them to keep aloof from it.
Stephen Radcliffe had always been a sullen, boorish man, in spite of
his descent from the ancient Druids--or whatever the high-caste tribes
might be, that he traced back from; and as to his wife, she was just
as much like a lady as a pig's like a windmill.
The story of the queer noises gained ground, and in the course of time
it coursed about pretty freely. One evening in the late spring--but the
report had been abroad then for months and months--a circumstance caused
it to be discussed at Dyke Manor. Giles, our groom, strolling out one
night to give himself an airing, chanced to get near the Torr, and came
home full of it. "Twere exactly," he declared, "like a lot o' witches
howling in the air." Just as Stephen Radcliffe had said of the wind.
The Squire told Giles it must be the owls; the servants thought Mr.
Radcliffe might be giving his wife a beating; Mrs. Todhetley imagined it
might be only the bleating of the young lambs. Giles protested it could
come from neither owls nor lambs: and as to Radcliffe's beating 'Becca,
he'd be hardly likely to try it on, for she'd beat back again. Tod and
I were at school, and heard nothing of it till we got home in summer.
* * * * *
"Johnny! There's the noise!"
We two had been over to the Court to see the Sterlings; it was only the
second day of our holidays; and were taking the cross-cut home through
the fields, which led us past Sandstone Torr. It was the twilight of a
summer's evening. The stars were beginning to show themselves; in the
north-west the colours were the most beautiful opal conceivable; the
round silver moon sailed in the clear blue sky. Crossing the stile by
the grove of trees that on three sides surrounded the Torr, we had
reached the middle of the next field, when a sort of faint wailing cry,
indescribably painful, brought us both to a standstill.
"It must be the noise they talk of," repeated Tod.
Where did it come from? What was it? Standing on the path in the centre
of the open field, we turned about and gazed around; but could see
nothing to produce or cause it. It seemed to be overhead, ever so far
up in the air: an unearthly, imploring cry, or rather a succession of
cries; faint enough, as if the sound spent itself before it reached us,
but still distinct; and just as much like what witches might be supposed
to make, witches in pain, as any cries could be. I'd have given a
month's pocket-money not to have heard it.
"Is it in the Torr?" exclaimed Tod, breaking the silence. "I don't see
how that could be, though."
"It is up in the air, Tod."
We stood utterly puzzled; and gazing at the Torr. At as much of it, at
least, as could be seen--the tops of the chimneys, and the sugar-loaf
of a tower shooting up to its great height amidst them. The windows of
the house and its old stone walls, on which the lichen vegetated, were
hidden by the clustering old trees, in full foliage then.
"Hark! There it is again!"
The same horrible, low, distressing sound, something between a howl and
a wail; enough to make a stout man shiver in his shoes.
"Is it a woman's cry, Tod?"
"_I_ don't know, lad. It's like a person being murdered and crying out
for help."
"Radcliffe can't be tanning his wife."
"Not he, Johnny. She'd take care of that. Besides, they've never been
cat-and-dog. Birds of a feather: that's what they are. Oh, by Jove!
there it comes again! Just listen to it! I don't like this at all,
Johnny. It must be witches, and nothing else."
Decidedly it must be. It came from the air. The open fields lay around,
white and still under the moonlight, and nothing was on their surface of
any kind, human or animal. Now again! that awful cry, rising on the bit
of breeze there was, and dying away in pain to a faint echo.
"Let us go to the Torr, Johnny, and ask Radcliffe if he hears it!"
We bounded forward under the cry, which rose again and again
incessantly; but in nearing the house it seemed to get further off and
to be higher than ever in the air. Leaping the gate into the lane, we
reached the front-door, and seized the bell-handle. It brought Mrs.
Radcliffe; a blue cap and red roses adoring her straggling hair. Holding
the candle above her head, she peered at us with her small, sly eyes.
"Oh, is it you, young gentlemen? Do you want anything? Will you walk
in?"
I was about to say No, when Tod pushed me aside and strode up the damp
stone passage. They did not make fires enough in the house to keep out
the damp. As he told me afterwards, he wanted to get in to listen. But
there was no sound at all to be heard; the house seemed as still as
death. Wherever the cries might come from, it was certainly not from
inside the Torr.
"Radcliffe went over to Wire-Piddle this afternoon, and he's not back
yet," she said; opening the parlour-door when we got to the hall. "Did
you want him? You must ha' been in a hurry by the way you pulled the
bell."
She put the candle down on the table. Her work lay there--a brown
woollen stocking about half-way knitted.
"There is the most extraordinary noise outside that you ever heard, Mrs.
Radcliffe," began Todd, seating himself without ceremony on the
old-fashioned mahogany sofa. "It startled us. Did you hear it in here?"
"I have heard no noise at all," she answered quietly, taking up the
stocking and beginning to knit standing. "What was it like?"
"An awful shrieking and crying. Not loud; nearly faint enough for dying
cries. As it is not in your house--and we did not think it was, or could
be--it must be, I should say, in the air."
"Ay," she said, "just so. I can tell you what it is, Mr. Joseph: the
night-birds."
Tod looked at her, plying the knitting-needles so quickly, and looked
at me, and there was a silence. I wondered what was keeping him from
speaking. He suddenly bent his head forward.
"Have you heard any talk of these noises, Mrs. Radcliffe? People say
they are to be heard almost any night."
"I've not heard no talk, but I have heard the noise," she answered,
whisking out a needle and beginning another of the three-cornered rows.
"One evening about a month ago I was a-coming home up the lane, and I
hears a curious kind o' prolonged cry. It startled me at the moment,
for, thinks I, it must be in this house; and I hastens in. No. Eunice
said she had heard no cries: as how should she, when there was nobody
but herself indoors? So I goes out again, and listens," added Mrs.
Radcliffe, lifting her eyes from the stocking and fixing them on Tod,
"and then I finds out what it really was--the night-birds."
"The night-birds?" he echoed.
"'Twas the night-birds, Mr. Joseph," she repeated, with an emphatic nod.
"They had congregated in these thick trees, and was crying like so many
human beings. I have heard the same thing many a time in Wiltshire when
I was a girl. I used to go there to stay with aunt and uncle."
"Well, I never heard anything like it before," returned Tod. "It's just
as though some unquiet spirit was in the air."
"Mayhap it sounds so afore you know what it is. Let me give you young
gentlemen a drop o' my home-made cowslip wine."
She had taken the decanter of wine and some glasses off the sideboard
with her long arms, before we could say Yes or No. We are famous for
cowslip wine down there, but this was extra good. Tod took another glass
of it, and got up to go.
"Don't be frighted if you hear the noise again, now that you know what
it is," she said, quite in a motherly way. "For my part I wish some o'
the birds was shot. They don't do no good to nobody."
"As there is not any house about here, except this, the thought
naturally arises that the noise may be inside it--until you know to the
contrary," remarked Tod.
"I wish it was inside it--we'd soon stop it by wringing all their
necks," cried she. "You can listen," she added, suddenly going into the
hall and flinging wide every door that opened from it and led to the
different passages and rooms. "Go to any part of the house you like, and
hearken for yourselves, young gentlemen."
Tod laughed at the suggestion. The passages were all still and cold, and
there was nothing to hear. Taking up the candle, she lighted us to the
front-door. Outside stood the woman-servant Eunice, a basket on her arm,
and just about to ring, Mrs. Radcliffe inquired if she had heard any
noise.
"Only the shrieking birds up there," she answered readily. "They be in
full cry to-night."
"They've been startling these gentlemen finely."
"There bain't nothing to be startled at," said the woman, roughly,
turning a look of contempt upon us. "If I was the master I'd shoot as
many as I could get at; and if that didn't get rid of 'em, I'd cut the
trees down."
"They make a queerer noise than any birds I ever heard before," said
Tod, standing his ground to say it.
"They does," assented the woman. "That queer, that some folks believes
it's the shrieks o' the skeleton on the gibbet."
Pleasant! When I and Tod had to pass within a few yards of its corner.
The posts of the old gibbet were there still, but the skeleton had
mouldered away long ago. A bit of chain, some few inches long, adhered
to its fastening in the post still, and rattled away on windy nights.
"What donkeys we were, Johnny, not to know birds' cries when we heard
them!" exclaimed Tod, as we tumbled over the gate and went flying across
the field. "Hark! Listen! There it is again!"
There it was. The same despairing sort of wail, faintly rising and dying
on the air. Tod stood in hushed silence.
"Johnny, I believe that's a human cry!--I could almost fancy," he went
on, "that it is speaking words. No bird, that ever I met with, native or
foreign, could make the like."
It died away. But still occurred the obvious question, What was it, and
where did it come from? With nothing but the empty air above and around
us, that was difficult to answer.
"It's not in the trees--I vow it," said Tod; "it's not inside the Torr;
it can't rise up from under the ground. I say, Johnny, is it a case of
ghost?"
The wailing arose again as he spoke, as if to reprove him for his
levity. I'd rather have met a ghost; ay, and a real ghost; than have
carried away that sound to haunt me.
We tore home as fast as our heels could take us, and told of the night's
adventure. After the pater had blown us up for being late, he treated us
to a dose of ridicule. Human cries, indeed? Ghosts and witches? I might
be excused, he said, being a muff; but Joe must be just going back to
his childhood. That settled Tod. Of all disagreeable things he most
hated to be ridiculed.
"It must have been the old birds in those trees, after all, Johnny,"
said he, as we went up to bed. "I think the moon makes people fanciful."
And after a sound night's rest we woke up to the bright sunshine, and
thought no more of the cries.
That morning, being close to Pitchley's Farm, we called in to see Mrs.
Frank Radcliffe. But she was not to be seen. Her brother, David Skate,
just come in to his mid-day dinner, came forward to meet us in his
fustian suit. Annet had been hardly able to keep about for some time, he
said, but this was the first day she had regularly broken down so as to
be in bed.
"It has brought on a touch of fever," said he, pressing the
bread-and-cheese and cider upon us, which he had ordered in.
"What has?" asked Tod.
"This perpetual torment that she keeps her mind in. But she can't help
it, poor thing, so it's not fair to blame her," added David Skate. "It
grows worse instead of better, and I don't see what the end of it is to
be. I've thought for some time she might go and break up to-day."
"Why to-day?"
"Because it is the anniversary of her husband's death, Master Johnny. He
died twelve months ago to-day."
Back went my memory to the morning we heard of it. When the pater was
scolding Dwarf Giles in the yard, and Tod stood laughing at the young
ducks taking to the water, and Stephen Radcliffe loomed into sight,
grim and surly, to disclose to us the tidings that the post had brought
in--his brother Frank's death.
"Has she still that curious fancy in her, David?--that he did not come
by his death fairly."
"She has it in her, and she can't get it out of her," returned David.
"Why, Master Johnny, it's nothing but that that's killing her. Ay, and
that's not too strong a word, sir, for I do believe she'll die of it,
unless something can be done to satisfy her mind, and give her rest," he
added earnestly. "She thinks there was foul play used in some way, and
that Stephen Radcliffe was at the bottom of it."
We had never heard a word about the fancy since that night when Annet
first spoke of it at the stile, and supposed she had forgotten it long
ago. The Squire and Mrs. Todhetley had often noticed how ill she looked,
but they put it down to grief for Francis and to her anxiety about the
farm.
"No, she has said no more since then," observed David. "She took up an
idea that the Squire ascribed it to a wandering brain; and so has held
her peace since."
"Is her brain wandering, do you think?" asked Tod.
"Well, I don't know," returned David, absently making little cuts at
the edge of the cheese with the knife. "In all other respects she is as
sane as sane can be; there's not a woman of sounder sense, as to daily
matters, anywhere. But this odd fancy has got hold of her mind; and it's
just driving her crazy. She says that her husband appears to her in her
dreams, and calls upon her to help and release him."
"Release him from what? From his grave in Finchley Cemetery?"
"From what indeed!" echoed David Skate. "That's what I ask her. But she
persists that, sleeping or waking, his spirit is always hovering near
her, crying out to her to avenge him. She declares that it is no fancy.
Of course it is, though."
"I never met with such a case," said Tod, forgetting the good cider in
his astonishment. "Frank Radcliffe died up at Dr. Dale's in London.
Stephen could not have had anything to do with his death: he was down
here at the time."
"Well, Annet has the notion firmly fixed in her mind that he had, and
there's no turning her," said David. "There will be no turning her this
side the grave, unless we can free her from it. Any way, the fancy has
come to such a pitch now, and is telling upon her so seriously, that
something must be done. If it were not that just the busiest time has
set in; the hay cut, and the wheat a'most ready to cut, I'd take her to
London to Dr. Dale's. Perhaps if she heard the account of Frank's death
from his own lips, and that it was a natural death, it might help her a
bit."
We went home full of this. The Squire was in a fine way when he heard
it, and brimming over with pity for Annet. He had grown to like her; and
he had always looked on Francis as in some degree belonging to him.
"Look here," said he, in his impulsive good nature, "it will never do to
let this go on: we shall have her in a mad-house too. That's not a bad
notion of David Skate's; and if he can't leave to take her up to London
just now, I'll take her."
"She could not go," said Tod. "She is in bed with low fever."
"Then I'll go up by myself," stamped the Squire in his zeal. "And get
Dr. Dale to write out all the particulars, and hurry down again with
them to her as fast as the train will bring me. Poor thing! her disease
must be a sort of mania."
* * * * *
"Now, Johnny, mind you don't make a mistake in the omnibus. Use your
eyes; they are younger than mine."
We were standing at Charing Cross in the hot afternoon sun, looking out
for an omnibus that would take us westward. The Squire had lost no time
in starting for London, and we had reached it an hour before. He let me
come up with him, as Tod had gone to Whitney Hall.
"Here it is, sir. 'Kensington,--Hammersmith,--Richmond.' This is the
right one."
The omnibus stopped, and in we got; for the Squire said the sun was too
fierce for the outside; and by-and-by, when the houses became fewer, and
the trees and fields more frequent, we were set down near Dr. Dale's. A
large house, standing amidst a huge grass-plat, shut in by iron gates.
"I want to see Dr. Dale," said the pater, bustling in as soon as the
door was opened, without waiting to be asked.
The servant looked at him and then at me; as if he thought the one or
the other of us was a lunatic about to be left there. "This way, sir,"
said he to the Squire and put us into a small square room that had a
blue and drab carpet, and a stand of plants before the window. A little
man, with deep-set dark eyes, and the hair all gone from the top of his
head, soon made his appearance--Dr. Dale.
The Squire plunged into explanations in his usual confusing fashion,
mixing up many things together. Dr. Dale knitted his brow, trying to
make sense of it.
"I'm sure I should be happy to oblige you in any way," said he--and he
seemed to be a very pleasant man. "But I do not quite understand what it
is you ask of me."
"Such a dreadful thing, you know, if she has to be put in a mad-house
too!" went on the pater. "A pretty, anxious, hard-working little
woman she is, as ever you saw, Dr. Dale! We think the account in your
handwriting might ease her. I hope you won't mind the trouble."
"The account of what?" asked the doctor.
"Only this," explained the Squire, laying hold, in his zeal, of the
doctor's button-hole. "Just dot down the particulars of Francis
Radcliffe's death. His death here, you know. I suppose you were an
eye-witness to it."
"But, my good sir, I--pardon me--I must repeat that I do not understand.
Francis Radcliffe did not die here. He went away a twelvemonth ago,
cured."
"Goodness bless me!" cried the Squire, staggering back to a chair when
he had fully taken in the sense of the words, and staring about him like
a real maniac. "It cannot be. I must have come to the wrong place."
"This is Dale House, and I am Dr. Dale. Mr. Francis Radcliffe was
under my charge for some months: I can't tell exactly how many without
referring to my books; seven or eight, I think; and he then left, cured,
or nearly so."
"Johnny, hand me my handkerchief; it's in my hat. I can't make top or
tail of this."
"I did not advise his removal," continued Dr. Dale, who, I do believe,
thought the Squire was bad enough for a patient. "He was very nearly,
if not quite well, but another month here would have established his
recovery on a sure basis. However, his brother insisted on removing him,
and I had no power to prevent it."
"What brother?" cried the Squire, rubbing his head helplessly.
"Mr. Radcliffe, of Sandstone Torr."
"Johnny, I think we must all be dreaming. Radcliffe of the Torr got a
letter from you one morning, doctor--in June, I think; yes, I remember
the hay-making was about--saying Francis had died; here in this house,
with you: and bidding him come up to see you about it."
"I never wrote any such letter. Francis Radcliffe did not die here."
"Well, it was written for you by one of your people. Not die! Why, you
held a coroner's inquest on him! You buried him in Finchley Cemetery."
"Nothing of the sort, Mr. Todhetley. Francis Radcliffe was taken from
this house, by his brother, last June, alive and well."
"Well I never!--this beats everything. Was he not worn away to a
skeleton before he went?--had he not heart disease?--did he not die of
effusion on the brain?" ran on the Squire, in a maze of bewilderment.
"He was thin certainly: patients in asylums generally are; but he could
not be called a skeleton; I never knew that he had heart disease. As to
dying, he most assuredly did not die here."
"I do think I must be lost," cried the Squire. "I can't find any way
out of this. Can you let me see Mr. Pitt, your head assistant, doctor?
Perhaps he can throw some light on it. It was Pitt who wrote the letter
to Mr. Radcliffe."
"You should see him with pleasure if he were still with me," replied the
doctor. "But he has left."
"And Frank did not die here!" commented the Squire. "What can be the
meaning of it?"
The meaning was evidently not to be found there. Dr. Dale said he could
tell us no more than he had told, if he talked till night--that Francis
Radcliffe was taken out by his brother. Stephen paid all charges at the
time, and they went away together.
"And of course, Johnny, he is to be believed," quoth the pater, turning
himself round and round on the grass-plot, as we were going away, like a
teetotum. "Dale would not deceive us: he could have no object in doing
that. What in the world does it all mean?--and where _is_ Francis? Ste
Radcliffe can't have shipped him off to Canada with the wheelbarrows!"
How the Squire whirled straight off to the train, finding one on the
point of starting, and got down home again, there's no space to tell of.
It was between eight and nine, as the station clock told him, but he was
in too much excitement to let the matter rest.
"Come along, Johnny. I'll have it out with Stephen before I sleep."
And they had it out in that same gloomy parlour at the Torr, where Tod
and I had been a night or two before; frightfully gloomy to-night, for
the dusk was drawing on, and hardly a bit of light came in. The Squire
and Stephen, sitting opposite each other, could not see the outline of
one another's faces. Ste brazened it out.
"You're making a hullabaloo for nothing," said he, doggedly. "No, it's
true he didn't die at the mad-house; he died within a week of coming
out of it. Why didn't I tell the truth about it? Why, because I knew I
should get a heap o' blame thrown back at me for taking him out--and I
wished I hadn't took him out; but 'twas no good wishing then. How was
I to know that the very self-same hour he'd got his liberty, he would
begin drinking again?--and drink himself into a furious fever, and
die of it? Could I bring him to life again, do you suppose?"
"What was the meaning of that letter you brought to me, purporting to
come from Dr. Dale? Answer that, Stephen Radcliffe."
"I didn't bring you a letter from Dr. Dale. 'Twas from Pitt; Dr. Dale's
head man. You read it yourself. When I found that Frank was getting
unmanageable at the lodgings, I sent to Pitt, asking if he'd be good
enough to come and see to him--I knew no other doctor up there; and Pitt
was the best I could have, as he understood his case. Pitt came and took
the charge; and I left Frank under him. I couldn't afford to stay up
there, with my grass waiting to be cut, and all the fine weather wasting
itself away. Pitt stayed with him; and he died in Pitt's arms; and it
was Pitt that wrote the letter to tell me of it. You should ha' gone up
with me, Squire," added Stephen, with a kind of sneer, "and then you'd
have seen where he was for yourself, and known as much as I did."
"It was an infamous deceit to put upon me, Stephen Radcliffe."
"It did no harm. The deceit only lay in letting you think he died in the
mad-house instead of out of it. If I'd not thought he was well enough to
come out, I shouldn't have moved him. 'Twas his fault," sullenly added
Stephen. "He prayed me to take him away from the place; not to go away
without him."
"And where was it that he did die?"
"At my lodgings."
"What lodgings?"
"The lodgings I stayed at while I was shipping off the things to Tom. I
took Frank there, intending to bring him down home with me when I came,
and surprise you all. Before I could come he was drinking, and as mad
again as a March hare. Pitt had to strap him down to his bed."
"Are you sure you did not ship him off to Tom also, while you were
shipping the things?" demanded the Squire. "I believe you are crafty
enough for it, Stephen Radcliffe--and unbrotherly enough."
"If I'd shipped him off, he could have shipped himself back again, I
take it," returned Stephen, coolly.
"Where are these lodgings that he died at?"
"In London."
"Whereabouts in London? I didn't suppose they were in New York."
"'Twas near Cow Cross."
"Cow Cross! Where in the name of wonder is Cow Cross?"
"Up towards Smithfield. Islington way."
"You give me the address, Stephen Radcliffe. I insist upon knowing it.
Johnny, you can see--take it down. If I don't verify this matter to my
satisfaction, Mr. Radcliffe, I'll have you up publicly to answer for
it."
Stephen took an old pocket-book out of his coat, went to the window to
catch what little light came in, and ran his finger down the leaves.
"Gibraltar Terrace, Islington district," read he. "That was all the
address I ever knew it by."
"Gibraltar Terrace, Islington district," repeated the pater. "Take it
down, Johnny--here's the back of an old letter. And now, Mr. Radcliffe,
will you go with me to London?"
"No. I'll be hanged if I do."
"I mean to come to the bottom of this, I can tell you. You shan't play
these tricks on honest people with impunity."
"Why, what do you suspect?" roared Stephen. "Do you think I murdered
him?"
"I'm sure I don't know what you did," retorted the pater. "Find out a
man in one lie, and you may suspect him of others. What was the name of
the people, at these lodgings?"
Stephen Radcliffe, sitting down again, put his hands on his knees,
apparently considering; but I saw him take an outward glance at the
Squire from under his grey eyebrows--very grey and bushy they were now.
He could see that for once in his life the pater was resolute.
"Her name was Mapping," he said. "A widow. Mrs. Mapping."
"Put that down, Johnny. 'Mrs. Mapping, Gibraltar Terrace, Islington
district.' And now, Mr. Radcliffe, where is Pitt to be found? He has
left Dale House."
"In the moon, for aught I can tell," was the insolent answer. "I paid
him for his attendance when we came back from the funeral--and precious
high his charges were!--and I know nothing of him since."
We said good-night to Stephen Radcliffe with as much civility as could
be called up under the circumstances, and went home in the fly. The
next day we steamed up to London again to make inquiries at Gibraltar
Terrace. It was not that the Squire exactly doubted Stephen's word, or
for a moment thought that he had dealt unfairly by Frank: nothing of
that sort: but he was in a state of explosion at the deceit Stephen
Radcliffe had practised on him; and needed to throw the anger off. Don't
we all know how unbearable inaction is in such a frame of mind?
Well. Up one street, down another, went we, in what Stephen had called
the Islington district, but no Gibraltar Terrace could we see or hear
of. The terrace might have been in Gibraltar itself, for all the sign
there was of it.
"I'll go down to-morrow, and issue a warrant against Ste Radcliffe,"
cried the Squire, when we got in, tired and heated, to the Castle and
Falcon--at which inn, being convenient to the search, he had put up. "I
will, Johnny, as I'm a living man. It is infamous to send us up here on
a wild-goose chase, to a place that has no name, and no existence. I
don't like the aspect of things at all; and he shall be made to explain
them."
"But I suppose we have not looked in all parts of Islington," I said.
"It seems a large place. And--don't you think, sir--that it might be as
well to ascertain where Pitt is? I dare say Dr. Dale knows."
"Perhaps it, would, Johnny."
"Pitt would be able to testify to the truth of what Stephen Radcliffe
says. We might hear it all from him."
"And need not bother further about this confounded Gibraltar Terrace.
The thought did not strike me before, Johnny. We'll go up to Dale's the
first thing after breakfast."
The Squire chartered a cab: he was in too much of a fever to look out
for an omnibus: and by ten o'clock Dr. Dale's was reached. The doctor
was not at home, but we saw some one that the servant called Mr.
Lichfield.
"Pitt?" said Mr. Lichfield--who was a tall, strong young man in a tweed
suit of clothes, and had black hair parted down the middle--"Oh, he was
my predecessor here. He has left."
"Where's he gone?" asked the Squire.
"I don't know, I'm sure. Dr. Dale does not know; for I have once or
twice heard him wonder what had become of Pitt. Pitt grew rather
irregular in his habits, I fancy, and the doctor discharged him."
"How long ago?"
"About a year, I think. I have not the least idea where Pitt is now:
would be happy to tell you if I knew."
So, there we were again--baffled. The Squire went back in the cab to
the Castle and Falcon, rubbing his face furiously, and giving things in
general a few hard words.
Up to Islington again, and searching up and down the streets and roads.
A bright thought took the pater. He got a policeman to show him to the
district sorting-house, went in, and inquired whether such a place as
Gibraltar Terrace existed, or whether it did not.
Yes. There was one. But it was not in Islington; only on the borders of
it.
Away we went, after getting the right direction, and found it. A terrace
of poor houses, in a quiet side-street. In nearly every other window
hung a card with "Lodgings" on it, or "Apartments." Children played in
the road: two men with a truck were crying mackerel.
"I say, Johnny, these houses all look alike. What is the number we
want?"
"Stephen Radcliffe did not give any number."
"Bless my heart! We shall have to knock at every one of them."
And so he did. Every individual door he knocked at, one after the other,
asking if Mrs. Mapping lived there. At the very last house of all we
found her. A girl, whose clothes were dilapidated enough to have come
down from Noah's Ark, got up from her knees, on which she was cleaning
the door-flag, and told us to go into the parlour while she called Mrs.
Mapping. It was a tidy threadbare room, not much bigger than a closet,
with "Lodgings" wafered to the middle pane of the window.
Mrs. Mapping came in: a middle-aged, washed-out lady, with pink cheeks,
who looked as if she didn't have enough to eat. She thought we had come
after the lodgings, and stood curtsying, and rubbing her hands down her
black-silk apron--which was in slits. Apparently a "genteel" person who
had seen better days. The Squire opened the ball, and her face took a
puzzled look as she listened.
"Radcliffe?--Radcliffe?" No, she did not recollect any lodger of the
name. But then, nine times out of ten, she did not know the names of
her lodgers. She didn't want to know them. Why should she? If the
gentlemen's names came out incidental, well and good; if not, she never
presumed to inquire after them. She had not been obliged to let lodgings
always.
"But this gentleman died here--_died_, ma'am," interrupted the Squire,
pretty nearly beside himself with impatience. "It's about twelve months
ago."
"Oh, that gentleman," she said. "Yes, he did die here, poor young man.
The doctor--yes, his name was Pitt, sir--he couldn't save him. Drink,
that was the cause, I'm afeard."
The Squire groaned--wishing all drink was at the bottom of the Thames.
"And he was buried in Finchley Cemetery, ma'am, we hear?"
"Finchley? Well, now yes, I believe it was Finchley, sir," replied Mrs.
Mapping, considering--and I could see the woman was speaking the truth
according to her recollection. "The burial fees are low at Finchley,
sir."
"Then he did die here, ma'am--Mr. Francis Radcliffe?"
"Sure enough he did, sir. And a sad thing it was, one young like him.
But whether his name was Radcliffe, or not, I couldn't take upon myself
to say. I don't remember to have heard his name."
"Couldn't you have read it on the coffin-plate?" asked the Squire,
explosively. "One might have thought if you heard it in no other way,
you'd see it there."
"Well, sir, I was ill myself at the time, and in a good deal of trouble
beside, and didn't get upstairs much out of my kitchen below. Like
enough it was Radcliffe: I can't remember."
"His brother brought him--and lodged here with him--did he not?"
"Like enough, sir," she repeated. "There was two or three of 'em out and
in often, I remember. Mr. Pitt, and others. I was that ill, myself, that
some days I never got out of bed at all. I know it was a fine shock to
me when my sister came down and said the young man was dead. She was
seeing to things a bit for me during my illness. His rantings had been
pitiful."
"Could I see your sister, ma'am?" asked the Squire.
"She's gone to Manchester, sir. Her husband has a place there now."
"Don't you recollect the elder Mr. Radcliffe?" pursued the Squire. "The
young man's brother? He was staying up in London two or three times
about some shipping."
"I should if I saw him, sir, no doubt. Last year I had rare good luck
with my rooms, never hardly had 'em empty. The young man who died had
the first-floor apartments. Well, yes, I do remember now that some
gentleman was here two or three times from the country. A farmer, I
think he was. A middle-aged man, sir, so to say; fifty, or thereabouts;
with grey hair."
"That's him," interrupted the Squire, forgetting his grammar in his
haste. "Should know the description of him anywhere, shouldn't we,
Johnny? Was he here at the time of the young man's death, ma'am?"
"No, sir. I remember as much as that. He had gone back to the country."
Mrs. Mapping stood, smoothing down the apron, waiting to hear what we
wanted next, and perhaps not comprehending the drift of the visit yet.
"Where's that Mr. Pitt to be found?"
"Law, sir! as if I knew!" she exclaimed. "I've never set eyes on him
since that time. He didn't live here, sir; only used to come in and out
to see to the sick young man. I never heard where he did live."
There was nothing more to wait for. The Squire slipped half-a-crown into
the woman's hand as we went out, and she curtsied again and thanked
him--in spite of the better days. Another question occurred to him.
"I suppose the young man had everything done for him that could be?
Care?--and nourishment?--and necessary attendance?"
"Surely, sir. Why not? Mr. Pitt took care of that, I suppose."
"Ay. Well, it was a grievous end. Good-morning, ma'am."
"Good-day to you, gentlemen."
The Squire went looming up the street in the dumps; his hands in his
pockets, his steps slow.
"I suppose, Johnny, if one tried to get at Pitt in this vast London
city, it would be like looking for a needle in a bottle of hay."
"We have no clue to him, sir."
"No. And I don't know that it would answer any purpose if we did get at
him. He could only confirm what we've heard. Well, this is fine news to
take back to poor Annet Radcliffe!"
"I should think she had better not be told, sir."
"She must know it some time."
The Squire sent for David Skate when we got home, and told him what we
knew; and the two marched to the Torr in the blazing June sun, and held
an interview with Stephen Radcliffe. Ste was sullen and reserved, and
(for him) haughty. It was a mistake, of course, as things turned out,
his having taken Frank from the asylum, he admitted that, admitted he
was sorry for it, but he had done it for the best. Frank got drinking
again, and it was too much for him; he died after a few days of
delirium, and Pitt couldn't save him. That was the long and the short
of the history; and the Squire and Skate might make the best and the
worst of it.
The Squire and Skate were two of the simplest of men; honest-minded
themselves, and unsuspicious of other people. They quitted the Torr for
the blazing meadows, on their road home again.
"I shall not say anything about this to Annet," observed David Skate.
"In her present frame of mind it would not do. The fever seems better,
and she is up, and about her work again. Later perhaps we may tell her
of it."
"I wish we could have found Pitt," said the Squire.
"Yes, it would be satisfactory to hear what he has to say," replied
David. "Some of these days, when work is slack, I'll take a run up to
London and try and search him out. Though I suppose he could not tell
us much more than the landlady has told."
"There it is," cried the Squire. "Even Johnny Ludlow, with his crotchets
about people and his likes and dislikes, says he's sure Mrs. Mapping
might be trusted; that she was relating facts."
So matters subsided, and the weeks and our holidays went on together.
Stephen Radcliffe, by this act of deceit, added another crooked feather
to his cap of ills in the estimation of the neighbourhood; though that
would not be likely to trouble him. Meeting Mr. Brandon one day in the
road, just out of Church Dykely, Stephen chanced to say that he wished
to goodness it was in his power to sell the Torr, so that he might be
off to Canada to his son: _that_ was the land to make money at, by all
accounts.
"You and your son might cut off the entail, now poor Francis is gone,"
said old Brandon, thinking what a good riddance it would be if Stephen
went.
"I don't know who'd buy it--at my price," growled Stephen. "I mean
to get shut o' them birds, though," he added, as an afterthought.
"_They're_ not entailed. They've never cried and shrieked as they do
this summer. I'd as soon have an army of squalling cats around the
place."
"The noise is becoming a subject of common talk," said old Brandon.
Ste Radcliffe bit his lips and turned his face another way, and emitted
sundry daggers from his looks. "Let folks concern themselves with their
own business," said he. "The birds is nothing to them."
* * * * *
Four weeks had gone by, and the moon was nearly at the full again. Its
light streamed on the hedges, and flickered amidst the waving trees, and
lay on the fields like pale silver. It was Sunday evening, and we had
run out for a stroll before supper, Tod and I.
On coming out of church, Duffham had chanced to get talking of the
cries. He had heard them the previous night. They gave him the shivers,
he said, they were so like human cries. This put it into our heads to
go again ourselves, which we had not done since that first time. How
curiously events are brought about!
Leaping the last stile, the Torr was right before us at the opposite
side of the large field, the tops of its chimneys and its towering
sugar-loaf tower showing out white in the moonlight. The wind was high,
blowing in gusts from the south-west.
"I say, Johnny, it's just the night for witches. Whirr! how it sweeps
along! They'll ride swimmingly on their broomsticks."
"The wind must have got up suddenly," I answered. "There was none
to-day. It was too hot for it. Talking of witches and broomsticks, Tod,
have you read----"
He put his arm out to stop my words and steps, halting himself. We had
been rushing on like six, had traversed half the field.
"What's that, Johnny?" he asked in a whisper. "There"--pointing onwards
at right angles. "Something's lying there."
Something undoubtedly was--lying on the grass. Was it an animal?--or a
man? It did not look much like either. We stood motionless, trying to
make the shape out.
"Tod! It is a woman."
"Gently, lad! Don't be in a hurry. We'll soon see."
The figure raised itself as we approached, and stood confronting us. The
last pull of wind that went brushing by might have brushed me down, in
my surprise. It was Mrs. Francis Radcliffe.
She drew her grey cloak closer round her and put her hand upon Tod's
arm. He went back half a step: I'm not sure but he thought it might be
her ghost.
"Do not think me quite out of my mind," she said--and her voice and
manner were both collected. "I have come here every evening for nearly a
week past to listen to the cries. They have never been so plain as they
are to-night. I suppose the wind helps them."
"But--you--were lying on the grass, Mrs. Francis," said Tod; not knowing
yet what to make of it all.
"I had put my ear on the ground, wondering whether I might not hear it
plainer," she replied. "Listen!"
The cry again! The same painful wailing sound that we heard that other
night, making one think of I know not what woe and despair. When it had
died away, she spoke further, her voice very low.
"People are talking so much about the cries that I strolled on here some
evenings ago to hear them for myself. In my mind's tumult I can hardly
rest quiet, once my day's work is done: what does it matter which way I
stroll?--all ways are the same to me. Some people said the sounds came
from the birds, some said from witches, some from the ghost of the man
on the gibbet: but the very first night I came here I found out what
they were really like--my husband's cries."
"What!" cried Tod.
"And I believe from my very soul that it is his spirit that cries!" she
went on, her voice taking as much excitement as any voice, only half
raised, can take. "His spirit is unable to rest. It is here, hovering
about the Torr. Hush! there it comes again."
It was anything but agreeable, I can assure you, to stand in that big
white moonlit plain, listening to those mysterious cries and to these
ghostly suggestions. Tod was listening with all his ears.
"They are the very cries he used to make in his illness at the farm,"
said Mrs. Radcliffe. "I can't forget _them_. I should know them
anywhere. The same sound of voice, the same wail of anguish: I could
almost fancy that I hear the words. Listen."
It did seem like it. One might have fancied that his name was repeated
with a cry for help. "Help! Frank Radcliffe! Help!" But at such a moment
as this, when the nerves are strung up to concert pitch, imagination
plays us all sorts of impossible tricks.
"I'll be shot if it's not like Frank Radcliffe's voice!" exclaimed Tod,
breaking the silence. "And calling out, too."
"Thank you," said Mrs. Francis. "I shall not be able to bear this long:
I shall have to speak of it to the world. When I say that you have
recognized his voice also, they will be less likely to mock at me as
a lunatic. David did, when I told him. At least, I could make no
impression on him."
Tod was lying down with his ear to the ground. But he soon got up,
saying he could not hear so well.
"Did Stephen kill him, do you think?" she asked, in a dread whisper,
drawing closer to us. "Why, else, should his poor unquiet spirit haunt
the region of the Torr?"
"It is the first time I ever heard of spirits calling out in a human
voice," said Tod. "The popular belief is, that they mostly appear in
dumb show."
He quitted us, as he spoke, and went about the field with slow steps,
halting often to look and listen. The trees around the Torr in
particular seemed to attract his attention, by the length of time he
stared up at them. Or, perhaps, it might be at the tops of the chimneys:
or perhaps at the tapering tower. We waited in nearly the same spot,
shivering and listening. But the sounds never came so distinctly again:
I think the wind had spent itself.
"It is a dreadful weight to have to carry about with me," said poor
Annet Radcliffe as we walked homewards. "And oh! what will be the
ending? Will it be heard always?"
I had never seen Tod so thoughtful as he was that night. At supper he
put down his knife and fork perpetually to fall into a brown study; and
I am sure he never knew a word of the reading afterwards.
It was some time in the night, and I was fast asleep and dreaming of
daws and magpies, when something shook my shoulder and awoke me. There
stood Tod, his nightshirt white as snow in the moonlight.
"Johnny," said he, "I have been trying to get daylight out of that
mystery, and I think I've done it."
"What mystery? What's the matter?"
"The mystery of the cries. They don't come from Francis Radcliffe's
ghost, but from Francis himself. His ghost! When that poor soft creature
was talking of the ghost, I should have split with laughter but for her
distress."
"From Francis himself! What on earth do you mean?"
"Stephen has got him shut up in that tower."
"Alive?"
"Alive! Go along, Johnny! You don't suppose he'd keep him there if he
were dead. Those cries we heard to-night were human cries; words; and
that was a human voice uttering them, as my ears and senses told me; and
my brain has been in a muddle ever since, all sleep gone clean out of
it. Just now, turning and twisting possibilities about, the solution of
the mystery came over me like a flash of lightning. Ste has got Frank
shut up in the Torr."
He, standing there upright by the bed, and I, digging my elbow into the
counterpane and resting my cheek on my hand, gazed at one another, the
perplexity of our faces showing out strongly in the moonlight.