The Haunted Tree
There were so many jolly friends staying at Chagmouth at present that
they made a most delightful circle. Generally they all managed to meet
every day, and the usual trysting-place was The Haven, partly because it
was in so central a situation for everybody, but chiefly because the
kind-hearted, unconventional Castletons were ready at any and every time
to welcome visitors, and would allow friends to 'drop in' in true
Bohemian fashion, quite regardless of whatever happened to be taking
place in the household. From the studio, indeed, they were excluded while
Mr. Castleton was at his easel, but they were allowed to use it when he
was not working, and it proved admirable for either games, theatricals,
or dancing. With so many costumes in the cupboard it was easy to get up
charades, and they had much fun over acting. Perhaps the most successful
was a small performance of 'The Babes in the Wood,' given by the
Castleton children, with Perugia and Gabriel, lovely in Elizabethan
costume, as 'the babes' John and Jane; Madox and Constable as the two
villains 'Daggersdrawn' and 'Triggertight,' who abandoned them in the
wood; and Lilith as the beneficent fairy 'Dewdrop,' who found them and
whisked them away to bonny Elfland. The little Castletons had natural
dramatic instincts and were adepts at posing, so their play was really
very pretty. Madox, in especial, absolutely excelled himself as a robber
and came out tremendously. He bowed gallantly in response to the storm of
applause, and blew an airy kiss to Merle, who nearly collapsed with
mirth. She thought her ten-year-old admirer deserved something in return
for so graceful an attention, so she sent him a box of chocolates with a
few verses written on a sheet of paper and placed inside.
TO DAGGERSDRAWN
You're a very handsome fellow,
So gallant and so gay;
And I really blush to tell you,
But you've stole my heart away.
When you took the part of Daggersdrawn,
My bosom swelled with pride
To hear your voice of thunder
And see your manly stride.
You seized the nasty pistols up
Without a sign of fear,
And thrust and parried with your sword
Just like a Cavalier.
As you've escaped the lonesome wood--
For so the story ends--
I send these chocs, with best regards,
And beg we may be friends.
Merle had no doubt the chocolates would be appreciated, but she had not
expected to receive back a poetical effusion from her small knight. He
evidently, however, had some slight gift for minstrelsy, for one day
there was a tremendous rap on the front-door knocker at Burswood Farm,
then a sound of running footsteps, and inside the letter-box was a note
addressed to 'Miss Merle Ramsay,' in a rather wobbly and unformed hand.
At the top of the sheet of paper was painted a boat with brown sails on a
blue sea, and underneath was written:
You ask me, dear, will I be thine?
How can you such a question ask
When, 'neath the robber's fearful mask,
I languish for thee, lady mine!
Thou art the lady that I love;
Thou art the lady that I chose.
Oh, fly with me from friends and foes!
Oh, for the wings of a dove!
O sail with me to a southern sea,
To where an isle is fair and warm,
And the sea around it bright and calm:
O Merle, will you come with me?
But for the nasty pistols, miss,
I have one ready to shoot me dead!
For already my heart is heavy as lead
Unless you favour my wish!
[Footnote: These verses were really composed by a little boy.]
It's rather silly but it's the best I can rite. M C.
In the privacy of the parlour Merle had a good laugh with Mavis over what
they termed her first love-letter.
"'Oh, for the wings of a dove!'" quoted Merle. "It's so Biblical, isn't
it? He's a dear, all the same! I love him better even than Constable.
He's such a bright little chap. Don't tell Clive, or he'd tease Madox to
death about this. It must be an absolute secret. I can just picture the
child sitting writing it with his sticky little fingers!"
"You mustn't let him know about 'Sweet William,' or there'll be a free
fight!" laughed Mavis.
William was Mrs. Treasure's little boy, and also an ardent admirer of
Merle, who gave him chocolates when she met him in the garden or the
stackyard. In spite of his mother's injunctions to 'Behave and not
trouble the visitors,' he would hang about the passages to present Merle
with handfuls of ferns and flowers grabbed at random from the hedgerows
and of no botanical value whatever; or sometimes the parlour window would
be cautiously opened from the outside, a pair of bright eyes would
appear, and a small grubby hand would push in a bird's egg or some other
country trophy as an offering. It was William who told Merle about the
'headless horseman,' a phantom rider who was reported to gallop down the
road after dusk, and whom Chagmouth mothers found useful as a bogey to
frighten their children with.
"He'll get you if you're out when it's dark!" said William, with round
awed eyes.
"What would he do with you if he did?" asked Merle.
But such a pitch of horror was beyond the limit of William's imagination,
and he could only reaffirm his original statement.
Of course the girls and Clive were very excited to learn that a real live
ghost was supposed to haunt the neighbourhood. They discussed it at the
dinner-table over the jam-tart and cream.
"We've certainly heard a sort of trotting sound when we've been in bed at
night," said Mavis, anxious to establish evidence. "We didn't think of
getting up to look out of the window, but I don't suppose we could have
seen on to the road if we had."
"Yes; I remember people used to believe in the 'headless horseman,'" said
Mr. Tremayne, who had known Chagmouth very well as a boy. "There was a
demon dog, too, that ran down Tinkers' Lane, and an old lady who 'walked'
by the well."
A delighted howl arose from the family at the mention of two more spooks.
"O--o--h! Tell us about the demon dog!" implored Clive.
"It had eyes as big as saucers, and they shone like fire. It used to
scuttle along the lane, and no one ever waited to see where it went,
though there used to be a hole in a bank where I was told it had once
disappeared."
"Was it _really_ ever seen?" asked Merle.
"I believe all these phantoms were clever devices of the smugglers in the
old days, when it was very desirable to have the roads quiet at night in
order to carry about contraband goods. It would be quite easy to fake a
demon dog. You take a black retriever, fasten two cardboard circles
smeared with phosphorus round his eyes, give him a kick, and send him
running down a dark road, and every one who met him would have hysterics.
As for the headless horseman, that's also a well-known smugglers' dodge
--false shoulders can be made and fixed on a level with the top of your
head, and covered with a cloak, so that the apparently headless man has
eyes in the middle of his chest, and can see to ride uncommonly well. It
was generally to somebody's interest to make up these ghosts and frighten
people."
"You take all the romance out of it!" pouted Mavis.
In spite of Mr. Tremayne's most reasonable explanations they clung to the
supernatural side of the stories. It was much more interesting to picture
the demon dog as the property of his Satanic Majesty, than to believe it
an ordinary black retriever with circles of phosphorus round its eyes.
"I vote we go and try and see it for ourselves!" suggested Clive, waxing
bold one evening. The girls agreed, so just before bedtime they sallied
forth in the direction of Tinkers' Lane, a lonely stretch of road that
led from the hillside towards the sea. They were all three feeling half
valiant and half scared, and each had brought some species of protection.
Mavis carried a prayer-book and a little ivory cross, Merle grasped a
poker, and Clive was armed with the hatchet from the wood-pile. So long
as they were on the uplands and could see the stars they marched along
tolerably bravely, but presently Tinkers' Lane turned downhill, and, like
most of its kind in Devon, ran between high fern-grown banks, on the tops
of which grew trees whose boughs almost met overhead and made an archway.
To plunge down here was like taking a dip into Dante's 'Inferno,' it
looked so particularly dark and gloomy, and such a suitable place for
anything ghostly.
"I wish we'd brought a lantern with us!" murmured Mavis.
"Then we shouldn't see any spooks!" declared Merle. "Come along! Let's go
as far as the old gate at any rate. I dare you both to come! Who's
afraid?"
Clive certainly was not going to show the white feather, and Mavis,
though rather nervy, preferred to venture forward with the others than to
remain by herself, so it ended in their all going on, arm-in-arm. They
had worked themselves to such a pitch of excitement that the whole
atmosphere seemed charged with the supernatural. There were mysterious
groanings and rustlings in the hedge, and the long branches of the trees
moaned as they swayed. It was so dark they were almost groping their way,
and could barely see the banks on either side. Suddenly, through a rift
in the trees came a faint gleam of starlight, and oh! horror of horrors!
What was that black dog-like object running rapidly towards them up the
lane? Mavis, whose over-sensitive nerves were strung up to the last
point, yelled with terror, and clung screaming to Merle, who gave a
shriek of agony herself as the phantom approached and leaped at them.
"Whatever's the matter?" cried a voice, and a figure came hurrying
forward and flashed an electric torch upon the scene.
In the circle of light thus formed the girls saw nothing more alarming
than Bevis and his spaniel Fan, who was jumping up affectionately at
Merle and licking her hands. They drew long breaths and then laughed.
"They thought you were Old Nick himself and his demon dog!" vouchsafed
Clive, very brave now the alarm was over.
"What are you all doing down Tinkers' Lane so late as this?" asked Bevis.
"We came out to see spooks!"
"You won't find anything worse than Fan and myself! Better let us take
you home."
"Oh, I wish you would," said Mavis, accepting the escort with alacrity.
"I don't think I like this dark place. I'm rather scared still. I don't
wonder people see bogeys here. If you'd been riding, Bevis, I should
certainly have taken you for the headless horseman. He rides here,
doesn't he?"
"I'll tackle him for you if we meet him, never fear!" laughed Bevis.
"I'll tell him it isn't respectable to go about without a head, and he
must put it on again at once! All the same, though" (more gravely), "I
think, if I were you, I wouldn't come down this lane in the dark all by
yourselves."
"We certainly shan't!"
"It's a good thing I didn't use the hatchet on poor Fan," said Clive,
forbearing to mention that he had been huddling in the hedge, much too
paralysed to take such violent measures.
"Bless her! She's an angel dog--not a demon!" murmured Merle, fondling
the silky ears that pressed close to her dress. "But you gave your auntie
rather a scare, darling! Another time you mustn't bounce upon her in the
dark! You must be a good girlie, and remember!"
The adventurous trio were not at all sorry to be taken safely to their
own gateway by Bevis, but all the same they felt a little disappointed
that they had no real peep at phantom forms in the lane. The girls did
not intend to tell their experience to William, but Clive let it out, so
they had to give him the full account. He looked at them with awe-struck
admiration.
"Suppose it had really been the ghost and it had got you!" he ventured.
William took the supernatural side of life seriously. It was no laughing
matter to him. On the very next day he came to Merle with important news.
"There's something queer in the wood above the house. I was up there with
Connie, and we both heard it!"
Of course Merle had to go and investigate. William escorted her at once
to the spot. There was a large elm just at the edge of the wood, and
certainly it was emitting very strange sounds. At intervals a curious
clicking whirr came from among the branches. Mr. and Mrs. Treasure, who
had also been informed of the mysterious noises, had hurried up from the
farm with little Connie. They stood staring upwards in much perplexity.
"Could it be a bird?" suggested Merle.
"That's no bird! It's something beyond that!" said Mr. Treasure solemnly.
"Oh! Is it an omen? My mother's been ill the last fortnight!" exclaimed
Mrs. Treasure in much distress.
"Maybe it's a warning of some kind or another!" opined the postman, who
had been passing and had joined the party.
Whatever might occasion the noises, they continued with great regularity.
The postman, continuing his round, spread news of the strange happening,
and soon quite a number of people came into the wood to listen for
themselves. No one was in the least able to account for the sounds, and
the general opinion was that the tree was haunted. Superstition ran rife,
and most of the neighbours considered it must be a portent. Poor Mrs.
Treasure began to be quite sure it had some intimate connection with her
mother's illness. Several girls were weeping hysterically, and one of
them asked if the end of the world was coming. Meantime, more and more
people kept crowding into the wood, and the idea spread that some
disaster was imminent.
"My John's out with the trawler!" wailed one woman. "I wish I'd not let
him go! As like as not he'll be wrecked!"
"You never know!" agreed a friend.
Old Grandfather Treasure, who had hobbled up from the stackyard, quoted
texts from Scripture and began to improve the occasion. His daughter-in-
law, with Connie clasped in her arms, sobbed convulsively.
Into the midst of all this excitement suddenly strode Bevis.
"I heard about it down on the quay," he said. "I came up at once. I'll
soon show you what it is!"
He was buckling climbing-irons on to his legs while he spoke, and with
the aid of these he rapidly mounted the elm tree to where the boughs
forked, put his hand into a hollow, and drew out a wooden box, which he
brought down with him.
"It's nothing at all ghostly," he explained. "The fact is I'm fearfully
keen on photographing birds, and I've just got a cinema camera. There's a
sparrow-hawk's nest in the next tree, and I want to take pictures of it;
only I knew the clicking of the cinema business would scare them away
probably for hours, so I made a little mechanical contrivance that would
go on clicking and let them get used to the noise, so that they'd take no
notice when I really went to work. You can look at it if you want to."
It was such a simple explanation that those among the neighbours who had
most loudly expressed superstitious fears looked rather foolish, and the
crowd began to melt away.
"Why didn't you tell us about it, Bevis?" asked Merle in private.
"Well, Soeurette, the fact is the birds are so shy that the fewer people
who go and watch them the better for the success of a photograph. I'm
afraid this will have sent them off altogether. Annoying, isn't it? Can't
be helped, though, now. It's a good dodge all the same, and I shall try
it again in some other tree when I can find a nest I want to take. Better
luck next time, I hope!"