On Sunday mornings Lord and Lady Mere de Beaurivage went to church.
They attended Divine Service. In town it was as often as not the
afternoon (they were hardly of the generation for fasting communion),
but in the country (and people of this exalted rank spend most Sundays
in the country) they received the consolations of religion from eleven
o’clock till close on lunch. They still felt a certain novelty about
the Church of England, for what we begin after our fortieth year always
has a certain novelty about it for the rest of our lives.
As luck would have it, her ladyship was delighted with the parson. He
had a Cockney accent; he preached no mysterious doctrine; he insisted
on the plain duties we owe to our fellow-men, especially the duty of
charity, and more particularly the wickedness of class hatred.
But, as luck would have it, his lordship was not quite so sympathetic.
For one thing, he didn’t like the allusion to antagonism between the
East End of London and the West, for he thought (quite justly) that
that was all rubbish, and he guessed that the parson, in spite of his
honest accent, must have lived somewhere in the middle. There he was
wrong. The parson came from Ealing.
Aunt Hilda was with them, you may be sure. She could go in the best
car and be driven in state, for a lazy morning parked outside God’s
Acre did not incommode the atheist Gaul. That was all to the good,
since a pious driver might have wanted to go to chapel, and Aunt Hilda,
after so many years in Sussex, had learnt how careful one must be of
religious susceptibilities in the Servants’ Hall.
As they purred back to Rackham Catchings from Rackham Church (by the
long way, avoiding Rackham village, yet narrowly missing two Rackham
children who were playing in the road), Hilda and Amathea agreed upon
the excellence of the parson, the former with enthusiasm (for was she
not the seller?) but the latter (being purchaser) with more caution.
For when you are buying and selling parsons, or anything else, it is
indecent for the purchaser to praise too much: at any rate, in the
higher ranks of society. With our peasantry, let me assure you, it is
quite the other way (for I know all about it, having attended many
markets). They have the nobler, immemorial human habit of the market,
still customary (I am told) with the Chinese. The seller is most humble
and deferential about his cow. The purchaser praises it to the skies.
But, when it comes to cash, reality pierces through the mask and they
are even more grasping than the rich.
“He’s a wonderful man, Amathea,” sighed Hilda dreamily. “He might have
had a very great career if he had stopped in London.” (Well, reader,
what are you grumbling about?—Ealing is a part of London, isn’t it?)
“But he said he’d had a sort of a call to come down here. And when I
heard that,” she added simply, “of course I thought it my duty to give
him the living.” (Oh, wicked woman! He had been put in long before she
had had anything to do with it!)
To whom Amathea:
“_Dearest_ Hilda! You always was that good about the church! Yer right,
too! I haven’t often ’eard better preaching. True it was, and straight
from the heart, in a manner of speaking.”
“I often think,” said Aunt Hilda, gazing wistfully at the top left
corner of the roof of the motor, as though a vision might appear there,
“that holiness is the most unmistakable thing on earth. Really that
kind of man is the kind of man of whom I feel” (she sought for the
word), “well, that is the kind of man who might in other days than ours
have worked a miracle.”
“Mayhap he can lay the spook,” said his lordship with a gurgling laugh.
But the suggestion was received in silence by both ladies; so he
pursued it no further, and covered his laugh by choking a little.
* * * * *
While their elders were hearing and discussing the sermon, Bo and
John began the conjuration. Lord Hambourne in his official quality of
University Atheist had stayed at home, and so had Lord Hellup in his
more natural quality of Commercial Sceptic. But the young people were
safe enough, without disappearing. Lord Hellup was deep in Motley, far
off, under the garden window of the hall. Lord Hambourne was prowling
about peering at woodwork and glass and sizing up the Catchings without
shame: standing on a chair to examine the date “1487” on the beam, and
remarking that in Rackham alone out of all Europe dates were stamped on
beams by the carpenters of the fifteenth century, and stamped in modern
figures.
There wasn’t too much time. It was already noon of Sunday, and by the
Monday morning at latest the battle must be won.
“Bo, we’re haunting this house,” said John.
“We are,” said Bo. “We haunt in couples.”
And the delight of her eyes in his presence rejoiced him and lit a
corresponding, less brilliant light in his.
“How are we to begin?” said her lover.
“Listen, Jacko,” she answered. “The ghost has got to clinch his fell
work before to-morrow morning; this evening, no less.”
(I ought to tell you how she was dressed; but I have only the time to
tell you that her skirt was of course a kilt, very short for a kilt,
but a good deal longer than that of Amathea, First Baroness Mere de
Beaurivage.)
“Well, we’ve got to introduce the ghost early,” said John, “but it’s
broad daylight for hours. What’s your plan?”
“Boy,” answered the maiden, “you want your thinking done for you.”
He nodded.
“You are approved,” Bo answered to that nod. “That’s how the Secretary
writes from the Cabinet to our Ambassador—my Ambassador, but not Pop’s
any longer, ’cause he’s naturalised—you are approved. First now, can’t
you rattle folk by daylight?”
“More than they want,” he said, “much more than they can bear, Bo.”
“’Tisn’t ‘they,’” said Bo, “it’s him. The aged Bruvvish. Pop wouldn’t
stand for it. He’s unknown to fear, is my Lord Hellup. He’s as brave as
the lion-tamer’s wife. There are few ghosts on Manhattan Island, Jacko.
It’s the other one you’re for, and that’ll spoil Aunt Hilda’s market.
Badly. D’ye get me? I’ll fix Pop. He shan’t bid. He shall chorus the
apparition.”
“You’re not going to tell him our plan?” said John in alarm.
“Nope; ’cause you’ve got to come a surprise on him as the Demon Buyer.
You’ve got to make good. He’ll be just interested and that’ll help roll
the ghost along.”
[Illustration: _Lord Hambourne is astonished at the modern habits of
the fifteenth century_]
“You don’t want me to rattle a chain in the passages?”
“Better’n that,” said Bo. “You begin right away. First chance you have.
Voices, John. Get him to hear voices.”
“Yes,” said John thoughtfully, “that was the basis, wasn’t it? I’m a
ventriloquist—and a good one.”
“Oh! Jacko! It’ll hum! He’s going to hear voices. They’ll be subdued,
you know, ’cause they’re from the Other World. He’s going to hear ’em
this very day to get a move on him. Take him off and try him. Then he’s
going to hear them before he goes to bed this very night. And then....”
At the prospect thus opening illimitably before her this happy child,
glorying in youth, to which all such jests are but too welcome, clasped
her hands in ecstacy.
“Then, we’ll dress you up for the part and——”
But as she spoke the noise of the motor at the door interrupted her,
the Church party came in, Lord Hellup arose from Motley, Lord Hambourne
abandoned his examination of antiques, and the conspirators were halted.
“More at lunch,” Bo whispered hurriedly. “Now you help Lord Mere off
with that coat,” she said loudly, and then added, for John’s advantage,
“and act the Judas.”
When they had all swarmed into the dining-room for luncheon, though
they were only seven they managed to make what Lord Hambourne called
in his literary productions “a buzz of conversation,” wherein appeared
regularly, like the cry of a tame duck, his own “Quate! quate!” as
he sat next to Amathea. And now and then “Lor!” from her ladyship.
He was explaining to her the three main theories of apparitions:
“Illusions” and the two “Phantasms,” _i.e._ “Phantasms of the dead,” as
distinguished from “Phantasms of the living,” or P.D., and P.L. as (he
assured her) they were called among the experts of psychology. He told
her about Meyer’s theory, Lombroso’s experiments and Julia; also Lodge.
He had the cunning of his kind, and knew that an academic reputation
is built by repeating the very little one has read to the completely
ignorant.
Lord Hellup had been masterfully captured to sit by the side of the
handsome Hilda, and he was telling her how sure he did love an old
English house, and how it just got him where he wanted it. The handsome
Hilda was putting into her voice such inflections as she felt suitable
to the occasion.
But John Maple—John Maple was occupied by greater things—one of which
was Bo.
The further conference of those young people needed secrecy, but that
was not so difficult to attain at a babbling table as one might think,
for Bo and John were covered by the direct syncopated speech of Lord
Hellup and the loud, often stammering, always quacking spate of the
don, as also by the comments, not restrained in tone, big, hearty,
of Amathea, First Baroness Mere de Beaurivage (you may blame me for
calling her First Baroness Mere de Beaurivage if you like, but I pass
the buck to her—it is her own expression).
However, they had to wait, for hardly had John got as far as the first
few questions when Amathea gave over Lord Hellup to her hostess and
captured John.
It was not till she had ceased her description of the opening of
Parliament, which had ended by her nudging John Maple jocosely in the
ribs to reward him for a mild jest, and swung round again as on a large
swivel to talk to Lord Hellup, that John was free to turn again to
Isabeau and renew the interrupted crime.
“Am I talking too loud?” he said, though he might have concocted
with her a plot to murder his sovereign for all that the eager
conversationalists on either flank would have known of it.
“No, Jacko,” she answered. “They’re bawling and deaf to the world.”
“I’ll wrap it up, all the same,” he said. “Follow close.”
And then continued pleasantly, not too emphatically, in this singular
fashion:
“It’s astonishing how much later we are in Sussex than in town. Did you
notice that? I mean, have you noticed the state of the woods compared
with any square in London? Or the parks? Do you think you could get
hold of a large piece of black cloth after dinner and pleat it so
as to make a sort of cloak? And it’s all nonsense about hearing the
nightingale before the cuckoo. Like that ass said the other day in
‘Nature Notes.’”
His partner answered with simplicity:
“I never can get these English birds. I used to think the nightingale
said ‘nightingale,’ just like the cuckoo says ‘cuckoo.’ Yes, I did.
I’ve got exactly what you want. It’s a cloak of my own. You’ve got
black trousers, and you can keep black socks. Only no clocks, you know.”
At this moment Lord Hellup interrupted to ask across the table:
“Jacko, what do you say about it?”
This was the third time the peer had called her nephew Jacko in her
hearing and Aunt Hilda was impressed.
“About what?” said John cheerfully.
“Your aunt says that the only difference between making farming pay and
losing on it is the amount of trouble you take.”
He shook his head.
“We have neither of us farmed,” he said.
Then he resumed, to Bo:
“It’s true, though. You _can_ make it pay, I believe. We’ve got a
neighbour here who makes it pay by asking whether, if I got hold of
some white paper, you could make it into a ruff for me? That’s all
that’s wanted. Making farming pay. We’d stick it on the top of the
cloak. That, and looking carefully after things and not going too much
up to London, and I’m sure anyone could make it pay. I could wear the
whole damn contraption on top of my head, and you would sew the ruff on
top of the neck. Then, as I am sure, thank God....”
“Thank God!” answered Bo gently.
“Bo,” interrupted her father again, “here’s Hilda Maple saying we make
farming pay in America.”
“Don’t you believe it, Hilda,” said the young woman, using the
Christian name for elders, after the modern fashion. “From the tallest
tower of my father’s castle beyond the seas as far as the eye can reach
over our broad lands there is not a hovel but what is derelict.”
She resumed rapidly to John:
“What about him?” and nodded towards Corton, who was solemnly pouring
out the better wine for Lord Hambourne, whom he pitied for a gentleman,
and poor.
“I can believe that,” said John to her emphatically. “Any amount of
derelict farms in New England too. I’m going to see him after lunch.
And when I’ve seen him we three will arrange to meet, because you can’t
really make farming pay on old land. That’s the reason.”
For ten minutes the plot was interrupted by the next artificial turn
between Amathea and John, which was played upon this occasion to the
tune of the beauty of the English climate and ended with a second
nudge to reward a second jest before the swivel turned to the left
again after the stern law of the tables of the rich.
Then the two young people clinched the thing.
“Aunt Hilda has made a wonderful success of the place,” he said. And he
caught his aunt’s eye as he said it. “And I must show you the new rock
garden to-morrow. She put Alpine flowers in it, and a special sort that
they thought could not grow in England, and it’s doing wonderfully.
I’ll take him out there after lunch and haunt him. Then, when he’s
back, we could have a game of billiards, fifty up. Anything up. Then
I’ll bring Corton round to you there. But you can make almost anything
grow in England, in the south at least, here in Sussex, if you take
trouble. Then we will conspire, my dear, it won’t take long.”
“Take him out—soon—and haunt him,” whispered Bo, as they got up. She
was burning to begin.
So was John. But he had to restrain himself for an hour. His aged guest
was in the habit of sleeping after the midday meal of a Sunday—he had
done so in the days when Sunday was his one day of rest and he did so
still. He chose a deep chair apart in the Library and there grunted
and snored at peace till half-past three. His host watched and waited.
As he came out, still heavy with sleep, and cramming into his pocket
the large coloured handkerchief with which he had covered his head in
slumber, John met him and took him prisoner, told him they might walk
out gently for a while, as the day was still and pleasant. He led the
way to the hall, put on his victim’s coat with tender care and opened
the door into the garden.
With the kindest touch in the world he slid his hand and forearm into
the elbow of Lord Mere de Beaurivage, leading him out into the garden
with all the affection of a relative. It is a vulgar, familiar gesture
which he would have sickened to make had not stern duty prescribed it.
He must obey Bo.
As for his captive, that elderly peer was actually flattered. True,
John Maple was a commoner; but then he was a sort of squire, and as
Amathea wanted the place so badly, and as John Maple was a kind of heir
(the Baron did not know the exact position—perhaps there was an entail,
or something: he didn’t understand these things) it was as well to be
friends.
John Maple led out through the damnable rhododendrons and across the
accursed rock garden to where Aunt Hilda had arranged a little fountain
with a leaden Cupid in the middle holding a duck which squirted a
fountain of water from its bill.
“I’d as lief ’ave a rest, Mr. Miple,” said the elder man, “quite a
short walk puffs me.”
There was a bench, and they sat down.
The splashing of the water was the only sound. It was still all about.
John Maple remembered how all this bit had looked in his childhood,
not garden but wild undergrowth; how he had cut a fork for a catapult
from a hazel here; and how once on the edge of that scrub, being all
alone, he had looked wide-eyed at a fox lurching by with a sly smile
showing its sharp teeth on its face.
He saw the old rough again clearly in his mind. It hardened him to
his duty. He must sweep away all that horror of Alpine garden and
rhododendrons and fountain, and replant the wild. But to do that he
must achieve. And to achieve he must move Acheron and the Nether World.
“It’s very quiet, Lord Mere,” he began, “especially after London.” He
thought with justice that this gambit would suit the mind of his guest.
And his guest replied that he couldn’t a-bear London, except o’ course
for meeting one’s friends; but there, country friends and country ways
were the best.
“It’s in the quiet of Rackham,” said John, after a little calculated
pause, “that I remember my childhood.” He was violating sacred things,
but he had his duty to do. “I was a nervous child,” he went on. “They
always had to leave a light in my room. And my dear old nurse would sit
awake for hours with the door open of her room down the passage. She
never allowed them to frighten me with the story, you know.”
“What story?” said Lord Mere, in whose solid mind there were two very
clear categories—nonsense in books and things as reely did ’appen.
“Oh,” went on John hurriedly, and as though to get over something
unpleasant as quickly as possible, “the story of the ghost, you
know.... _She believed it_—dear old thing. She would have thought it
impious not to believe in spirits. And on the top of that there was the
feeling she had for the family. But she loved me more, and she would
never let me hear of it. But I couldn’t help hearing of it. There was a
foolish maid who spoke once ... and terrified me. And I heard the groom
complaining to my father about the terror of the horses on a certain
night.”
“What’s that about the ’orses?” asked Lord Mere nervously, and with the
beginning of an ill-ease in his heart.
“Well, you know,” said John, “animals are supposed to see these things
from the other world sometimes when we can’t. It’s no wonder I was
terrified by the story as a child. I used to dream of it. And once,
you know—well, of course, it’s all nonsense. But children are the prey
of such things.... Once I _did_ think I saw it—just at that season of
the year ... this season ... standing quite clearly in the firelight.
I hadn’t been well, and I think that’s the reason they had put me in
the old room with the big bed, over the drawing-room. So that nurse
could be next door. I had been asleep, and in the middle of a terrible
nightmare. I can’t remember the nightmare, except some confused
impression of violence and,” he sank his head, “a child couldn’t know
the name for it ... but it was the shadow of Death.... I remember that
panic acutely still. I was only ten—I woke up, suddenly—broad awake. I
sat up in the bed trembling—and, oh, Lord Mere” (and here John looked
at the old man’s face and saw it beginning to stare, the head drawn
back a little), “it was an agony I shall never quite forget.... It was
an illusion, I know. But....”
“Course it was, boy. Course it was, Mr. Miple, I mean.” He wheezed into
an uncomfortable laugh. “Yer know that as well as I does!”
“Yes, Lord Mere,” said John thoughtfully, “I suppose I know it _now_.
One grows out of these things. But it was abominably real then.... I
don’t know why, but this time of year it still comes back to me....
Association, I suppose.”
“Not that you’ve seen nothing since, Mr. Miple?” pursued his lordship
anxiously.
“No, no, no!” John assured him. “I am sure it was a matter of health,
and I got my health back as I grew up. And you know, I went abroad. So
it became only a memory.”
The old man was restless. And when John began again, “Of course, they
say that the influence of a violent and horrible death....” Lord Mere
de Beaurivage wanted to change the subject.
“Yus, yus, yus!” he said hastily, as John helped him to his feet. They
went back slowly towards the house, Lord Mere already hobbling even
after so short a stroll, and John tenderly supporting him by the arm
and treading most leisurely to ease the old man’s way.
It was after some moments of silence, when they were in the thick
of the rhododendrons on either side, that Lord Mere de Beaurivage
gave a startled twist in the midst of a step, a twist that hurt him
and stopped him as he shot a glance at the thick growth to his left.
He had heard—he thought he had heard—had he heard?—an evil whisper,
sneering little words, not high above the ground, as from the mouth of
something creeping, not human: surely the leaves had never stirred in
that windless afternoon? And the words he had heard, or thought he had
heard, were: “To the house,” or “in the house”—something like that. It
was a sibilant sound. He had heard the word “house” sneered at him....
Surely he had heard it.... It was a sound such as rustling leaves might
have made.... But then no leaf had stirred.
He turned his head towards John. He was still halted, and still
breathing heavily.
“What’s the matter, Lord Mere?” said the young man, with great
sympathy. “I’m afraid I’ve overtired you?” The old fellow shook his
head.
“No, no. It’s me heart, I think,” he said. “I’m orl right. Let’s be
getting along and doing—along and doing. Get among the others, eh? Get
among the others. More cheerful-like.”
They were moving away from the rhododendrons now, and into the open.
So much to the good. And there was the house before them. He thought of
that whispered word “house,” and he shuddered.
Then he shook off the little trouble. It had only been a moment. And
any small beast creeping in the shrubs might have brushed through with
that sibilant sound.
During what remained of their brief companionship as they made back
towards the porch John Maple cheered his guest in every way.
_He_ made no allusion to the Abominable Thing. He even appeared to have
forgotten it.
But Lord Mere de Beaurivage, as he painfully put down his hat and stick
on the oaken chest in the hall, and more painfully crawled out of his
coat with his companion’s aid, had something or other on his mind that
would not away. He turned back suddenly on his way toward the library,
put one arm on John’s shoulder, and looked with a fixed but uncertain
look in his poor old yellow eyes, straight into the frank glance of his
hostess’ nephew.
“Did yer say it ’ad no ’ed?” he whispered thickly.
“Oh, Lord Mere,” answered John, “don’t let’s think of it!” He drew
in his breath. “It was a long time ago, and I tell you, I was only a
child. And—and—I’m sleeping here to-night also,” he added, suddenly.
“So the less I think of it the better.”
Then he watched the broad, squat figure retreating slowly towards
the library door. He saw the painful aged gesture of the gouty hand
upon the knob, the shuffle into the room beyond. He thought he heard
something like a groan, and in his heart he half repented.
But already that which commanded him was upon him: no less than Bo
herself, swinging into the hall out of the drawing-room like a rather
too tall ray of sunshine.
“Dog-Man,” she said, “how’s your end? Have you bitten ’em? Have you
bitten ’em good and hard?”
There was no lack of healthy determination in _this_ conspirator. Women
know their minds. At least, some women do. And especially those of the
kind who make happy marriages. John was learning every hour. But pray
remember that the woman tempted him.
He was a little ashamed, and he did not meet her eye.
“I have suggested things, Bo. I did say a few words. Made an
atmosphere.”
“Was he scared?” persisted his implacable premate.
“I’m afraid he was,” said John.
“What did ye tell him, Jacko?” she asked softly, with such affection
that he was relieved. “Did you make it glare?”
“He couldn’t glare without a head, Bo.”
“No more could he,” answered the young lady thoughtfully. “Not in
nature, that wouldn’t be. But then, _he’s_ not in nature either, Jacko,
is he? Did ye make Blackie Bogey talk?”
“No,” said her lover. Then he corrected himself. “He did say a word in
the rhododendrons.”
“_What?_” answered Bo, delighted. “Oh, that’s good! Push it along.
He’ll babble yet, Jacko. He’ll babble like a brook. He’ll moan and
he’ll groan. He’ll put down old Uncle Hamlet like a one-spot taking a
deuce. You are,” she added, after searching for a compliment at the
back of her mind, “the Bee’s Knees. You are the Cat’s Pyjamas.”
Even as she spoke she was looking through the open drawing-room door
and the tall French windows towards the big lawn in front of Rackham,
and there she saw a sight which made her seize John Maple’s wrist
suddenly and strongly after a fashion more tolerable to-day from her
sex and age than it would have been half a generation ago.
“Look, Dog-Man!” she whispered excitedly, and jutted her chin towards
the sight that had thus fixed her eyes.
“What is it, Bo?” he asked. He saw nothing but his aunt and Lady Mere
de Beaurivage standing on the grass some little way off, and looking up
towards the new-old woodwork of the house. Once more the comprehension
of women came to aid the dullness of men.
“You haven’t gotten it, haven’t you?” she said compassionately.
“John Maple, heir of Rackham, mark the twain. The Baroness is deep in
converse with the Lady of the Manor upon the green sward. Money’s going
to talk.”
John Maple understood.
“You think it’s begun already?” said he.
Isabeau Hellup nodded, with a fixed certitude.
“And my noble father will be the next to suffer,” she added.
“It’s a race, Bo,” said John, “between them and us.”
“And you’ve got to win by four little plaits of the mane on the steed’s
neck—or the whole neck, if you like. But you’ve got to win, damn you,
Jacko!—you’ve got to win. Now see here. Have you gotten that spell with
Corton yet?”
“No,” said John. “I can’t do everything at once.”
“Well,” answered Bo, looking at the impossible watch on her wrist,
“step on the gas and shoot. There’s no time to lose.”
He agreed.
“I’m going to fix the coat and the ruff. And I’m going to sew through
the slit in it that dandy little sword which I got from the shield
stack on the stairs; six in a star. There’s only five now. But I put
them straight. No one’ll notice. You run off to Corton.” She paused
and added, “And I’ll add a word to Lord Mere. Just a word. Just a
follow-up, Jacko. ’Nuff said.”