DUAL AND TRIPLE BANSHEE HAUNTINGS
It is a somewhat curious, and, perhaps, a not very well-known fact, that
some families possess two Banshees, a friendly and an unfriendly one;
whilst a few, though a few only, possess three--a friendly, an unfriendly,
and a neutral one. A case of the two Banshees resulting in a dual Banshee
haunting was told me quite recently by a man whom I met in Paris at
Henriette's in Montparnasse. He was a Scot, a journalist, of the name of
Menzies, and his story concerned an Irish friend of his, also a
journalist, whom I will call O'Hara.
From what I could gather, these two men were of an absolutely opposite
nature. O'Hara--warm-hearted, impulsive, and generous to a degree;
Menzies--somewhat cold, careful with regard to money, and extremely
cautious; and yet, apart from their vocation which was the apparent link
between them, they possessed one characteristic in common--they both
adored pretty women. The high brow and extreme feminist with her stolid
features and intensely supercilious smile was a nightmare to them; they
sought always something pleasing, and dainty, and free from academic
conceits; and they found it in Paris--at Henriette's.
It so happened one day that, unable to get a table at Henriette's, the
place being crowded, they wandered along the Boulevard Montparnasse, and
turned into a new restaurant close to the Boulevard Raspail. This place,
too, was very full, but there was one small table, at which sat alone a
young girl, and, at O'Hara's suggestion, they at once made for it.
"You sly fellow," Menzies whispered to his friend, after they had been
seated a few minutes, "I know why you were so anxious to come here."
"Well, wasn't I right," O'Hara, whose eyes had never once left the girl's
face, responded. "She's the prettiest I've seen for many a day."
"Not bad!" Menzies answered, somewhat critically. "But I don't like her
mouth, it's wolfish."
O'Hara, however, could see no fault in her; the longer he gazed at her,
the deeper and deeper he fell in love; not that there was anything very
unusual in that, because O'Hara was no sooner off with one flame than he
was on with another; and he averaged at least two or three love cases a
year. But to Menzies this latest affair was annoying; he knew that when
O'Hara lost his heart he generally lost his head too, and could never talk
or think on any topic but the eyes, hair, mouth and finger-nails--for,
like most Irishmen, O'Hara had a passion for well-kept, well-formed
hands--of his new divinity, and on this occasion he did want O'Hara to
remain sane a little longer.
It was, then, for this reason chiefly, that Menzies did not get a little
excited over the new discovery, too; for he was bound to admit that, in
spite of the lupine expression about the mouth, there was some excuse this
time for his friend's enthusiasm. The girl was pretty, an almost perfect
blonde, with daintily shaped hands, and dressed as only a young Paris
beauty can dress, who has money and leisure at her command.
Yes, there was excuse; and yet it was the height of folly. Girls mean
expenditure in one way or another, and just now neither he nor O'Hara had
anything to spend. While he was thinking, however, O'Hara was acting.
He offered the girl a cigarette, she smilingly rejected it; but the ice
was broken, and the conversation begun. There is no need to go into any
particulars as to what followed--it was what always did follow in a case
of this description--blind infatuation that invariably ended with a
startling abruptness; only in this instance the infatuation was blinder
than ever, and the ending, though sudden, was not usual. O'Hara asked the
girl to dinner with him that night. She accepted, and he took her out
again the following evening. From that moment all reason left him, and he
gave himself up to the maddest of mad passions.
Menzies saw little of him, but when they did by chance happen to meet it
was always the same old tale--Gabrielle! Gabrielle Delacourt. Her
star-like eyes, gorgeous hair, and so forth.
Then came a night when Menzies, tired of his own company, wandered off to
Montmartre, and met a fellow-countryman of his, by name Douglas.
"I say, old fellow," the latter remarked, as they lolled over a little
marble-topped table and watched the evolutions of a more than usually
daring vaudeville artiste, "I say, how about that Irish pal of yours, 'O'
something or other. I saw him here the other night with Marie Diblanc."
"Marie Diblanc!" Menzies articulated. "I have never heard of her."
"Not heard of Marie Diblanc!" Douglas exclaimed. "Why I thought every
journalist in Paris knew of her, but perhaps she was before your time, for
she's had a pretty long spell of prison--at least five or six years, which
as you know is pretty stiff nowadays for a woman--and has only recently
come out. She was quite a kiddie when they bagged her, but a kiddie with a
mind as old as Brinvillier's in crime and vice--she robbed and all but
murdered her own mother for a few louis, besides forging cheques and
stealing wholesale from shops and hotels. They say she was in with all the
worst crooks in Europe, and surpassed them all in subtlety and daring.
When I saw her the other night her hair was dyed, and she was wearing the
most saint-like expression; but I knew her all the same. She couldn't
disguise her mouth or her hands, and it is those features that I notice in
a woman more than anything else."
"Describe her to me," Menzies said.
"A brunette originally," Douglas replied, "but now a blonde--masses of
very elaborately waved golden hair; peculiarly long eyes--rather too
intensely blue and far apart for my liking--a well-moulded mouth, though
the lips are far too thin, and give her away at once."
"That's the girl," Menzies exclaimed emphatically. "That's the girl he
calls Gabrielle Delacourt. I was with him the day he first met her--over
in Montparnasse."
Douglas nodded.
"That's right," he said. "That's the name he introduced her to me by. But,
I'm quite positive she's Marie Diblanc; and I think you ought to give him
the tip. If he's seen about with her he'll be suspected by the police.
Besides, she is sure to commit some crime--for a girl with that kind of
face and history never reforms, she goes on being right down bad to the
bitter end--and get him implicated. Only, possibly, she will use him as
her tool."
"I'll see him and warn him," Menzies said. "I'll call at his place
to-night, though there's no knowing when he'll turn up, for he's the most
erratic creature under the sun."
True to his word, Menzies, after a few more minutes' conversation, got up
and retraced his steps to Montparnasse. O'Hara lived in the Rue Campagne
Premiere, close to the famous "rabbit warren." His door, as not
infrequently happened, was unlocked, but he was out. Menzies went in, and,
entering the little room which served as a parlour, dining-room, and study
combined, threw himself into an armchair and lit a cigarette. He did not
bother to light up as it was a moonlight night, and the darkness suited
his present mood. After a while, however, feeling a little chilly, he
turned on the gas fire, and then, glancing at the clock over the
mantel-shelf, perceived it was close on twelve.
At that instant there was a noise outside, and, thinking it was O'Hara, he
called out, "Hulloa, Bob, is that you?"
As there was no response he called again, and this time there was a
laugh--an ugly, malevolent kind of chuckle that made Menzies jump up at
once and angrily demand who was there. No one replying, he went to the
room door, and, opening it wide, saw a few yards from him a tall dark
figure enveloped in what appeared to be a cloak and gown.
"Hulloa!" he cried. "Who are you, and what the ---- do you want here?"
Whereupon the figure drew aside its covering and revealed a face that
caused Menzies to utter an exclamation of terror and spring back. It was
the face of an old woman with very high cheek-bones, tightly drawn
shrivelled skin, and obliquely set pale eyes that gleamed banefully as
they met Menzies' horrified stare. A disordered mass of matted yellow hair
crowned her head and descended half-way to her shoulders, revealing,
however, her ears, which stood out prominently from her head, huge and
pointed, like those of an enormous wolf. A leadenish white glow seemed to
emanate from within her and to intensify the general horror of her
appearance.
Though Menzies had never believed in ghosts before, he felt certain now
that he was looking at something which did not belong to this world. It
was, he affirmed, so absolutely hellish that he would have uttered a
prayer and bid it begone, had not his words died in his throat so that he
could not articulate a sound. He then tried to raise a hand to cross
himself, but this, also, he was unable to do; and the only thing he found
he could do, was to stare at it in dumb, open-mouthed horror and wonder.
How long this state of affairs might have gone on it is impossible to say;
but at the sound of heavy and unmistakably human footsteps, first in the
lower part of the building, and then ascending the stone staircase leading
to this flat, the old woman disappeared, apparently amalgamating with the
somewhat artistic hangings on the wall behind her. Menzies was still
rubbing his eyes and looking when O'Hara burst in upon him.
"Hulloa, Donald, is that you?" he began. "I've done it."
"Done what?" Menzies stuttered, his nerves all anyhow.
"Why, proposed to Gabrielle, of course," O'Hara went on excitedly, "and
she's accepted me. She, the prettiest, sweetest, finest little colleen
I've ever come across, has told me she will marry me. Ye gods, I shall go
off my head with joy; go stark, staring mad, I tell you." And crossing the
floor of the study he tumbled into the chair Menzies himself had just
occupied.
"I say, old fellow, why don't you congratulate me?" he continued.
"I do congratulate you," Menzies observed, taking another seat. "Of course
I congratulate you, but are you sure she is the sort of girl you will
always care about or who will always care about you. You haven't known her
very long, and most women cost a deuced lot of money, especially French
ones. Don't take the irrevocable steps before contemplating them well
first."
"I have," O'Hara retorted, "so it's no use sermonising. I have made up my
mind to marry Gabrielle, and nothing on earth will deter me."
"Do you know her people, or anything about them?" Menzies ventured.
O'Hara laughed.
"No," he said, "but that doesn't bother me in the slightest. I shouldn't
care whether her father was a navvy or a publican, or whether her mother
took in washing and pinched a few odd shirts and socks now and again,
only as it happens, they don't affect the question at all, because they
are both dead. Gabrielle is an orphan--quite on her own--so I am perfectly
safe as far as that goes. No pompous papa to consult, no cantankerous old
mother-in-law to dread. Gabrielle was educated at a convent school, and,
though you may laugh, knows next to nothing of the world. She's as
innocent as a butterfly. We are to be married next month."
Finding that it was no earthly use to say any more on the subject, just
then at all events, Menzies changed the conversation and referred to the
incident of the old woman.
O'Hara at once became interested.
"Why," he said, "from your description she must have been one of the
Banshees that is supposed to haunt our family, and which my mother always
declared she saw shortly before my father's death. A hideous hag with a
shock head of tow-coloured hair, who stood on the staircase laughing
devilishly, and then, all at once, vanished. She is known as the bad
Banshee to distinguish her from the good one, which is, so I have always
been led to understand, very beautiful, but which never manifests itself,
saving when anything especially dreadful is going to happen to an
O'Hara."
Feeling very uneasy in his mind, Menzies now bid his friend good night,
and went home.
After that days passed and Menzies saw nothing of O'Hara, until one
evening, when he was thinking it must be about now that the marriage was
to take place, O'Hara turned up at his flat, and proposed that they should
go for a stroll in the direction of the fortifications near Montsouris.
But O'Hara was not in his usual good spirits; he seemed very glum and
depressed, and Menzies gathered that there had been occasional differences
of opinion between his friend and Gabrielle, and that the affair was not
running quite as smoothly as it might. Gabrielle had a great many
admirers, one of them very rich, and O'Hara was obviously very much
annoyed at the attentions they had been bestowing on his fiancee, and at
the manner in which she had received them. But there was something else,
too; something he could see in his friend's face and manner, but which
O'Hara would not so much as hint at. Menzies was, of course, pleased, for
there now seemed to be a glimmer of hope that these frictions would
materialise into something stronger and more definite, and lead to a
rupture that would be final.
He was so engrossed in speculations of this nature that he forgot all
about the time or where they were, and was only brought back to earth by
the whistle and shriek of a train, which made him at once realise they had
left Montsouris and were several miles without the fortifications.
It was also getting very dusk, and, as he had to be up unusually early in
the morning, he suggested to O'Hara they had better turn back. They were
then close beside a clump of bushes and a very lofty pine tree that was
bending to and fro in such a peculiar manner that Menzies' attention was
at once directed to it.
"What's wrong with that tree?" he remarked, pointing at it with his stick.
"What's wrong with the tree?" O'Hara laughed. "Why, it's not the tree
there's anything the matter with--the tree's all right, quite all
right--it's you. What on earth are you staring at it for in that
ridiculous fashion? Have you suddenly gone mad?"
Menzies made no reply, but went up to the tree and examined it. As he was
doing so, a slight disturbance in the bushes made him glance around, and
he saw, a few feet from him, the tall figure of a girl, clad in a kind of
long flowing mantle, but with bare head and feet. The moonlight was on her
face, and Menzies, hard and difficult though he was, as a rule, to please,
realised it was lovely, far more lovely, so he declared afterwards, than
any woman's face he had ever gazed upon. The eyes particularly impressed
him, for, although in the darkness he could not tell their colour, he
could see that they were of an extremely beautiful shape and setting, and
seemed to be filled with a sorrow that was almost more than her heart
could bear. Indeed, so poignant was this sorrow of hers, that Menzies,
infected by it, too, could not keep back the tears from his own eyes; and,
dour and unemotional as he was by nature, his whole being suddenly became
literally steeped in sadness and pity.
The girl looked straight at him, but only for a few seconds; she then
turned towards O'Hara, and seemed to concentrate her whole attention upon
him. There was now, Menzies thought, a certain indistinctness and a
something shadowy about her that he had not at first noticed, and he was
thinking how he could test her to see if she were really a substance or
merely an optical illusion, when O'Hara, who was getting tired at his long
absence, called out, whereupon the girl at once vanished, uttering, as she
melted away in the background, in the same inexplicable manner as the old
woman had done, such an awful, harrowing, wailing shriek, that it seemed
to fill the whole air, and to linger on for an eternity. Thoroughly
terrified, Menzies, as soon as his scattered senses could collect
themselves, fled from the spot, and didn't cease running till O'Hara's
angry shout brought him to a standstill. To his astonishment O'Hara hadn't
heard anything, and was only annoyed at his seemingly mad behaviour. In
answer to his description of the girl, however, and the wailing, O'Hara at
once declared it was the Banshee, and the one he had always been so
particularly anxious to see.
"Unless you are having a joke at my expense," he said, "and you look too
genuinely scared for that, you have actually seen her--a very beautiful
girl, dressed after some old-time Irish custom, in a loose flowing green
mantle--only of course you couldn't see the colour--with head and feet
bare. But it's odd about that wail. The good Banshee in a family is always
supposed to make it, but why didn't I hear her? Why should it only be you?
You're Scotch, not Irish."
"For which I'm truly thankful," Menzies said with warmth. "I've lived
without ever seeing or hearing a ghost or anything approaching one for
thirty-eight years, and now I've seen and heard two, within the short
space of three weeks, and all because of you, because you're Irish. No
thanks. None of your Banshees for me. I'd rather, ten thousand times
rather, be just an ordinary laddie from the Highlands, and dispense with
your highly aristocratic and fastidious family ghost."
"Come, now," O'Hara said good-humouredly, "we won't quarrel about so
unsubstantial a thing as the Banshee. Let's hurry up and have a bottle of
cognac to make us think of something rather more cheerful."
Menzies often thought of those words, for it is not infrequently the most
trifling words and actions that haunt our memory to the greatest extent in
after days. The rest of the evening passed quite uneventfully, and, after
they had "toasted" each other, the two friends separated for the night.
Two days later O'Hara's body lay in the Morque, whither it had been taken
from the Seine. Though there were some doubts expressed as to the exact
manner in which he had met his death, it was officially recorded "death
from misadventure," and it was not till several years later Menzies
learned the truth.
He was then in Mexico, in a little town not twenty miles from San Blas, on
the Western Coast, doing some newspaper work for a South American paper. A
storekeeper and his wife were murdered; done to death in a singularly
cruel manner, even for those parts, and one of the assassins was caught
red-handed. The other, a woman, succeeded in escaping. As there had been
so many murders lately in that neighbourhood, the townspeople declared
they would make a very severe example of the culprit, and hang him, right
away, on the scene of his diabolical outrage. Menzies, who had never
witnessed anything of the kind before, and was, of course, anxious for
copy, took good care to be present. He stood quite close to the handcuffed
man, and caught every word of the confession he made to the local padre.
He gave his name as Andre Fecamps, his age as twenty-five, and his
nationality as French. He asserted that he was first induced to take to
crime through falling in love with a notorious French criminal of the name
of Marie Diblanc, who accepted him as her lover, conditionally on his
joining the band of Apaches of which she was the recognised leader.
He did so, and forthwith plunged into every kind of wickedness imaginable.
Among other crimes in which he was implicated he mentioned that of the
murder of an Irishman of the name of O'Hara, who was supposed to have met
with an accidental death from drowning in the Seine. What really happened,
so the young desperado said, was this. M. O'Hara was madly in love with
Marie Diblanc, who was posing to him as Gabrielle Delacourt, an innocent
young girl from the country, when she was already very much married, and
was being searched for high and low, at that very time, by certainly more
than one desperate husband. Well, one day she persuaded M. O'Hara to take
her to a dance given by some very wealthy friends of his.
He did so, and she contrived, unknown to him of course, to smuggle me in,
and between us we walked off with something like ten thousand pounds of
jewellery.
M. O'Hara came to suspect her--how I don't know, unless he overheard some
stray conversation between her and some other member of our gang at one of
the restaurants they used to dine at. Anyhow, she got to know of it, and
at once resolved to have him put out of the way. It was arranged that she
should bring him to a house in Montmartre, where several of us were in
hiding, and that we should both kill and bury him there.
Well, he came, and, on perceiving that he had fallen into a trap, besought
her, if his life must be forfeited--and, anyhow, now he knew she was a
thief he wouldn't have it otherwise--to take it herself. This she
eventually agreed to do, and, lying in her arms, he allowed her to press a
poison-bag over his mouth, and so put him to death. His body was taken to
the Seine that night in a fiacre and dropped in. Fecamps added that it was
the only occasion upon which he had seen Marie Diblanc really moved, and
he believed she was a trifle fond of the Irishman, that is to say, if she
could be genuinely fond of anyone.
Menzies, who was of course deeply interested, extracted every particle of
information he could out of the man, but nothing would make the latter
admit a word as to what had become of Diblanc.
"If I go to hell," he said, "she is certain to go there, too; for bad as I
am, I believe her to be infinitely worse; worse, a hundred times worse
than any Apache man I have ever met. And yet, depraved and evil as she is,
I love her, and shall never know a second's happiness till she joins me."
The man died; and Menzies, as he made a sketch of his swinging body, felt
thoroughly satisfied at last that the ghost he had seen outside the
fortifications of Monsouris was the good and beautiful Banshee, the
Banshee that only manifested itself when some unusually dreadful fate was
about to overtake an O'Hara.