More Deadly than the Male

by Graeme Davis

  “But let me tell you, mamma—I must tell you,” she entreated piteously. “If you could explain it, I should be so glad, but I am afraid you can’t,” and again a shudder passed through her.

  I saw it was better to let her tell it. I had by this time drawn her inside; a door in front stood open, and a bright fire caught my eyes. It was the kitchen, and the most inviting-looking room in the house. I peeped in—there was no one there, but from an inner room we heard the voice of the landlady hushing her baby to sleep.

  “Come to the fire, Nora,” I said. Just then Reggie came clattering downstairs, followed by Lieschen, the taciturn “maid of the inn.”

  “She has taken a candle upstairs, mamma, but I’ve not taken off my boots, for there’s a little calf, she says, in the stable, and she’s going to show it me. May I go?”

  “Yes, but don’t stay long,” I said, my opinion of the sombre Lieschen improving considerably; and when they were out of hearing, “Now, Nora dear, tell me what frightened you so.”

  “Mamma,” she said, a little less white and shivering by now, but still with the strange strained look in her eyes that I could not bear to see, “it couldn’t have been a real man. Listen, mamma. When you and Reggie went, I got out a needle and thread—out of your little bag—and first I mended a hole in my glove, and then I took off one of my boots—the buttoning-up-the-side ones, you know—to sew a button on. I soon finished it, and then, without putting my boot on, I sat there, looking out of the window and wondering if you and Reggie would soon be back. Then I thought perhaps I could see if you were coming, better from the window of the place outside our room, where the hay and bags of flour are.” (I think I forgot to say that to get to our room we had to cross at the top of the stair a sort of landing, along one side of which, as Nora said, great bags of flour or grain and trusses of hay were ranged; this place had a window with a somewhat more extended view than that of our room.) “I went there, still without my boot, and I knelt in front of the window some time, looking up the rough path, and wishing you would come. But I was not the least dull or lonely. I was only a little tired. At last I got tired of watching there, and I thought I would come back to our room and look for something to do. The door was not closed, but I think I had half drawn it to as I came out. I pushed it open and went in, and then—I seemed to feel there was something that had not been there before, and I looked up; and just beside the stove—the door opens against the stove, you know, and so it had hidden it for a moment as it were—there, mamma, stood a man! I saw him as plainly as I see you. He was staring at the stove, afterwards I saw it must have been at your little blue paper parcel. He was a gentleman, mamma—quite young. I saw his coat; it was cut like George Norman’s. I think he must have been an Englishman. His coat was dark, and bound with a little very narrow ribbon binding. I have seen coats like that. He had a dark blue neck-tie, his dress all looked neat and careful—like what all gentlemen are; I saw all that, mamma, before I clearly saw his face. He was tall and had fair hair—I saw that at once. But I was not frightened; just at first I did not even wonder how he could have got into the room—now I see he couldn’t without my knowing. My first thought, it seems so silly,” and Nora here smiled a little, “my first thought was, ‘Oh, he will see I have no boot on,’”—which was very characteristic of the child, for Nora was a very “proper” little girl,—“and just as I thought that, he seemed to know I was there, for he slowly turned his head from the stove and looked at me, and then I saw his face. Oh, mamma!”

  “Was there anything frightening about it?” I said.

  “I don’t know,” the child went on. “It was not like any face I ever saw, and yet it does not sound strange. He had nice, rather wavy fair hair, and I think he must have been nice-looking. His eyes were blue, and he had a little fair moustache. But he was so fearfully pale, and a look over all that I can’t describe. And his eyes when he looked at me seemed not to see me, and yet they turned on me. They looked dreadfully sad, and though they were so close to me, as if they were miles and miles away. Then his lips parted slightly, very slightly, as if he were going to speak. Mamma,” Nora went on impressively, “they would have spoken if I had said the least word—I felt they would. But just then—and remember, mamma, it couldn’t have been yet two seconds since I came in, I hadn’t yet had time to get frightened—just then there came over me the most awful feeling. I knew it was not a real man, and I seemed to hear myself saying inside my mind, ‘It is a ghost,’ and while I seemed to be saying it—I had not moved my eyes—while I looked at him—”

  “He disappeared?”

  “No, mamma, he did not even disappear. He was just no longer there. I was staring at nothing! Then came a sort of wild fear. I turned and rushed downstairs, even without my boot, and all the way the horrible feeling was that even though he was no longer there he might still be coming after me. I should not have cared if there had been twenty tipsy peasants downstairs! But I found Lieschen. Of course I said nothing to her; I only asked her to come up with a light to help me to find my boot, and as soon as I had put it on I came outside, and ran up and down—it was a long time, I think—till you and Reggie came at last. Mamma, can you explain it?”

  How I longed to be able to do so! But I would not deceive the child. Besides, it would have been useless.

  “No, dear. As yet I cannot. But I will try to understand it. There are several ways it may be explained. Have you ever heard of optical delusions, Nora?”

  “I am not sure. You must tell me;” and she looked at me so appealingly, and with such readiness to believe whatever I told her, that I felt I would give anything to restore her to her former happy fearlessness.

  But just then Reggie came in from the stable.

  “We must go upstairs,” I said; “and Lieschen,” turning to her, “bring up our supper at once. We are leaving very early to-morrow morning, and we will go early to bed.”

  “Oh, mamma,” whispered Nora, “if only we had not to stay all night in that room!”

  But there was no help for it, and she was thankful to hear of the success of our expedition to the post-office. During supper we, of course, on Reggie’s account, said nothing of Nora’s fright, but as soon as it was over, Reggie declaring himself very sleepy, we got him undressed and put to bed on the settee originally intended for Nora. He was asleep in five minutes, and then Nora and I did our utmost to arrive at the explanation we so longed for. We thoroughly examined the room; there was no other entrance, no cupboard of any kind even. I tried to imagine that some of our travelling cloaks or shawls hanging on the back of a chair might, in the uncertain light, have taken imaginary proportions; that the stove itself might have cast a shadow we had not before observed; I suggested everything, but in vain. Nothing shook Nora’s conviction that she had seen something not to be explained.

  “For the light was not uncertain just then,” she maintained; “the mist had gone and it had not begun to get dark. And then I saw him so plainly! If it had been a fancy ghost it wouldn’t have looked like that—it would have had a long white thing floating over it, and a face like a skeleton perhaps. But to see somebody just like a regular gentleman—I could never have fancied that!”

  There was a good deal in what she said. I had to give up my suggestions, and I tried to give Nora some idea of what are called “optical delusions,” though my own comprehension of the theory was of the vaguest. She listened, but I don’t think my words had much weight. And at last I told her I thought she had better go to bed and try to sleep. I saw she shrank from the idea, but it had to be.

  “We can’t sit up all night, I suppose,” she said, “but I wish we could. I am so dreadfully afraid of waking in the night, and—and—seeing him there again.”

  “Would you like to sleep in my bed? though it is so tiny, I could make room and put you inside,” I said.

  Nora looked wistfully at the haven of refuge, but her good sense and considerateness for me came to the front.

  “No,” she said,
“neither of us would sleep, and you would be so tired to-morrow. I will get into my own bed, and I will try to sleep, mamma.”

  “And listen, Nora; if you are the least frightened in the night, or if you can’t sleep, call out to me without hesitation. I am sure to wake often, and I will speak to you from time to time.”

  That was the longest night of my life! The first part was not the worst. By what I really thought a fortunate chance it was a club night of some kind at Silberbach—a musical club, of course; and all the musically-gifted peasants of the countryside assembled in the sanded parlour of the “Katze.” The noise was something indescribable, for though there may have been some good voices among them, they were drowned in the din. But though it prevented us from sleeping, it also fairly drove away all ghostly alarms. By twelve o’clock or thereabouts the party seemed to disperse, and all grew still. Then came some hours I can never forget. There was faint moonlight by fits and starts, and I not only found it impossible to sleep, I found it impossible to keep my eyes shut. Some irresistible fascination seemed to force them open, and obliged me ever and anon to turn in the direction of the stove, from which, however, before going to bed, I had removed the blue paper parcel. And each time I did so I said to myself, “Am I going to see that figure standing there as Nora saw it? Shall I remain sane if I do? Shall I scream out? Will it look at me, in turn, with its sad unearthly eyes? Will it speak? If it moves across the room and comes near me, or if I see it going towards Nora, or leaning over my Reggie sleeping there in his innocence, misdoubting of no fateful presence near, what, oh! what shall I do?”

  For in my heart of hearts, though I would not own it to Nora, I felt convinced that what she had seen was no living human being—whence it had come, or why, I could not tell. But in the quiet of the night I had thought of what the woman at the china factory had told us, of the young Englishman who had bought the other cup, who had promised to write and never done so! What had become of him? “If,” I said to myself, “if I had the slightest reason to doubt his being at this moment alive and well in his own country, as he pretty certainly is, I should really begin to think he had been robbed and murdered by our surly landlord, and that his spirit had appeared to us—the first compatriots who have passed this way since, most likely—to tell the story.”

  I really think I must have been a little light-headed some part of that night. My poor Nora, I am certain, never slept, but I can only hope her imagination was less wildly at work than mine. From time to time I spoke to her, and every time she was awake, for she always answered without hesitation.

  “I am quite comfortable, dear mamma, and I don’t think I am very frightened;” or else, “I have not slept much, but I have said my prayers a great many times, and all the hymns I could remember. Don’t mind about me, mamma, and do try to sleep.”

  I watched the dawn slowly breaking. From where I lay I could see through the window the high mound of rough stones and fragments of rock that I have described. At its foot there was a low wall loosely constructed of these same unhewn blocks, and the shapes that evolved themselves out of this wall, beside which grew two or three stunted trees, were more grotesque and extraordinary than I could describe. They varied like the colours in a kaleidoscope with the wavering and increasing light. At one time it seemed to me that one of the trees was a gipsy woman enveloped in a cloak, extending her arm towards me threateningly; at another, two weird dogs seemed to be fighting together; but however fantastic and fearsome had been these strange effects of light and fancy mingled together, I should not have minded—I knew what they were; it was a relief to have anything to look at which could keep my eyes from constantly turning in the direction of that black iron stove.

  I fell asleep at last, though not for long. When I woke it was bright morning—fresher and brighter, I felt, as I threw open the window, than the day before. With the greatest thankfulness that the night was over at last, as soon as I was dressed I began to put our little belongings together, and then turned to awake the children. Nora was sleeping quietly; it seemed a pity to arouse her, for it was not much past six, but I heard the people stirring about downstairs, and I had a feverish desire to get away; for though the daylight had dispersed much of the “eerie” impression of Nora’s fright, there was a feeling of uneasiness, almost of insecurity, left in my mind since recalling the incident of the young man who had visited the china factory. How did I know but that some harm had really come to him in this very place? There was certainly nothing about the landlord to inspire confidence. At best it was a strange and unpleasant coincidence. The evening before I had half thought of inquiring of the landlord or his wife, or even of Lieschen, if any English had ever before stayed at the “Katze.” If assured by them that we were the first, or at least the first “in their time,” it would, I thought, help to assure Nora that the ghost had really been a delusion of some kind. But then, again, supposing the people of the inn hesitated to reply—supposing the landlord to be really in any way guilty, and my inquiries were to rouse his suspicions, would I not be risking dangerous enmity, besides strengthening the painful impression left on my own mind, and this corroboration of her own fear might be instinctively suspected by Nora, even if I told her nothing?

  “No,” I decided; “better leave it a mystery, in any case, till we are safely away from here.” For, allowing that these people are perfectly innocent and harmless, their even telling me simply, like the woman at Grünstein, that such a person had been here, that he had fallen ill, possibly died here—I would rather not know it. It is certainly not probable that it was so; they would have been pretty sure to gossip about any occurrence of the kind, taciturn though they are. The wife would have talked of it to me—she is more genial than the others—for I had had a little kindly chat with her the day before, à propos of what every mother, of her class at least, is ready to talk about—the baby! A pretty baby too, though the last, she informed me with a sort of melancholy pride, of four she had “buried”—using the same expression in her rough German as a Lancashire factory hand or an Irish peasant woman—one after the other. Certainly Silberbach was not a cheerful or cheering spot. “No, no,” I made up my mind, “I would rather at present know nothing, even if there is anything to know. I can the more honestly endeavour to remove the impression left on Nora.”

  The little girl was so easily awakened that I was half inclined to doubt if she had not been “shamming” out of filial devotion. She looked ill still, but infinitely better than the night before, and she so eagerly agreed with me in my wish to leave the house as soon as possible, that I felt sure it was the best thing to do. Reggie woke up rosy and beaming—evidently no ghosts had troubled his night’s repose. There was something consoling and satisfactory in seeing him quite as happy and hearty as in his own English nursery. But though he had no uncanny reasons like us for disliking Silberbach, he was quite as cordial in his readiness to leave it. We got hold of Lieschen, and asked for our breakfast at once. As I had told the landlady the night before that we were leaving very early, our bill came up with the coffee. It was, I must say, moderate in the extreme—ten or twelve marks, if I remember rightly, for two nights’ lodging and almost two days’ board for three people. And such as it was, they had given us of their best. I felt a little twinge of conscience, when I said good-bye to the poor woman, for having harboured any doubts of the establishment. But when the gruff landlord, standing outside the door, smoking of course, nodded a surly “adieu” in return to our parting greeting, my feeling of unutterable thankfulness that we were not to spend another night under his roof regained the ascendant.

  “Perhaps he is offended at my not having told him how I mean to get away, notwithstanding his stupidity about it,” I said to myself, as we passed him. But no, there was no look of vindictiveness, of malice, of even annoyance on his dark face. Nay, more, I could almost have fancied there was the shadow of a smile as Reggie tugged at his Tam o’ Shanter by way of a final salute. That landlord was really one of the most incomp
rehensible human beings it has ever been my fate to come across, in fact or fiction.

  We had retained Lieschen to carry our modest baggage to the post-house, and having deposited it at the side of the road just where the coach stopped, she took her leave, apparently more than satisfied with the small sum of money I gave her, and civilly wishing us a pleasant journey. But though less gruff, she was quite as impassive as the landlord. She never asked where we were going, if we were likely ever to return again, and like her master, as I said, had we been staying there still, I do not believe she would ever have made an inquiry or expressed the slightest astonishment.

  “There is really something very queer about Silberbach,” I could not help saying to Nora, “both about the place and the people. They almost give one the feeling that they are half-witted, and yet they evidently are not. This last day or two I seem to have been living in a sort of dream or nightmare, and I shall not get over it altogether till we are fairly out of the place;” and though she said little, I felt sure the child understood me.

  We were of course far, far too early for the post. The old man came out of his house, and seemed amused at our haste to be gone.

  “I am afraid Silberbach has not taken your fancy,” he said. “Well, no wonder. I think it is the dreariest place I ever saw.”

  “Then you do not belong to it? Have you not been here long?” I asked.

  He shook his head.

  “Only a few months, and I hope to get removed soon,” he said. So he could have told me nothing, evidently! “It is too lonely here. There is not a creature in the place who ever touches a book—they are all as dull and stupid as they can be. But then they are very poor, and they live on here from year’s end to year’s end, barely able to earn their daily bread. Poverty degrades—there is no doubt of it, whatever the wise men may say. A few generations of it makes men little better than—” He stopped.