As to the more regular phenomena there were scores of people who could testify to hearing noises, and dozens who had seen the ghosts; white ladies, misty old gentlemen in wigs and top-hoots, at least one white man in armor; and there were several shapes of animal form. Indeed the last appearance recorded, on the authority of Mr. Wilkins, dairyman and purveyor of milk in the adjoining village, was of this character.
It appears that Mr. Wilkins, learning that Missel Hall was let at last, entered the grounds and approached the main door with the intention of leaving his business card on the step. Arrived on the spot, however, he found that the door had been left ajar, probably by the neglect of somebody who had been engaged in preparing the house for the reception of the new tenants. He entered, therefore, with the idea of leaving the card on a mantelpiece, where it would be more likely to attract notice.
The evening was closing in, but it was not yet dusk. Mr. Wilkins was in a perfectly calm frame of mind, not in any way predisposed to hallucination, being intent, indeed, on the recent scandalous price of turnips. He entered the nearest room, deposited his card on the mantelpiece, and was turning to go, when his attention was arrested by three distinct raps apparently coming from the wall behind him. He turned quickly, and beheld what seemed to be a light vapor, or steam, rising in the form of a column in the darkest corner of the room. It rose and thickened till it attained the size, as he afterwards expressed it, of a sixteen-gallon churn. Then this misty column suddenly fell forward in his direction, causing him to back hurriedly to the door. For the next few minutes Mr. Wilkins wholly forgot the price of turnips, for his whole mind and emotions were engaged in the fearful contemplation of one of the strangest phenomena recorded in the history of the supernatural.
The column fell forward, as I have said, and Mr. Wilkins gazed spellbound at the sight before him. For the misty body, a column no longer, continued to decrease in size, and to assume the general appearance of some bulky animal. Larger and still larger it grew, till it had surpassed the size of a sheep and even that of a calf, and the paralyzed beholder was aware, not only of indications of a tail, but of horns, and between the horns of a gradual growth of two distinct luminous points. With this last horror, the eyes, the spell was broken, and with a tearing effort Mr. Wilkins sprang through the doorway and ran, pursued by the monstrous phantom. He ventured to glance over his shoulder, however, as he reached the step of the outer door, and it seemed that already the spectre had begun to diminish in size. No longer did it seem of the bulk, and somewhat of the aspect, of a cow, but to be gradually resuming its former shape—a column.
Somewhat recovering his courage, Mr. Wilkins continued to run across the drive, till another glance over his shoulder assured him that the apparition had ceased to pursue him, and was now standing stationary, and shrinking, on the terrace. Mr. Wilkins dodged behind a convenient shrub and turned at bay. Truly indeed the appearance was fast diminishing. The horrible eyes were gone, only one horn remained, and the body had shrunk to a mere erect column, the height of a man. But the tail hung unaltered, stiffly dependent behind. Still the change went on before Mr. Wilkins’s astonished eyes, till, with a gasp of amazed recognition, he found himself gazing at a spectral pump.
With that his courage returned, and he emerged from his concealment; for to a respectable dairyman, who sees to the cleanliness of his premises, no object is more familiar than a pump, and there is nothing in the world he is less afraid of. But as Mr. Wilkins advanced, extending his hand, by familiar habit, toward the pump-handle, so the ghostly object faded and thinned away to nothing, and Mr. Wilkins found himself standing alone, in the gathering gloom, before the door of the haunted house.
Nothing more was observed till the new tenants were completely installed. The moving in was accompanied by many strange noises, however, and although noises are common enough, indeed unavoidable, in any house-moving, the noises heard on this occasion were altogether unusual. There were no rapipngs nor dragging of chairs, and there was not anywhere a suggestion of laughter, domoniac or otherwise; but everybody agreed that the shrieks were terrible and pitiful to hear.
Fortunately the new tenants did not arrive till the disturbances had ceased; for Mr. Benton, the agent, with a courteous regard for their nerves pleasant to meet in these ungallant days, had refrained from mentioning the little drawbacks from which Missel Hall suffered, and as the Quilters came from London they had no other means of learning.
The whole of the active Quilter family was female, consisting of a mother and five daughters. The remaining member was Mr. Quilter, an elderly and obese gentleman who slept between meals and was not observed to pursue any more exciting occupation. The ladies could not be called obese—unless you wished to be impolite to Mrs. Quilter—and they wore curious sack-shaped clothes. Their eyes were very earnest and their hair was not very long and not very short, but very touzly and very red. They decorated and furnished the house—filled it top and bottom, except for one little unconsidered room—with wonderful furniture and amazing wall-papers, all of a sort that I have heard called the product of the New Art. The chairs were made of square oak planks, with stencil-holes like fireworks in their backs. All the tables straddled their legs wide to snare the feet of the heedless. There was a sideboard with pewter rockets inlaid all over it, and a balloon of blue enamel at the summit of each rocket.
The dining-room was papered with a cheerful pattern of green stag-beetles a foot long, with yellow legs, crawling perpendicularly up a rich crimson ground. The drawing-room, on the other hand, was of a bold yellow tint, dotted at wide intervals with very elegant brown cauliflowers, each with a graceful fringe of curly tentacles, like the legs of an octopus, reaching out to its neighbor. Curly tentacles, in fact, formed the chief motive of all the decoration—tentacles with flaccid curves like those of an expiring boa constrictor.
The tentacles were everywhere. They drooped and crawled over a pewter clock with three bowed legs and a square face on the morning-room mantelpiece. They squirmed so thick on the lids of the silver toilet-boxes on the dressing-tables that I have seen nothing like it since I went fishing as a little boy, with worms in a canister. You found yourself unconsciously prancing on tip-toe across the wriggling carpet—instinctive survival of man’s primeval repulsion from the serpent. The tentacles came at you round corners, threatened you from behind doors—wormed about on your dinner-plate. On any piece of furniture you might choose to handle you would find unexpected projections and surprising outworks, each with its curly tentacle, and probably a piece of inexplicable copper or pewter, with tentacles of its own. And through it all Mr. Quilter slept undisturbed, and his daughters played on a green oak piano with pewter pot-hooks and hangers lovingly inlaid all over it, and all was peace and New Art.
And now, with the advent of the Quilter family, the whole supernatural history of Missel Hall culminated in the amazing spectacle of the Luminous Room. No more did mysterious noises and strange sights disturb the repose of the dwellers, but that strange pale light shone out from the high attic, otherwise empty, and declared the ghostly fame of Missel Hall to every watcher of the night.
At first the Quilters—except Mr. Quilter, who was asleep—were seriously disturbed by the discovery; and ere long, as was natural, their anxious inquiries brought them information of the earlier history of their house. But days and nights went on and nothing occurred to justify their fears—there was nothing but that weird light in the empty attic, which gave them no inconvenience at all. So that soon they grew rather proud of the phenomenon, and brought their friends to see it. One or two bold spirits among these friends ventured into the luminous chamber by night; and the reports of each visit agreed precisely with the others. The strange light pervaded the whole room—all agreed on this point. It was like no light any witness had ever seen; persons standing in it were plainly enough visible to each other, but with a pallor and a certain dimness of outline that admitted but of one description: they looked
like ghosts. Indeed it would seem as though the illumination did not consist of light, as human experience knows it, but rather of something which not only lighted persons and objects in the room but also interposed between them.
Withal, it cast no shadow. This was, perhaps, its most remarkable quality. If one carried a candle into the room the objects it lighted cast their shadows in a natural way, though, of course, owing to the pervading luminousness the shadows were very feeble. But without any such artificial light no shadow was thrown, of anything, anywhere. The light, whatever it was, was all-pervading. And whatever it was it so affected the atmosphere that it was difficult to breathe therein.
The Misses Quilter became ardent spiritualists. They brought expert friends from London, who arranged séances in the astonishingly furnished rooms, and accomplished nothing. The failure was unprecedented, and the experts were wholly at fault. Not a table would move, not a mark would appear on a slate—and that in this ancient haunt of spectres, Missel Hall! The science of spiritualism was shaken to its foundations.
After much anxious consultation the experts resolved on a fresh expedient, and thereby made possible one of the most curious demonstrations recorded in the history of their craft. At the head of a small sheet of paper the question was written: What causes the light in the east wing attic? This paper, with a pencil, was enclosed in a small box, and the box was placed inside the lighted room and there left, with the door shut.
At the end of ten minutes the box was withdrawn, and, the paper being examined, it was found to carry below the question the almost illegibly scrawled word: Terror.
A fresh paper was prepared with the amended question: What is the light?
By the same process, and after a similar interval, another reply was elicited. This time it read, somewhat ungrammatically: Only us. Crowded like—(remainder illegible).
This reply caused much interest and excitement among the experts. A fresh question was prepared and answered, and others after that, as are transcribed below.
Question.—Do you mean you are the ghosts that haunt this house?
Answer.—Yes. We apologize. Take them away (illegible words follow).
Q.—Please answer more clearly.
A.—Take them away. We are squashed into a mass and terrified to death. We really do apologize!
Q. For what do you apologize?
A.—Everything. Anything. Only take them away. We apologize for haunting this house and frightening people. We will never do it again; we have been frightened too much ourselves. We’ve all gone through a good deal, but never anything like this. We can’t stand it. There’s only this room left, and we are crowded solid. We dare not come out. It is terrible.
Q.—What terrifies you?
A.—All of it! Furniture! Snakes! Fireworks! Cauliflowers! Tentacles! Curlywigs! Jim-jams! Sacks and touzly wigs! Pray do something for us.
Q.—What must we do?
A. (an almost undecipherable mass of ragged scrawls, apparently from many different hands in all sorts of directions on both sides of paper).—Take them away… Benton…raise rent… Apologize… Never frighten people any more… Know what it is ourselves now…never expected this… Worse things than us… Help! Police… (rest wholly illegible.
These mysterious words are all the explanation extant of the amazing phenomenon of the Luminous Room. Answers to succeeding questions were wholly unreadable, and in the end the experts gave up their attempts to unravel the mystery.
It is a fact, nevertheless, that since the Quilters have left Missel Hall (they have been gone six months now) the strange light has wholly disappeared from the attic and it has not been followed by any of the more ordinary terrors which preceded it; a fact that, it is said, will shortly be cited in a paper to be read before a spiritualistic congress and adduced as a proof that ghosts may be relied on to keep their promises, even when extorted under stress of deadly terror.
MR. BOSTOCK’S BACK-SLIDING
First published in The Strand Magazine, Dec 1907
It is a terribly easy thing to fall into—imperceptibly to glide into—evil-doing; and once embarked on the slippery descent, there is no telling how low one may descend. This, the moral of the story of Mr. Bostock, is, in accordance with modern practice, placed at the beginning of the story instead of at the end, which our grandfathers considered the proper place. Nowadays we get the moral over and out of the way as soon as possible, and find it good riddance.
Mr. Bostock was a person of that peculiar stainlessness which is only to be observed in a London suburb of the highest respectability, always in association with the precisely correct clothes for every occasion, and a comfortable income derived somehow from the City. He was no longer young, nor slim, and his large, clean-shaven countenance carried the heavy portentousness noticeable in the Strictly Proper. Regularity, Propriety, Serene Importance—these words could be traced across his white waistcoat and his pink face as distinctly as though spelt in printed letters; and Severe Respectability shone like a halo from the high polish of his crown.
Every admirer of the female sex—every discriminating person, in other words—will at once perceive that there was a Mrs. Bostock to whom much or all of this perfection was due; indeed, the ribald of his suburb ascribed Mr. Bostock’s correctitude to simple terror of his wife. This was the slander of vulgar malice, of course, but it is a fact that Mrs. Bostock was a lady well fitted to inspire terror in the unregenerate; and those whom she regarded as her social inferiors—which meant very nearly everybody—had reason to quail before her overbearing majesty.
Twenty-four years of training under Mrs. Bostock’s severe eye had endowed Mr. Bostock with the shining qualities so vastly respected in his suburb, and of late her supervision had been reinforced by that of their two daughters, now grown up. It may be that it is not permitted to mere man to receive a greater share of this sort of blessing than can be conferred by an energetic wife and one full-grown daughter; that the gradual accession of assistance from another daughter, as she reaches womanhood, will overcome the fortitude of the most respectable. It is certain that Mr. Bostock’s lapse occurred shortly after Julia, his second daughter—now arrived near marriageable age—had fully ranged herself by the side of her mamma and her sister in the direction of his comportment.
The family were staying at the seaside at the proper period of late summer, and, of course, at the proper place. The town is already sufficiently well advertised, so here I shall call it Scarbourne, which is not in the least like its real name. Everybody will readily recognize it, however, from the circumstance that it is the most genteel town on the English coast, where every male visitor positively must change all his clothes at least three times a day, and no lady must be seen to wear anything twice. Also, the promenade is the one place for pedestrian exercise, and the vulgar act of walking on the beach is never condoned. No place on earth basks in a more sacred odor of perfect respectability than this blessed spot, with nothing to mar its bliss but the presence of a vulgar convict prison a few miles inland, and the fact that the aproach by railway lies through another seaside town of the most unpardonable description, where parents paddle on the sands among their children, and the air resounds to the banjo and tambourine of the nefarious nigger. It is said that the Scarbourne visitors barely forgave the King for the proximity of His Majesty’s prison, and that only in consideration of his social position; but the railway company might beg forgiveness in vain for bringing their line through Beachpool-on-Sea.
Mr. Bostock’s temptation came insidiously yet suddenly, giving him little time for choice. There was some expectation that the office in the City, which provided the means for Mr. Bostock’s respectability, might require his presence for a day or two in the midst of his vacation; and there was hourly expectation of a telegram from his head clerk to call him. Mr. Bostock was somewhat puzzled, almost shocked, to detect himself looking forward to the receipt of the telegr
am with something vastly like pleasurable anticipation; and with this begins the tale of his backsliding.
A telegram did come, immediately after breakfast on a brilliant August morning. Mr. Bostock tore it open eagerly. It was from his chief clerk, indeed; but—it conveyed the news that the matter in question had been satisfactorily settled, and that Mr. Bostock’s presence in London would not be required. Mr. Bostock sank back in his easy-chair in a frame of mind which he distinctly recognized as one of gloomy dejection.
Mrs. Bostock and her daughters were dressing for a morning drive in the jobbed carriage that conveyed them everywhere, except for the promenade walk; and as Mr. Bostock sat back with the telegram in his hand his wife appeared, patting and smoothing her gloves.
“Oh—that telegram has come, then,” observed Mrs. Bostock. “Then we’ll ask Mrs. Berkeley Wiggs to take your seat, and we’ll drive out a little when I’ve done some shopping in the town. I suppose you’ll catch the ten-thirteen?”
Here was Mr. Bostock’s temptation, and here began his fall. “Y—yes!” he stammered, hastily, crumpling up the telegram and stuffing it away in his pocket. “Yes! I’ll—I’ll catch the ten-thirteen, of course. Too late for the fast train, of course. Of course. Yes, my dear—I’ll go off and catch the ten-thirteen. Don’t bother about me—I’ll walk, or have a cab. Yes—of course, I must catch the ten-thirteen!”
The Arthur Morrison Mystery Page 161