by E. Nesbit
‘Virginia creeper, isn’t it?’ Amelia asked, and Frederick said: ‘Yes, Virginia creeper.’ Thesiger said it looked more like a South American plant, and Ernestine said Virginia was in South America and that was why. ‘I know, because of the war,’ she said modestly, and nobody smiled or answered. There were manners in those days.
‘There’s a ghost story about it surely,’ Thesiger began again, looking up at the dark closed doors of the pavilion.
‘Not that I ever heard of,’ said the pavilion’s owner. ‘I think the country people invented the tale because there have always been so many rabbits and weasels and things found dead near it. And once a dog, my uncle’s favourite spaniel. But of course that’s simply because they get entangled in the Virginia creeper – you see how fine and big it is – and can’t get out, and die as they do in traps. But the villagers prefer to think it’s ghosts.’
‘I thought there was a real ghost story,’ Thesiger persisted.
Ernestine said: ‘A ghost story. How delicious! Do tell it, Mr Doricourt. This is just the place for a ghost story. Out of doors and the sun shining, so that we can’t really be frightened.’
Doricourt protested again that he knew no story.
‘That’s because you never read, dear boy,’ said Eugene Thesiger. ‘That library of yours. There’s a delightful book – did you never notice it? – brown tree calf with your arms on it; the head of the house writes the history of the house as far as he knows it. There’s a lot in that book. It began in Tudor times – 1515 to be exact.’
‘Queen Elizabeth’s time.’ Ernestine thought that made it so much more interesting. ‘And was the ghost story in that?’
‘It isn’t exactly a ghost story,’ said Thesiger. ‘It’s only that the pavilion seems to be an unlucky place to sleep in.’
‘Haunted?’ Frederick asked, and added that he must look up that book.
‘Not haunted exactly. Only several people who have slept the night there went on sleeping.’
‘Dead, he means,’ said Ernestine, and it was left for Amelia to ask:
‘Does the book tell anything particular about how the people died? What killed them, or anything?’
‘There are suggestions,’ said Thesiger; ‘but there, it is a gloomy subject. I don’t know why I started it. Should we have time for a game of croquet before tea, Doricourt?’
‘I wish you’d read the book and tell me the stories,’ Ernestine said to Frederick, apart, over the croquet balls.
‘I will,’ he answered fervently, ‘you’ve only to tell me what you want.’
‘Or perhaps Mr Thesiger will tell us another time – in the twilight. Since people like twilight for ghosts. Will you, Mr Thesiger?’ She spoke over her blue muslin shoulder.
Frederick certainly meant to look up the book, but he delayed till after supper; the half-hour before bed when he and Thesiger put on their braided smoking-jackets and their braided smoking-caps with the long yellow tassels, and smoked the cigars which were, in those days still, more of a luxury than a necessity. Ordinarily, of course, these were smoked out of doors, or in the smoking-room, a stuffy little den littered with boots and guns and yellow-backed railway novels. But tonight Frederick left his friend in that dingy hutch, and went alone to the library, found the book, and took it to the circle of light made by the colza lamp.
‘I can skim through it in half an hour,’ he said, and wound up the lamp and lighted his second cigar. Then he opened the shutters and windows, so that the room should not smell of smoke in the morning. Those were the days of consideration for the ladies who had not yet learned that a cigarette is not exclusively a male accessory like a beard or a bass voice.
But when, his preparations completed, he opened the book, he was compelled to say ‘Pshaw!’ Nothing short of this could relieve his feelings. (You know the expression I mean, though of course it isn’t pronounced as it’s spelt, anymore than Featherstonehaugh or St Maur are.)
‘Pshaw!’ said Frederick, fluttering the pages. His remark was justified. The earlier part of the book was written in the beautiful script of the early sixteenth century, that looks so plain and is so impossible to read, and the later pages, though the handwriting was clear and Italian enough, left Frederick helpless, for the language was Latin, and Frederick’s Latin was limited to the particular passages he had ‘been through’ at his private school. He recognised a word here and there, mors, for instance, and pallidus and pavor and arcanum, just as you or I might; but to read the complicated stuff and make sense of it?! Frederick said something just a shade stronger than ‘Pshaw!’ – ‘Botheration!’ I think it was; replaced the book on the shelf, closed the shutters, and turned out the lamp. He thought he would ask Thesiger to translate the thing, but then again he thought he wouldn’t. So he went to bed wishing that he had happened to remember more of the Latin so painfully beaten into the best years of his boyhood.
And the story of the pavilion was, after all, told by Thesiger.
There was a little dance at Doricourt next evening, a carpet dance, they called it. The furniture was pushed back against the walls, and the tightly stretched Axminster carpet was not so bad to dance on as you might suppose. That, you see, was before the days of polished floors and large rugs with loose edges that you can catch your feet in. A carpet was a carpet in those days, well and truly laid, conscientiously exact to the last recess and fitting the floor like a skin. And on this quite tolerable surface the young people danced very happily, some ten or twelve couples. The old people did not dance in those days, except sometimes a quadrille of state to ‘open the ball’. They played cards in a room provided for the purpose, and in the dancing-room three or four kindly middle-aged ladies were considered to provide ample chaperonage. You were not even expected to report yourself to your chaperone at the conclusion of a dance. It was not like a real ball. And even in those far-off days there were conservatories.
It was on the steps of the conservatory, not the steps leading from the dancing-room, but the steps leading to the garden, that the story was told. The four young people were sitting together, the girls’ crinolined flounces spreading round them like huge pale roses, the young men correct in their high-shouldered coats and white cravats. Ernestine had been very kind to both the men – a little too kind, perhaps, who can tell? At any rate, there was in their eyes exactly that light which you may imagine in the eyes of rival stags in the mating season. It was Ernestine who asked Frederick for the story, and Thesiger who, at Amelia’s suggestion, told it.
‘It’s quite a number of stories,’ he said, ‘and yet it’s really all the same story. The first man to sleep in the pavilion slept there ten years after it was built. He was a friend of the alchemist or astrologer who built it. He was found dead in the morning. There seemed to have been a struggle. His arms bore the marks of cords. No; they never found any cords. He died from loss of blood. There were curious wounds. That was all the rude leeches of the day could report to the bereaved survivors of the deceased.’
‘How sunny you are, Mr Thesiger,’ said Ernestine with that celebrated soft low laugh of hers. When Ernestine was elderly, many people thought her stupid. When she was young, no one seems to have been of this opinion.
‘And the next?’ asked Amelia.
‘The next was sixty years later. It was a visitor that time, too. And he was found dead with just the same marks, and the doctors said the same thing. And so it went on. There have been eight deaths altogether – unexplained deaths. Nobody has slept in it now for over a hundred years. People seem to have a prejudice against the place as a sleeping apartment. I can’t think why.’
‘Isn’t he simply killing?’ Ernestine asked Amelia, who said:
‘And doesn’t anyone know how it happened?’ No one answered till Ernestine repeated the question in the form of: ‘I suppose it was just accident?’
‘It was a curiously recurrent accident,’ said Thesiger, and Frederick, who throughout the conversation had said the right things at the right mome
nt, remarked that it did not do to believe all these old legends. Most old families had them, he believed. Frederick had inherited Doricourt from an unknown great-uncle of whom in life he had not so much as heard, but he was very strong on the family tradition. ‘I don’t attach any importance to these tales myself.’
‘Of course not. All the same,’ said Thesiger deliberately, ‘you wouldn’t care to pass a night in that pavilion.’
‘No more would you,’ was all Frederick found on his lips.
‘I admit that I shouldn’t enjoy it,’ said Eugene, ‘but I’ll bet you a hundred you don’t do it.’
‘Done,’ said Frederick.
‘Oh, Mr Doricourt,’ breathed Ernestine, a little shocked at betting ‘before ladies’.
‘Don’t’ said Amelia, to whom, of course, no one paid any attention, ‘don’t do it.’
You know how, in the midst of flower and leafage, a snake will suddenly, surprisingly rear a head that threatens? So, amid friendly talk and laughter, a sudden fierce antagonism sometimes looks out and vanishes again, surprising most of all the antagonists. This antagonism spoke in the tones of both men, and after Amelia had said, ‘Don’t,’ there was a curiously breathless silence. Ernestine broke it. ‘Oh,’ she said, ‘I do wonder which of you will win. I should like them both to win, wouldn’t you, Amelia? Only I suppose that’s not always possible, is it?’
Both gentlemen assured her that in the case of bets it was very rarely possible.
‘Then I wish you wouldn’t,’ said Ernestine. ‘You could both pass the night there, couldn’t you, and be company for each other? I don’t think betting for such large sums is quite the thing, do you, Amelia?’
Amelia said No, she didn’t, but Eugene had already begun to say:
‘Let the bet be off then, if Miss Meutys doesn’t like it. That suggestion was invaluable. But the thing itself needn’t be off. Look here, Doricourt. I’ll stay in the pavilion from one to three and you from three to five. Then honour will be satisfied. How will that do?’
The snake had disappeared.
‘Agreed,’ said Frederick, ‘and we can compare impressions afterwards. That will be quite interesting.’
Then someone came and asked where they had all got to, and they went in and danced some more dances. Ernestine danced twice with Frederick and drank iced sherry and water and they said goodnight and lighted their bedroom candles at the table in the hall.
‘I do hope they won’t,’ Amelia said as the girls sat brushing their hair at the two large white muslin frilled dressing-tables in the room they shared.
‘Won’t what?’ said Ernestine, vigorous with the brush.
‘Sleep in that hateful pavilion. I wish you’d ask them not to, Ernestine. They’d mind, if you asked them.’
‘Of course I will if you like, dear,’ said Ernestine cordially. She was always the soul of good nature. ‘But I don’t think you ought to believe in ghost stories, not really.’
‘Why not?’
‘Oh, because of the bible and going to church and all that,’ said Ernestine. ‘Do you really think Rowland’s Macassar has made any difference to my hair?’
‘It is just as beautiful as it always was,’ said Amelia, twisting up her own little ashen-blonde handful. ‘What was that?’
That was a sound coming from the little dressing-room. There was no light in that room. Amelia went into the little room though Ernestine said: ‘Oh, don’t! How can you? It might be a ghost or a rat or something’ and as she went she whispered: ‘Hush!’
The window of the little room was open and she leaned out of it. The stone sill was cold to her elbows through her print dressing-jacket.
Ernestine went on brushing her hair. Amelia heard a movement below the window and listened. ‘Tonight will do,’ someone said.
‘It’s too late,’ said someone else.
‘If you’re afraid, it will always be too late or too early,’ said someone. And it was Thesiger.
‘You know I’m not afraid,’ the other one, who was Doricourt, answered hotly.
‘An hour for each of us will satisfy honour,’ said Thesiger carelessly. ‘The girls will expect it. I couldn’t sleep. Let’s do it now and get it over. Let’s see. Oh, damn it!’
A faint click had sounded.
‘Dropped my watch. I forgot the chain was loose. It’s all right though; glass not broken even. Well, are you game?’
‘Oh, yes, if you insist. Shall I go first, or you?’
‘I will,’ said Thesiger. ‘That’s only fair, because I suggested it. I’ll stay till half-past one or a quarter to two, and then you come on. See?’
‘Oh, all right. I think it’s silly, though,’ said Frederick.
Then the voices ceased. Amelia went back to the other girl.
‘They’re going to do it tonight.’
‘Are they, dear?’ Ernestine was placid as ever. ‘Do what?’
‘Sleep in that horrible pavilion.’
‘How do you know?’
Amelia explained how she knew.
‘Whatever can we do?’ she added.
‘Well, dear, suppose we go to bed,’ suggested Ernestine helpfully. ‘We shall hear all about it in the morning.’
‘But suppose anything happens?’
‘What could happen?’
‘Oh, anything,’ said Amelia. ‘Oh, I do wish they wouldn’t! I shall go down and ask them not to.’
‘Amelia!’ the other girl was at last aroused. ‘You couldn’t. I shouldn’t let you dream of doing anything so unladylike. What would the gentlemen think of you?’
The question silenced Amelia, but she began to put on her so lately discarded bodice.
‘I won’t go if you think I oughtn’t,’ she said.
‘Forward and fast, auntie would call it,’ said the other. ‘I am almost sure she would.’
‘But I’ll keep dressed. I shan’t disturb you. I’ll sit in the dressing-room. I can’t go to sleep while he’s running into this awful danger.’
‘Which he?’ Ernestine’s voice was very sharp. ‘And there isn’t any danger.’
‘Yes, there is,’ said Amelia sullenly, ‘and I mean them. Both of them.’
Ernestine said her prayers and got into bed. She had put her hair in curl-papers which became her like a wreath of white roses.
‘I don’t think auntie will be pleased,’ she said, ‘when she hears that you sat up all night watching young gentlemen. Goodnight, dear!’
‘Goodnight, darling,’ said Amelia. ‘I know you don’t understand. It’s all right.’
She sat in the dark by the dressing-room window. There was no moon, but the starlight lay on the dew of the park, and the trees massed themselves in bunches of a darker grey, deepening to black at the roots of them. There was no sound to break the stillness, except the little cracklings of twigs and rustlings of leaves as birds or little night wandering beasts moved in the shadows of the garden, and the sudden creakings that furniture makes if you sit alone with it and listen in the night’s silence.
Amelia sat on and listened, listened. The pavilion showed in broken streaks of pale grey against the wood, that seemed to be clinging to it in dark patches. But that, she reminded herself, was only the creeper. She sat there for a very long time, not knowing how long a time it was. For anxiety is a poor chronometer, and the first ten minutes had seemed an hour. She had no watch. Ernestine had – and slept with it under her pillow. The stable clock was out of order; the man had been sent for to see to it. There was nothing to measure time’s flight by, and she sat there rigid, straining her ears for a footfall on the grass, straining her eyes to see a figure come out of the dark pavilion and across the dew-grey grass towards the house. And she heard nothing, saw nothing.
Slowly, imperceptibly, the grey of the sleeping trees took on faint dreams of colour. The sky turned faint above the trees, the moon perhaps was coming out. The pavilion grew more clearly visible. It seemed to Amelia that something moved along the leaves that surrounded it, and she
looked to see him come out. But he did not come.
‘I wish the moon would really shine,’ she told herself. And suddenly she knew that the sky was clear and that this growing light was not the moon’s cold shiver, but the growing light of dawn.
She went quickly into the other room, put her hand under the pillow of Ernestine, and drew out the little watch with the diamond ‘E’ on it.
‘A quarter to three,’ she said aloud. Ernestine moved and grunted.
There was no hesitation about Amelia now. Without another thought for the ladylike and the really suitable, she lighted her candle and went quickly down the stairs, paused a moment in the hall, and so out through the front door. She passed along the terrace. The feet of Frederick protruded from the open French window of the smoking-room. She set down her candle on the terrace – went up to Frederick as he slept, his head between his shoulders and his hands loosely hanging, and shook him.
‘Wake up,’ she said – ‘Wake up! Something’s happened! It’s a quarter to three and he’s not come back.’
‘Who’s not what?’ Frederick asked sleepily.
‘Mr Thesiger. The pavilion.’
‘Thesiger! – the … You, Miss Davenant? I beg your pardon. I must have dropped off.’
He got up unsteadily, gazing dully at this white apparition still in evening dress with pale hair now no longer wreathed.
‘What is it?’ he said. ‘Is anybody ill?’
Briefly and very urgently Amelia told him what it was, implored him to go at once and see what had happened. If he had been fully awake, her voice and her eyes would have told him many things.
‘He said he’d come back,’ he said. ‘Hadn’t I better wait? You go back to bed, Miss Davenant. If he doesn’t come in half an hour …’
‘If you don’t go this minute,’ said Amelia tensely, ‘I shall.’
‘Oh, well, if you insist,’ Frederick said. ‘He has simply fallen asleep as I did. Dear Miss Davenant, return to your room, I beg. In the morning when we are all laughing at this false alarm, you will be glad to remember that Mr Thesiger does not know of your anxiety.’