Gaslit Nightmares

by Lamb, Hugh;

  Everybody urges him not to be reckless, but he persists in his foolhardiness, and goes up to the Yellow Chamber (or whatever colour the haunted room may be) with a light heart and a candle, and wishes them all goodnight, and shuts the door.

  Next morning he has got snow-white hair.

  He does not tell anybody what he has seen: it is too awful.

  There is also the plucky guest, who sees a ghost, and knows it is a ghost, and watches it, as it comes into the room and disappears through the wainscot, after which, as the ghost does not seem to be coming back, and there is nothing, consequently, to be gained by stopping awake, he goes to sleep.

  He does not mention having seen the ghost to anybody, for fear of frightening them – some people are so nervous about ghosts, – but determines to wait for the next night, and see if the apparition appears again.

  It does appear again, and, this time, he gets out of bed, dresses himself and does his hair, and follows it; and then discovers a secret passage leading from the bedroom down into the beer-cellar – a passage which, no doubt, was not unfrequently made use of in the bad days of yore.

  After him comes the young man who woke up with a strange sensation in the middle of the night, and found his rich bachelor uncle standing by his bedside. The rich uncle smiled a weird sort of smile and vanished. The young man immediately got up and looked at his watch. It had stopped at half-past four, he having forgotten to wind it.

  He made inquiries the next day, and found that, strangely enough, his rich uncle, whose only nephew he was, had married a widow with eleven children at exactly a quarter to twelve, only two days ago.

  The young man does not attempt to explain the extraordinary circumstance. All he does is to vouch for the truth of his narrative.

  And, to mention another case, there is the gentleman who is returning home late at night, from a Freemasons’ dinner, and who, noticing a light issuing from a ruined abbey, creeps up, and looks through the keyhole. He sees the ghost of a ‘grey sister’ kissing the ghost of a brown monk, and is so inexpressibly shocked and frightened that he faints on the spot, and is discovered there the next morning, lying in a heap against the door, still speechless, and with his faithful latch-key clasped tightly in his hand.

  All these things happen on Christmas Eve, they are all told of on Christmas Eve. For ghost stories to be told on any other evening than the evening of the twenty-fourth of December would be impossible in English society as at present regulated. Therefore, in introducing the sad but authentic ghost stories that follow hereafter, I feel that it is unnecessary to inform the student of Anglo-Saxon literature that the date on which they were told and on which the incidents took place was – Christmas Eve.

  Nevertheless, I do so.

  Well, you all know my brother-in-law, Mr Parkins (began Mr Coombes, taking the long clay pipe from his mouth, and putting it behind his ear: we did not know his brother-in-law, but we said we did, so as to save time), and you know of course that he once took a lease of an old mill in Surrey, and went to live there.

  Now you must know that, years ago, this very mill had been occupied by a wicked old miser, who died there, leaving – so it was rumoured – all his money hidden somewhere about the place. Naturally enough, every one who had since come to live at the mill had tried to find the treasure; but none had ever succeeded, and the local wiseacres said that nobody ever would, unless the ghost of the miserly miller should, one day, take a fancy to one of the tenants, and disclose to him the secret of the hiding-place.

  My brother-in-law did not attach much importance to the story, regarding it as an old woman’s tale, and, unlike his predecessors, made no attempt whatever to discover the hidden gold.

  ‘Unless business was very different then from what it is now,’ said my brother-in-law, ‘I don’t see how a miller could very well have saved anything, however much of a miser he might have been: at all events, not enough to make it worth the trouble of looking for it.’

  Still, he could not altogether get rid of the idea of that treasure.

  One night he went to bed. There was nothing very extraordinary about that, I admit. He often did go to bed of a night. What was remarkable, however, was that exactly as the clock of the village church chimed the last stroke of twelve, my brother-in-law woke up with a start, and felt himself quite unable to go to sleep again.

  Joe (his Christian name was Joe) sat up in bed, and looked around.

  At the foot of the bed something stood very still, wrapped in shadow.

  It moved into the moonlight, and then my brother-in-law saw that it was the figure of a wizened little old man, in knee-breeches and a pig-tail.

  In an instant the story of the hidden treasure and the old miser flashed across his mind.

  ‘He’s come to show me where it’s hid,’ thought my brother-in-law; and he resolved that he would not spend all this money on himself but would devote a small percentage of it towards doing good to others.

  This apparition moved towards the door: my brother-in-law put on his trousers and followed it. The ghost went downstairs into the kitchen, glided over and stood in front of the hearth, sighed and disappeared.

  Next morning, Joe had a couple of bricklayers in, and made them haul out the stove and pull down the chimney, while he stood behind with a potato-sack in which to put the gold.

  They knocked down half the wall, and never found so much as a four-penny bit. My brother-in-law did not know what to think.

  The next night the old man appeared again, and again led the way into the kitchen. This time, however, instead of going to the fireplace, it stood more in the middle of the room, and sighed there.

  ‘Oh, I see what he means now,’ said my brother-in-law to himself; ‘it’s under the floor. Why did the old idiot go and stand up against the stove, so as to make me think it was up the chimney?’

  They spent the next day in taking up the kitchen floor; but only thing they found was a three-pronged fork, and the handle of that was broken.

  On the third night, the ghost reappeared, quite unabashed, and for a third time made for the kitchen. Arrived there, it looked up at the ceiling and vanished.

  ‘Umph! he don’t seem to have learned much sense where he’s been to,’ muttered Joe, as he trotted back to bed; ‘I should have thought he might have done that at first.’

  Still, there seemed no doubt now where the treasure lay, and the first thing after breakfast they started pulling down the ceiling. They got every inch of the ceiling down, and they took up the boards of the room above.

  They discovered about as much treasure as you would expect to find in an empty quart pot.

  On the fourth night, when the ghost appeared, as usual, my brother-in-law was so wild that he threw his boots at it; and the boots passed through the body, and broke a looking-glass.

  On the fifth night, when Joe awoke, as he always did now at twelve, the ghost was standing in a dejected attitude, looking very miserable. There was an appealing look in its sad eyes that quite touched my brother-in-law.

  ‘After all,’ he thought, ‘perhaps the silly chap’s doing his best. Maybe he has forgotten where he really did put it, and is trying to remember. I’ll give him another chance.’

  The ghost appeared grateful and delighted at seeing Joe prepare to follow him, and led the way into the attic, pointed to the ceiling, and vanished.

  ‘Well, he’s hit it this time, I do hope,’ said my brother-in-law; and next day they set to work to take the roof off the place.

  It took them three days to get the roof thoroughly off, and all they found was a bird’s nest; after securing which they covered up the house with tarpaulins, to keep it dry.

  You might have thought that would have cured the poor fellow of looking for treasure. But it didn’t.

  He said there must be something in it all, or the ghost would never keep on coming as it did; and that, having gone so far, he would go on to the end, and solve the mystery, cost what it might.

  Night after ni
ght, he would get out of his bed and follow that spectral old fraud about the house. Each night, the old man would indicate a different place; and, on each following day, my brother-in-law would proceed to break up the mill at the point indicated, and look for the treasure. At the end of three weeks, there was not a room in the mill fit to live in. Every wall had been pulled down, every floor had been taken up, every ceiling had had a hole knocked in it. And then, as suddenly as they had begun, the ghost’s visits ceased; and my brother-in-law was left in peace, to rebuild the place at his leisure.

  ‘What induced the old image to play such a silly trick upon a family man and a ratepayer?’ Ah! that’s just what I cannot tell you.

  Some said that the ghost of the wicked old man had done it to punish my brother-in-law for not believing in him at first; while others held that the apparition was probably that of some deceased local plumber and glazier, who would naturally take an interest in seeing a house knocked about and spoilt. But nobody knew anything for certain.

  An Unexpected Journey

  J.H. PEARCE

  J.H. Pearce received glowing reviews for his short story book DROLLS FROM SHADOWLAND (1893). The New York Mail and Express said it contained ‘genius of an uncommon kind’; the Boston Traveller described the stories as ‘beautiful to read from their deep imagination and haunting in their allegorical depth’; in Britain the Illustrated London News commented: ‘his is imagination of a fine kind’. Yet, for all this praise, and that afforded his other work in this vein TALES OF THE MASQUE (1894), Pearce faded into obscurity after what appears to be his last work THE DREAMER’S BOOK (1905).

  Joseph Henry Pearce was born in 1856 and his writing career started in 1891 with the novel ESTHER PENTREATH. He wrote several Cornish novels, and all told published nine books in fourteen years.

  ‘An Unexpected Journey’ comes from DROLLS FROM SHADOWLAND, and is an atmospheric vignette on a familiar theme. In Mr Pearce’s capable hands, it carries extra weight.

  The performance was over: the curtain had descended and the spectators had dispersed.

  There had been a slight crush at the doors of the theatre, and what with the abrupt change from the pleasant warmth and light of the interior to the sharp chill of the night outside, Preston shivered, and a sudden weakness smote him at the joints.

  The crowd on the pavement in front of the theatre melted away with unexampled rapidity, in fact, seemed almost to waver and disappear as if the mise en scène had changed in some inexplicable way.

  A hansom drove up, and Preston stepped into it heavily, glancing drowsily askance at the driver as he did so.

  Seated up there, barely visible in the gloom, the driver had an almost grisly aspect, humped with waterproof capes, and with such a lean, white face. Preston, as he glanced at him, shivered again.

  The trap-door above him opened softly, and the colourless face peered down at him curiously.

  ‘Where to, sir?’ asked the hollow voice.

  Preston leaned back wearily. ‘Home,’ he replied.

  It did not strike him as anything strange or unusual, that the driver asked no questions but drove off without a word. He was very weary, and he wanted to rest.

  The sleepless hum of the city was abidingly in his ears, and the lamps that dotted the misty pavements stared at him blinkingly all along the route. The tall black buildings rose up grimly into the night; the faces that flitted to and fro along the pavements, kept ever sliding past him, melting into the darkness; and the cabs and ’buses, still astir in the streets, had a ghostly air as they vanished in the gloom.

  Preston lay back, weary in every joint, a drowsy numbness settling on his pulse. He had faith in his driver: he would bring him safely home.

  Presently they were at one of the wharves beside the river: Preston could hear the gurgle of the water around the piles.

  Not this way had he ever before gone homeward. He looked out musingly on the swift, black stream.

  ‘Just in time: we can go down with the tide,’ said a voice.

  Preston would have uttered some protest, but this sluggishness overpowered him: it was as if he could neither lift hand nor foot. The inertia of indifference had penetrated into his bones.

  Presently he was aware that he had entered a barge that lay close against the wharf, heaving on the tide. And, as if it were all a piece of the play, the lean old driver, with his dead-white face, had the oars in his hands and stood quietly facing him, guiding the dark craft down the stream.

  The panorama of the river-bank kept changing and shifting in the most inexplicable manner, and Preston was aware of a crowd of pictures ever coming and going before his eyes: as if some subtle magician, standing behind his shoulder, were projecting for him, on the huge black screen of night, the most marvellous display of memories he had ever contemplated. For they were all memories, or blends of memories, that now rose here on the horizon of his consciousness. There was nothing new in essentials presented to him: but the grouping was occasionally novel to a fault.

  The dear old home – the dear old folks! Green hills, with the little white-washed cottage in a dimple of them, and in the foreground the wind-fretted plain of the sea. The boyish games – marbles and hoop-trundling – and the coming home at dusk to the red-lighted kitchen, where the mother had the tea ready on the table and the sisters sat at their knitting by the fire.

  The dear, dear mother! how his pulse yearned towards her! there were tears in his eyes as he thought of her now. Yet, all the same, the quiet of his pulse was profound.

  And there was the familiar scenery of his daily life: the ink-stained desks, the brass rails for the books, the ledgers and bankbooks, and the files against the walls; and the faces of his fellow-clerks (even the office boy) depicted here before him to the very life.

  The wind across the waters blew chilly in his face: he shivered, a numbness settling in his limbs.

  His sweet young wife, so loving and gentle – how shamefully he had neglected her, seeking his own pleasure selfishly – there she sat in the familiar chair by the fireside with dear little Daisy dancing on her knee. What a quiet, restful interior it was! He wondered: would they miss him much if he were dead? ... Above all, would little Daisy understand what it meant when some one whispered to her ‘favee is dead’?

  The wavering shadows seemed to thicken around the boat. And the figure at the oars – how lean and white it was: and yet it seemed a good kind of fellow, too, he thought. Preston watched it musingly as the stream bore them onward: the rushing of the water almost lulling him to sleep.

  Were they sweeping outward, then, to the unknown sea?

  It was an unexpected journey ..... And he had asked to be taken home!

  Presently the air grew full of shapes: shadowy shapes with mournful faces; shapes that hinted secrets, with threatenings in their eyes.

  If a man’s sins, now, should take to themselves bodies, would it not be in some such guise as this they would front and affright him at dead of night?

  Preston shivered, sitting there like a mere numb lump.

  How much of his wrong-doing is forgiven to a man – and how much remembered against him in the reckoning?

  How awful this gruesome isolation was becoming!

  Was it thus a man went drifting up to God?

  The figure at the oars was crooning softly. It was like the lullaby his mother used to sing to him when he was a child.

  There was a breath of freer air – humanity lay behind them – they were alone with Nature on the vast, dim sea.

  The numbness crept to the roots of his being. He had no hands to lift; he had no feet to move. His heart grew sluggish: there was a numbness in his brain.

  Death stood upright now in the bow before him: and in the east he was aware of a widening breadth of grey.

  Would the blackness freshen into perfect day for him .... or would the night lie hopelessly on him for ever? ....

  The figure drew near – and laid its hand across his eyes ....

  ‘Thro
wn out of the hansom, and the wheels went over him, sir.

  He was dead in less than five minutes, I should think.’

  ‘Cover his face .... and break it gently to his wife.’

  The Page-Boy’s Ghost

  THE COUNTESS OF MUNSTER

  Wilhelmina Fitzclarence, the Countess of Munster (1830 – 1906) started writing late in life, producing her first book DORINDA at the age of fifty-nine. The daughter of the twelfth Earl of Cassillia, Wilhelmina had married her cousin, the second Earl of Munster, in 1855. He died in 1901, and three years later she published her autobiography MY MEMORIES AND MISCELLANIES. They had seven children but only two survived her.

  The Countess was a keen animal lover and there are several pets to be found in her collection GHOSTLY TALES (1896) from which this story is taken. The Countess of Munster’s stories are, to my mind, among the best of the late Victorian era. They are plainly written, they make no allowances for the fashion of the day, and they proceed to the point with admirable haste. In the nicest possible way, compare this story with that of Mrs Banks, and see the differing literary styles that went to make up Victorian ghostly tales.

  In the month of March of the year 1894, I, accompanied by my niece, Clara (who is young, pretty, and, moreover, a very clever and practical hospital nurse), went with my cousin Mrs Oliver in search of a house for the latter lady, who was about to settle in Bath.

  The house-agent, of course, told us of many residences likely to suit our requirements, and amongst others, there was one especially – situated in ‘Granville Crescent.’ Cards were given us to view the house, and one lovely morning we three ladies started for that purpose.

  When we arrived at the door, we found it was a corner house, which had been added to according to the owner’s convenience, and was consequently rather a rambling building, although not large.

  After viewing the basement and dining rooms, we proceeded upstairs. I had not been noticing my niece for some minutes, having, of course, been thoroughly occupied with my cousin, looking over the rooms, their furniture, etc.; but suddenly I felt a tug at my sleeve, and turning, I saw Clara looking ghastly pale, and evidently much disturbed.