He took the money-box from the shelf and shook it contemptuously. “Empty, o’ course,” he said. “You two ain’t donc much for this ‘ere community to-day, but I will.”
He dropped a pawn-ticket into the box, and put it down before them. “That’s the ticket for the clock,” he pursued; “all there is in the box. Seems to me you expect me to keep this ‘ere show goin’ all by myself. Well, any’ow I done my share to-day — where’s my supper?”
He glared from Teddy Mills to Sotcher, and back to Teddy again. But with that his attention was drawn in another direction by the stealthy entrance of Billy Snider.
Snider slid in quietly, though with an elaborate air of careless indifference. Joe sprang up and seized him by the arm. “Where’s that money?” demanded the outraged Budd.
“Money? What money?” asked Billy, with much innocent surprise.
“What money? You know what money; all the money; the money in the box!”
Billy Snider wriggled uncomfortably and looked from one to another. “In the box? Oh, that? Well, I wanted it, you know, so I just took it — like we arranged.”
“Like we — like we — Why, you took it all!”
“Yes, I know. I wanted it all.”
Joe Budd wasted no more words, but swung Billy Snider across the room, and pushed him backward over the table. “You turn out yer pockets,” he commanded, “or I’ll tear ‘em out o’ your trousers an’ bash you arterwards. Go on! Turn ‘em inside out!”
Billy Snider glanced towards the other comrades, but saw no encouragement. Very grudgingly he extracted several shillings and a few coppers from one trouser pocket and put them on the table.
“Go on! Out with the rest!”
With another reluctant effort, Billy added some more shillings; but Joe, with a preference for quicker business, thrust his fingers into his victim’s waistcoat pockets with no reluctance whatever, and there found three sovereigns!
“Three quid!” cried Joe. “Look at that! An’ last night ‘e ‘adn’t got fifteen bob to pay into the funds!”
He released Billy and turned from one comrade to another a look of grieved surprise. “Seems to me I’ve bin made a victim of in this ‘ere business,” he said. “You’re all in it, I b’lieve. Well, well — I won’t appoint myself treasurer, ‘cos that ‘ud be officialism an’ authority, an’ agin the sacred principles of anarchy; I won’t be treasurer, but I will take care o’ the money. Where’s my supper?” he proceeded, with a sudden burst of wrath. “‘Ere you, Mr. Bloomin’ Jawmedead, take that, an’ get my supper!”
It was Sotcher who was addressed, and “that” was a vigorous bang in the eye. Sotcher staggered and gasped, and, with a tender hand over the bruised feature began a noisy protest based on the rights of sovereign humanity.
“Rights?” retorted Joe Budd; “it’s equal rights for all, ain’t it? Very well, I’ve punched you in the eye — you’ve got just as much right to punch me. Goin’ to? Eh? Ain’t you? ‘Cos if you ain’t, go an’ get my supper. That’s voluntary co-operation, that is. ‘Anarchy is order’ is what you told me yerself, an’ I’m goin’ to ‘ave my orders carried out ‘ere. I ain’t agoin’ to belong to a free community an’ be done out o’ my rights. This ‘ere’s a brother’ood of free initiative, whether you like it or no!”
Late that night, when Joe Budd had retired in state to the bed that had been Teddy’s, Billy Snider suggested the propriety of a simultaneous attack on the common oppressor. But Sotcher, still tenderly fingering the black eye, was sure that his principles would never permit him to participate in an act involving the Tyranny of the Majority.
And in the morning it was found that Billy Snider had risen early again. He had not interfered with the box this time, for the pawn-ticket lay undisturbed. But Joe Budd, swathed in a blanket, came downstairs in a typhoon of violent language, to announce that his clothes were all gone, with the money in the pockets.
Now it chanced that Joe Budd’s was the best suit of clothes in the house, while Sotcher’s would never have paid for carrying off. But although Sotcher’s clothes were left, and not a rag the worse, it was observed that he paled instantly at the announcement of Billy’s second evasion, and clapped his hands to his pockets. There were some seconds of agonized and contorted investigation, and then the orator straightway vanished into the outer street; whence he returned in five minutes in company with that foe of all his dearest principles — a policeman.
“I’ve bin robbed in this ‘ouse,” Sotcher complained clamorously. “I’ve bin robbed o’ two pound one an’ four in this ‘ouse, an’ I’ll ‘ave the for of somebody! That’s the master o’ the ‘ouse, constable, an’ ‘is name’s Mills. Ain’t ‘e responsible? I’ve bin robbed in this ‘ouse, I tell you, an’ I won’t stand it. ‘E’s responsible in the eye o’ the lor! Two pound one an’ four was in my pockets, an’ while there’s for an’ magistrates an’ p’lice in the country I mean to ‘ave my rights. There’s the man o’ the ‘ouse, constable!”
Boys came running, and women with aprons over their heads: and the Rodd Street revolution wound up ignobly in a street row of the most ordinary Bethnal Green type, the centre whereof was marked by the towering helmet of the policeman, about which swirled the excited forms of Teddy Mills, Alfred Sotcher, and a large and violent man in a blanket. While in the distance was perceived the rapidly approaching form of Mrs. Mills, who had heard rumors of strange doings at the home she had left temporarily, with a view of giving her husband a salutary shock, and was now most vigorously resolved to go and investigate matters for herself.
THE CHAMBER OF LIGHT: A FANTASY
IF I cannot tell a tale of a haunted house in which I have lived, nor even of one in which I have passed a night of trembling adventure (and indeed neither experience has been my fortune), I at least know enough of the strange case of Missel Hall to be able to present it in its completeness, or at any rate in as much of its completeness as will ever be known, and with an accuracy to which, I believe, few other persons could pretend.
The house is fairly large, as one might expect from its title; yet not altogether so large as one may sometimes see a “hall,” for, indeed, the name is given rather loosely in Essex to almost any house of the least pretension. Wherefore it must be remembered that Missel Hall is not such a hall as some I have seen — like a quarter of a mile of Park Lane with a terrace before it — nor is it a mere farmhouse, like Tarpots Hall. It was, and is, no more nor less than a comfortably large house, just large enough for its advancing ends to be called wings. It stood in a comparatively bare part of the commonly well-grown county of Essex, and on a slight elevation, which looked across a little common, or heath, that was unusually flat for that same county, which the ignorant stranger believes to be flat everywhere.
When I called the house comfortably large, I meant that, and nothing more. That is to say, so far as size might give comfort, Missel Hall had it; but so far as a plague of ghosts and their terrors might abolish comfort, Missel Hall was the most uncomfortable house in the county. Once more I pick my words with care. The Hall was the most uncomfortable house in the county, before it received its last tenants; soon after their arrival the more active troubles ceased, and the whole ghostly peculiarities of the place settled down into one — silent and weird. There was a room which had a light of its own.
It was not a mere point of light — a ghostly candle, “corpse-light,” or anything of that sort — but a wan, sickly luminousness that filled the whole apartment. It is to be presumed that it persisted night and day, though bright daylight made it imperceptible; for as soon as the light began to fail, and even at midday, when a heavy thundercloud turned noon to twilight, the pale light grew visible through the one window of the haunted room, and persisted, through night or storm, till full sunlight outstared it.
To see the house from the heath, standing black and desolate like a rock against the evening sky, with its one eye of unearthly light, was uncanny enough, but perhaps the effect was heightened w
hen other windows showed the warm light of common lamps; for the contrast was striking, and no stranger could have passed without a twinge of surprise and wonder at the spectral light of the single high window in the east wing. I have heard people confess to a chilliness of scalp and spine at the sight. There was never another house in Essex be-. devilled exactly in this way, though I think I remember to have heard some talk of a case rather like it in a western county.
But this strange light, as I have said, was not seen till after the arrival of the last tenants of Missel Hall. Before then the whole place had been given over to ghostly disturbances of many sorts; with the arrival of the Quilter family these suddenly ceased, and were immediately succeeded by this, a phenomenon wholly unprecedented, and, it would seem, less capable of explanation than any that had gone before.
The house was an old one, and hitherto all its ghostly appointments had been strictly correct and according to proper fashion and precedent. In course of time, it is true, they had grown so numerous as to make the house difficult to live in, for persons of any nerves but the strongest, and in the end they had caused the place to stand empty for some years; but there was nothing irregular — everything was perfectly in good form and (blessed phrase) comme il faut. There were:
Rappings. Rumblings. Shrieks with bumps. Shrieks plain. Furniture ill-used. Ghosts with large eyes. Do. without heads. Heads with nothing else. Eyes unappropriated. Demoniac laughter. A smell of Sulphur. Do. Brimstone (without treacle).
All being, as you will perceive, phenomena of well established respectability and proved credence, as the learned are aware, from the writings of Cornelius Agrippa and Mr. Stead. There were other manifestations also, a little outside the limits of the regular schedule, though not so far from it as the strange light in the east wing. Thus it was testified by Mrs. Emma Skinner, a charwoman employed to clean the premises, that on shortly returning to a room where she had just completed her work, she found mysterious inscriptions scrawled with the points of ghostly fingers on windows, sideboards, mantelpiece, floor, walls — and in short wherever she had forgotten to dust, and that mocking laughter followed her as she fled in terror, the sounds intensifying to an appalling uproar, in the midst of which the horrified Emma believed she could distinguish her own Christian name, preceded by the exclamation “Whoa!” as though to call her back. Needless to say she did not pause in her flight, and arrived at last at the house of Mr. Benton, the agent for the property, breathless, and only so far capable of speech as to demand brandy and water and a week’s pay in lieu of notice.
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.
Delphi Complete Works of Arthur Morrison Page 255