“Where is it?” asks Choppy, innocent as putty. “I don’t know my way about here.”
“Well,” the landlord says, takin’ him to the window, “you see the church right away there to the right?”
“Yes,” says Choppy.
“Well, the forty-fourth milestone’s a little way beyond that, along the road, and the forty-fifth’s further on still.”
“Further on still?” says Choppy, with a sort o’ fall in his voice. “Further on still?”
“Why, yes, o’ course,” says the landlord. “A mile further on. It would be wouldn’t it?”
Choppy Byles looked round at me and Jerry Stagg with a face like a paper kite.
“What’s this mean?” he gasped, as soon as the landlord was out o’ the room.
“I’ll go along the lane and see,” says Jerry. And we both went with him.
We came out at the end o’ the lane, and there was the first milestone we’d seen, straight in front of us. We took a look round and went across. It was the forty-third! The forty-third!
The figures was worn, and not particular clear, and the three was one o’ them with the flat top and a corner instead of a curl; very much like a five on a pitch-dark night with a match in a wind; but a three all the same.
The three of us stood a-blinkin’ at each other over that milestone, as it come to us that we’d gone and made the mile a lump shorter instead of longer! And such a lump!
“Look out!” says Jerry, very sudden. “There’s Gosling comin’ up the lane with another chap. Get behind the hedge!”
There was a gate close by, and we nipped in like winkin’ and stooped behind the hedge. It was Gosling, sure enough, with a pal, talkin’ and laughin’ like anything. He seemed to have a lot to say, but we only heard one bit, and that was enough.
“Five quid and a silver flask,” says Gosling “not to mention a night’s fun. But that’ll be nothing to the afternoon’s!”
We three just sat down behind that hedge and looked at each other like waxworks. We saw a whole new picture-show of that awful night in two seconds, us workin’ and them peepin’ and laughin’.
Then says Choppy Byles, “My bag’s in the bedroom at the Fox and ‘Ounds. Cheaper to leave it there. Foller the railway line. We’ll hoof it.”
So we did.
THE FOUR-WANT WAY
THERE can be no more widely spread delusion than that a man can believe his own eyes. And yet it is difficult to understand how such a delusion can have survived a single year’s experience of a single human life; for every man’s eyes — except a blind man’s — must deceive him at least a score of times in the period.
I learned the lesson long ago by aid of my own eyes; and it was a fault of those same eyes that brought me the story I am here to tell again. It was in the best days of my Essex memories, when I was so very young a man that many people called me a boy. I was walking by night on a road I had traversed a hundred times before at all times of the day and night, so that I knew almost every bush in the hedges. There was a crowded sky of hurrying cloud, which never wholly blackened the country about me, and sometimes, for a space of seconds, let through a ray of clear moonlight that flung my shadow sharp on the road before me, and lit the meadows deadly pale as far as I could see. For all the hastening of the clouds above it was not a windy night in the lower air, and there was no more than a whisper among the trees as I passed the group of elms that stood in the hedge eighty yards before you reach the four-wont way. It is just beyond these elms that the country so falls away on the right that you can see the sea without interruption for a quarter of a mile along the road; and the widest view of the water is that from the four-wont way, where the cross-road drops steep toward the village by the shore.
I am reminded here that it may be necessary to explain that a four-wont way in Essex is nothing but the meeting-place of crossroads. To me the phrase is so familiar that I am disposed to apologise for the explanation, since it may be superfluous; though at the moment I cannot remember to have heard the words in any other county.
By involuntary habit I turned my head as I came to the spot where by day the sea is first visible, though now I rather remembered than saw it. But a distant light or two in the far dark and a wisp of mist over the marsh below mapped the familiar view clearly enough. So I reached the four-wont way at a moment of moderate brightness, and saw, as I thought, a man lying on the bank by the roadside.
By reason of the fall of the hill there were banks by the two corners to my left, but none by those on the right, and it was on the bank before me, on the side that bordered the crossroad, that the form appeared to lie. Drunk and asleep, was my first fancy; but I looked again, and the dark figure seemed to lie with a limpness that was more than that of sleep. Was the man ill — or dead? I checked my walk, and went across; but as I bent over the grass and weeds that grew on the bank the figure lost shape, and was nothing but a darkness, and the darkness fell into the natural forms of shadows on the broken ground among the grass and weeds.
Clearly there was nothing there. I had been deceived by the chance form of shadows on the bank. And yet the impression had been so real and so certain that even now I could not refrain from feeling about the bank with my hands. They came on the rough, dry ground, the grass and the weeds, and nothing else.
Yet one is by nature slow to discredit one’s own eyes, even when the illusion is proved. So now I had the curiosity to walk backward till I reached again the spot where first I had paused in my walk. The shadows still lay along the bank, but whether from the changed light through the clouds that scurried overhead, or because actual examination had enabled me to correct my sight, I could see no human form now. Once more I went toward the bank, this time very slowly, watching for any change in the shadows that might suggest, however remotely, the shape that had deceived me. But still I saw nothing; nothing but the broken shade among the grass and weeds. I even put out my hand again, and felt the rough earth.
I turned back now more carelessly into the road, fully convinced of my error, but still with a sidelong step and a parting glance at the bank as I went. And as I did it I saw the dark form again, but in another place.
This time it was on the other face of the same bank — round the corner, as it were, and at the side of the road I was to pass along, though no more than a few feet from where I had already seen it. I stood still and rubbed my eyes. There was no mistaking it now, at any rate. Exactly the same dark form, apparently as solid as anything about me, lying in precisely the same attitude, at full length, with the head, which seemed as black as the rest, drooping slackly.
I took a good, deliberate look, and walked slowly toward it, watching for the moment when it should resolve itself into ordinary shadow, as I had seen it do before. It held its shape and its apparent substance till I stood over it, and then for the second time as I put out my hand I perceived that there was nothing before me but the shadows one would expect to see on the bank.
I had an odd feeling of chilliness, and from that moment to this I have never been able to decide whether the chilliness preceded or followed the sudden remembrance that a gibbet had stood at this corner in old times. At any rate I lingered no longer, but, after a quick look about me, went on my way; constraining myself, in the vain pride of youth, to walk with a regular step at a slower pace than I had been making, and resisting an almost overpowering impulse to glance over my shoulder.
In a hundred yards I began to be angry with myself for taking so much thought of an absurd error of vision, and especially for so illogical a recollection of the gibbet, which could have no possible connection with the faults of my eyes. But no logic will check a train of thought; and I went on remembering all I knew about the gibbet for the remaining two miles of my walk.
It was not a vast deal that I remembered after all. I had seen and handled a treasured little bag of chips cut from the post fifty years before I was born, and vastly esteemed for wear as a remedy for ague. I had heard old men tell of the men
hanged there in chains, visible to passing ships at sea, about the year of Waterloo and before it; and I once had the curiosity to fasten a sheet of white paper in a neighbouring tree, so that I might readily pick out the spot when I rowed out in a boat. I found it a clearly noticeable spot on the skyline, where the figure of a dangling man must have caught the eye at once.
At this moment I cannot recall why I mentioned my little optical illusion to Roboshobery Dove next morning, unless I made it one of my arguments against some of the old fellow’s ancient beliefs. But mention it I did, sitting at his cottage door under the shade of his best plum-tree; told him the whole transaction, in fact.
Roboshobery, who was knocking out his pipe against the socket of his wooden leg, paused and stared.
“All black, you say?” he queried. “An’ laid out straight like someone might ha’ putt him there?”
“Why, yes, so it seemed; but then, as I was saying—”
“Head hangin’ all aside?”
“Yes — what seemed the head. I might have guessed it fancy, from that, now I come to think of it — it was so unnatural.”
The old man never took his eyes from mine.
“You’ve seen Derifal,” he said.
“Derifal?”
“Ay, sir, you’ve seen Derifal, an’ not the first, either. Though ’tis nigh ten year since I heard of it last, that not bein’ a road much used o’ nights. ‘Twere Derifal.”
“And who is Derifal?”
“What he be now you may make your guess, sir,” Dove answered deliberately, giving his attention once more to his pipe. “Once he were a man, an’ he hung in chains on the gibbet at that there corner.”
“But Derifal? I never heard the name before. I have heard of Cavell, and Munt, and Apprice, that Prentice remembers — the last that hung there; but never of Derifal.”
“Cavell, an’ Munt, an’ Apprice — I saw ‘em all myself when I were a boy. But Derifal were before that, long; an’ the last man that saw him hangin’ died fifty year ago. I’ll tell ‘ee, sir. ’Tis a true proper tale for wilful youth.”
Roboshobery filled his pipe from the steel box engraved with a frigate in full sail, and I saw in his eye the quaint twinkle that ever accompanied a rebuke to a junior. He smoked a few puffs in silence, and then began his tale:
“It were fair to count that Derifal had a father, like most on us, but none hereabout ever heard tell on him. His mother dropped into the place out o’ nowhere, so to say, in a po’-chay, nobody but her and her boy, about six year old or so, then. D’ye know the waste corner in the lane by t’ oad common, leadin’ to Beggar’s Bush — the place where so much wallflower and snapdragon grows wild?”
The place was very noticeable to anybody passing the lane, and here and there the footings of old walls were still visible, showing it to be the site of a vanished cottage.
“Well,” the old man proceeded, when I had answered him, “they lived in a cottage that stood there. There were some sort o’ walls to it when I were a boy, though no roof; but the bricks were hiked off a few at a time, till ‘twere as you see it now. But that makes nothen’, here or there. The cottage were bought an’ the furnitude put in by the lawyer at Rochford, by orders from another lawyer in London; an’ nobody knew where the orders come from to begin with. But when all were ready, down comes Mrs. Derifal an’ the boy, an’ here they lived the rest o’ their lives.
“Rather a gentry sort o’ person, ’twould seem, were this Mrs. Derifal; an’, keepin’ to herself, there were tales a-plenty about — some I heard myself many’s a year after she were dust and bones. But not a soul knew anything certain till the boy growed up, an’ then they knew bad things of him. ‘Twere as you might expect. He never went to school — his mother teached him, or wanted; but he learnt little that he hadn’t a mind to. She were all for him, body an’ soul, an’ he growed up to prove her folly. She drew money quarterly through the lawyers, an’ spent it all on the boy; an’ as soon as he was old enough to do it, he spent it himself.
“There were little o’ the genelman about he, whatever his father may or may not ha’ been. He couldn’t find company low enough hereabouts; an’ that ‘ud sound strange enough to you if you knew these parts as I’ve known ‘em. He was away days together, an’ ’twas said his mother never slept those times, but sat watchin’. An’ like as not, when his humour was bad, he’d knock her down for it. He took her money as soon as she got it, every farden; an’ what she lived on nobody could guess. She, that had been as neat an’ lady-lookin’ a woman as you might find in Essex, turned into a poor oad trollops with half a gownd to cover her, an’ eyes blistered red with cryin’ when they wasn’t black with beatin’. But with it all she wouldn’t hear a word against him, an’ tried to make believe to be the best-fortuned mother in the parish. She bought him out o’ trouble with selling the furnitude an’ he turned on her for her ill-kep’ house. She would take him by the hem of his coat, an’ pray him to come back home, till he drove her away; an’ she’d find him drunk in a ditch an’ sit by him all night till she could take him home with her.
“They lived like that for long enough to set such tales about those parts as I might go on tellin’ you for an hour, an’ all tales o’ the same sort. We’ve had our share o’ bad ‘uns hereabout; but I never heard of the like of Derifal — not a man that ‘ud so behave to his own mother, that is. His name was a sort o’ common sayin’ in my time, though he hanged at the four-wont way ‘fore I was born, as I’ve said.
“The time came when all he could get from his mother wasn’t enough for Derifal, an’ he tried other ways. He were never taken for it; but I’ve heard he went with some others a-robbin’ on the road. An’ at last it came that he an’ two more had a plan that nobody ever learned the rights of, though ’tis to be guessed it were breaking into a house. His mother got some notion of it, though, an’ tried to keep him back. Much good that was.
“It seems she followed him unbeknown as he went out at night, an’ over by Dawes Heath he met his two pals. Whether or not she heard anything they said, I can’t tell ‘ee; but sartain it is she ran an’ catched him about with her arms, pleadin’ an’ prayin’ he wouldn’t go. ‘Danny, my boy, ye’ll never go! Don’t listen to ‘em, Danny! ’Tis your life, my boy! You sha’n’t go while I can hold ‘ee, my Danny!’
“He threatened her, an’ she held him the tighter and begged the harder. He beat her with his shut fist, an’ she hung tight to save him. He couldn’t break her hold, and he maddened an’ cursed, an’ beat her down by the head with an iron bar from his pocket. She let go then, and dropped, dyin’!
“Derifal’s mates were hainish low enough; but this was beyond ‘em. They went King’s evidence, an’ Derifal were hanged on Dawes Heath, with half Essex tryin’ to pull him out o’ the cart an’ limb him. An’ at the end of the hour he were taken down and hung in chains there at the four-wont way.
“Now a man hung in chains was padlocked, as you may have heard, an’ Derifal was padlocked in the reg’lar way. But the next mornin’ the chains hung empty, an’ the corpse was lying on the bank, put out straight an’ decent like it were in a coffin, barring that the head — Well, you remember about the head yourself. So they sent a man off a-hossback to Chelmsford, an’ before night Derifal were up in the chains again with a new padlock, it bein’ guessed that somebody had a key to fit the other. But that weren’t enough; for next morning they found Derifal laid out the same again on the bank, at the other side o’ the post! An’ the padlock were tight as ever!
“They did it again, an’ the sheriff set a secret watch. But in the night the two watchmen came down runnin’, half dead o’ fright. They’d watched a bit, and seen nothen’; an’ then they sat to take a rest behind the hedge, countin’ they could hear if anybody came a-nigh. They’d sat a while, an’ maybe dozed a bit, when they heard a most piteous noise of cryin’ and sobbin’ — not screams nor like that, but just quiet, bitter cryin’. So they upped and peeped over the hedge, an’ there were Der
ifal, laid out straight an’ black on the bank again, an’ a gashly thin, pale woman over him, cryin’ as they’d never dreamed, an’ with her hands to his head, like as she’d knelt many a night with him drunk by the wayside. An’ with that they runned.
“In the morning they carried the body away from the bank, an’ it never went back. How ’twas done I don’t know, but after a time there came an order— ’twas said from the King himself — that Derifal should be buried. So buried he was; an’ with that ’tis to be guessed his mother got her rest at last, for I never heard she were seen again. You saw no white woman, sir, did you?”
“Certainly not; and as for the—”
“Ay, ay, sir, ’tis as I said; she’s at rest. But I can show you two men alive now that have seen the black man, besides yourself.”
THE THING IN THE UPPER ROOM
A SHADOW hung ever over the door, which stood black in the depth of its arched recess, like an unfathomable eye under a frowning brow. The landing was wide and panelled, and a heavy rail, supported by a carved balustrade, stretched away in alternate slopes and levels down the dark staircase, past other doors, and so to the courtyard and the street. The other doors were dark also; but it was with a difference. That top landing was lightest of all, because of the skylight; and perhaps it was largely by reason of contrast that its one doorway gloomed so black and forbidding The doors below opened and shut, slammed, stood ajar. Men and women passed in and out, with talk and human sounds — sometimes even with laughter or a snatch of song; but the door on the top landing remained shut and silent through weeks and months. For, in truth, the logement had an ill name, and had been untenanted for years. Long even before the last tenant had occupied it, the room had been regarded with fear and aversion, and the end of that last tenant had in no way lightened the gloom that hung about the place.
The house was so old that its weather-washed face may well have looked down on the bloodshed of St. Bartholomew’s, and the haunted room may even have earned its ill name on that same day of death. But Paris is a city of cruel history, and since the old mansion rose proud and new, the hôtel of some powerful noble, almost any year of the centuries might have seen the blot fall on that upper room that had left it a place of loathing and shadows. The occasion was long forgotten, but the fact remained; whether or not some horror of the ancien régime or some enormity of the Terror was enacted in that room was no longer to be discovered; but nobody would live there, nor stay beyond that gloomy door one second longer than he could help. It might be supposed that the fate of the solitary tenant within living memory had something to do with the matter — and, indeed, his end was sinister enough; but long before his time the room had stood shunned and empty. He, greatly daring, had taken no more heed of the common terror of the room than to use it to his advantage in abating the rent; and he had shot himself a little later, while the police were beating at his door to arrest him on a charge of murder. As I have said, his fate may have added to the general aversion from the place, though it had no in no way originated it; and now ten years had passed, and more, since his few articles of furniture had been carried away and sold; and nothing had been carried in to replace them.
Delphi Complete Works of Arthur Morrison Page 271