The rider got down
As light as shadow falls.
But he was a tall, sinewy figure. He wore a cape or short mantle, a cocked hat, and a pair of jack-boots, such as held their ground in some primitive corners of England almost to the close of the last century.
“Take him, lad,” said he to old Scales. “You need not walk or wisp him — he never sweats or tires. Give him his oats, and let him take his own time to eat them. House!” cried the stranger — in the oldfashioned form of summons which still lingered, at that time, in out-of-the-way places — in a deep and piercing voice.
As Tom Scales led the horse away to the stables it turned its head towards its master with a short, shill neigh.
“About your business, old gentleman — we must not go too fast,” the stranger cried back again to his horse, with a laugh as harsh and piercing; and he strode into the house.
The hostler led this horse into the inn yard. In passing, it sidled up to the coachhouse gate, within which lay the dead sexton — snorted, pawed and lowered its head suddenly, with ear close to the plank, as if listening for a sound from within; then uttered again the same short, piercing neigh.
The hostler was chilled at this mysterious coquetry with the dead. He liked the brute less and less every minute.
In the meantime, its master had proceeded.
“I’ll go to the inn kitchen,” he said, in his startling bass, to the drawer who met him in the passage.
And on he went, as if he had known the place all his days: not seeming to hurry himself — stepping leisurely, the servant thought — but gliding on at such a rate, nevertheless, that he had passed his guide and was in the kitchen of the George before the drawer had got much more than halfway to it.
A roaring fire of dry wood, peat and coal lighted up this snug but spacious apartment — flashing on pots and pans, and dressers high-piled with pewter plates and dishes; and making the uncertain shadows of the long “hanks” of onions and many a flitch and ham, depending from the ceiling, dance on its glowing surface.
The doctor and the attorney, even Sir Geoffrey Mardykes, did not disdain on this occasion to take chairs and smoke their pipes by the kitchen fire, where they were in the thick of the gossip and discussion excited by the terrible event.
The tall stranger entered uninvited.
He looked like a gaunt, athletic Spaniard of forty, burned half black in the sun, with a bony, flattened nose. A pair of fierce black eyes were just visible under the edge of his hat; and his mouth seemed divided, beneath the moustache, by the deep scar of a hare-lip.
Sir Geoffrey Mardykes and the host of the George, aided by the doctor and the attorney, were discussing and arranging, for the third or fourth time, their theories about the death and the probable plans of Toby Crooke, when the stranger entered.
The newcomer lifted his hat, with a sort of smile, for a moment from his black head.
“What do you call this place, gentlemen?” asked the stranger.
“The town of Golden Friars, sir,” answered the doctor politely.
“The George and Dragon, sir: Anthony Turnbull, at your service,” answered mine host, with a solemn bow, at the same moment — so that the two voices went together, as if the doctor and the innkeeper were singing a catch.
“The George and the Dragon,” repeated the horseman, expanding his long hands over the fire which he had approached. “Saint George, King George, the Dragon, the Devil: it is a very grand idol, that outside your door, sir. You catch all sorts of worshippers — courtiers, fanatics, scamps: all’s fish, eh? Everybody welcome, provided he drinks like one. Suppose you brew a bowl or two of punch. I’ll stand it. How many are we? Here — count, and let us have enough. Gentlemen, I mean to spend the night here, and my horse is in the stable. What holiday, fun, or fair has got so many pleasant faces together? When I last called here — for, now I bethink me, I have seen the place before — you all looked sad. It was on a Sunday, that dismalest of holidays; and it would have been positively melancholy only that your sexton — that saint upon earth — Mr. Crooke, was here.” He was looking round, over his shoulder, and added: “Ha! don’t I see him there?”
Frightened a good deal were some of the company. All gaped in the direction in which, with a nod, he turned his eyes.
“He’s not thar — he can’t be thar — we see he’s not thar,” said Turnbull, as dogmatically as old Joe Willet might have delivered himself — for he did not care that the George should earn the reputation of a haunted house. “He’s met an accident, sir: he’s dead — he’s elsewhere — and therefore can’t be here.”
Upon this the company entertained the stranger with the narrative — which they made easy by a division of labour, two or three generally speaking at a time, and no one being permitted to finish a second sentence without finding himself corrected and supplanted.
“The man’s in Heaven, so sure as you’re not,” said the traveller so soon as the story was ended. “What! he was fiddling with the church bell, was he, and d —— d for that — eh? Landlord, get us some drink. A sexton d —— d for pulling down a church bell he has been pulling at for ten years!”
“You came, sir, by the Dardale-road, I believe?” said the doctor (village folk are curious). “A dismal moss is Dardale Moss, sir; and a bleak clim’ up the fells on t’ other side.”
“I say ‘Yes’ to all — from Dardale Moss, as black as pitch and as rotten as the grave, up that zigzag wall you call a road, that looks like chalk in the moonlight, through Dunner Cleugh, as dark as a coal-pit, and down here to the George and the Dragon, where you have a roaring fire, wise men, good punch — here it is — and a corpse in your coachhouse. Where the carcase is, there will the eagles be gathered together. Come, landlord, ladle out the nectar. Drink, gentlemen — drink, all. Brew another bowl at the bar. How divinely it stinks of alcohol! I hope you like it, gentlemen: it smells all over of spices, like a mummy. Drink, friends. Ladle, landlord. Drink, all. Serve it out.”
The guest fumbled in his pocket, and produced three guineas, which he slipped into Turnbull’s fat palm.
“Let punch flow till that’s out. I’m an old friend of the house. I call here, back and forward. I know you well, Turnbull, though you don’t recognize me.”
“You have the advantage of me, sir,” said Mr. Turnbull, looking hard on that dark and sinister countenance — which, or the like of which, he could have sworn he had never seen before in his life. But he liked the weight and colour of his guineas, as he dropped them into his pocket. “I hope you will find yourself comfortable while you stay.”
“You have given me a bedroom?”
“Yes, sir — the cedar chamber.”
“I know it — the very thing. No — no punch for me. By and by, perhaps.”
The talk went on, but the stranger had grown silent. He had seated himself on an oak bench by the fire, towards which he extended his feet and hands with seeming enjoyment; his cocked hat being, however, a little over his face.
Gradually the company began to thin. Sir Geoffrey Mardykes was the first to go; then some of the humbler townsfolk. The last bowl of punch was on its last legs. The stranger walked into the passage and said to the drawer:
“Fetch me a lantern. I must see my nag. Light it — hey! That will do. No — you need not come.”
The gaunt traveller took it from the man’s hand and strode along the passage to the door of the stableyard, which he opened and passed out.
Tom Scales, standing on the pavement, was looking through the stable window at the horses when the stranger plucked his shirtsleeve. With an inward shock the hostler found himself alone in presence of the very person he had been thinking of.
“I say — they tell me you have something to look at in there” — he pointed with his thumb at the old coachhouse door. “Let us have a peep.”
Tom Scales happened to be at that moment in a state of mind highly favourable to anyone in search of a submissive instrument. He was in great perplexity,
and even perturbation. He suffered the stranger to lead him to the coachhouse gate.
“You must come in and hold the lantern,” said he. “I’ll pay you handsomely.”
The old hostler applied his key and removed the padlock.
“What are you afraid of? Step in and throw the light on his face,” said the stranger grimly. “Throw open the lantern: stand there. Stoop over him a little — he won’t bite you. Steady, or you may pass the night with him!”
* * *
In the meantime the company at the George had dispersed; and, shortly after, Anthony Turnbull — who, like a good landlord, was always last in bed, and first up, in his house — was taking, alone, his last look round the kitchen before making his final visit to the stableyard, when Tom Scales tottered into the kitchen, looking like death, his hair standing upright; and he sat down on an oak chair, all in a tremble, wiped his forehead with his hand, and, instead of speaking, heaved a great sigh or two.
It was not till after he had swallowed a dram of brandy that he found his voice, and said:
“We’ve the deaul himsel’ in t’ house! By Jen! ye’d best send fo t’ sir” (the clergyman). “Happen he’ll tak him in hand wi’ holy writ, and send him elsewhidder deftly. Lord atween us and harm! I’m a sinfu’ man. I tell ye, Mr. Turnbull, I dar’ n’t stop in t’ George tonight under the same roof wi’ him.”
“Ye mean the ra-beyoned, black-feyaced lad, wi’ the brocken neb? Why, that’s a gentleman wi’ a pocket ful o’ guineas, man, and a horse worth fifty pounds!”
“That horse is no better nor his rider. The nags that were in the stable wi’ him, they all tuk the creepins, and sweated like rain down a thack. I tuk them all out o’ that, away from him, into the hack-stable, and I thocht I cud never get them past him. But that’s not all. When I was keekin inta t’ winda at the nags, he comes behint me and claps his claw on ma shouther, and he gars me gang wi’ him, and open the aad coachhouse door, and haad the cannle for him, till he pearked into the deed man’t feyace; and, as God’s my judge, I sid the corpse open its eyes and wark its mouth, like a man smoorin’ and strivin’ to talk. I cudna move or say a word, though I felt my hair rising on my heed; but at lang-last I gev a yelloch, and say I, ‘La! what is that?’ And he himsel’ looked round on me, like the devil he is; and, wi’ a skirl o’ a laugh, he strikes the lantern out o’ my hand. When I cum to myself we were outside the coachhouse door. The moon was shinin’ in, ad I cud see the corpse stretched on the table whar we left it; and he kicked the door to wi’ a purr o’ his foot. ‘Lock it,’ says he; and so I did. And here’s the key for ye — tak it yoursel’, sir. He offer’d me money: he said he’d mak me a rich man if I’d sell him the corpse, and help him awa’ wi’ it.”
“Hout, man! What cud he want o’ t’ corpse? He’s not doctor, to do a’ that lids. He was takin’ a rise out o’ ye, lad,” said Turnbull.
“Na, na — he wants the corpse. There’s summat you a’ me can’t tell he wants to do wi’ ‘t; and he’d liefer get it wi’ sin and thievin’, and the damage of my soul. He’s one of them freytens a boo or a dobbies off Dardale Moss, that’s always astir wi’ the like after nightfall; unless — Lord save us! — he be the deaul himsel.’”
“Whar is he noo?” asked the landlord, who was growing uncomfortable.
“He spang’d up the back stair to his room. I wonder you didn’t hear him trampin’ like a wild horse; and he clapt his door that the house shook again — but Lord knows whar he is noo. Let us gang awa’s up to the Vicar’s, and gan him come down, and talk wi’ him.”
“Hoity toity, man — you’re too easy scared,” said the landlord, pale enough by this time. “‘Twould be a fine thing, truly, to send abroad that the house was haunted by the deaul himsel’! Why, ‘twould be the ruin o’ the George. You’re sure ye locked the door on the corpse?”
“Aye, sir — sartain.”
“Come wi’ me, Tom — we’ll gi’ a last look round the yard.”
So, side by side, with many a jealous look right and left, and over their shoulders, they went in silence. On entering the oldfashioned quadrangle, surrounded by stables and other offices — built in the antique cagework fashion — they stopped for a while under the shadow of the inn gable, and looked round the yard, and listened. All was silent — nothing stirring.
The stable lantern was lighted; and with it in his hand Tony Turnbull, holding Tom Scales by the shoulder, advanced. He hauled Tom after him for a step or two; then stood still and shoved him before him for a step or two more; and thus cautiously — as a pair of skirmishers under fire — they approached the coachhouse door.
“There, ye see — all safe,” whispered Tom, pointing to the lock, which hung — distinct in the moonlight — in its place. “Cum back, I say!”
“Cum on, say I!” retorted the landlord valorously. “It would never do to allow any tricks to be played with the chap in there” — he pointed to the coachhouse door.
“The coroner here in the morning, and never a corpse to sit on!” He unlocked the padlock with these words, having handed the lantern to Tom. “Here, keck in, Tom,” he continued; “ye hev the lantern — and see if all’s as ye left it.”
“Not me — na, not for the George and a’ that’s in it!” said Tom, with a shudder, sternly, as he took a step backward.
“What the — what are ye afraid on? Gi’ me the lantern — it is all one: I will.”
And cautiously, little by little, he opened the door; and, holding the lantern over his head in the narrow slit, he peeped in — frowning and pale — with one eye, as if he expected something to fly in his face. He closed the door without speaking, and locked it again.
“As safe as a thief in a mill,” he whispered with a nod to his companion. And at that moment a harsh laugh overhead broke the silence startlingly, and set all the poultry in the yard gabbling.
“Thar he be!” said Tom, clutching the landlord’s arm— “in the winda — see!”
The window of the cedar-room, up two pair of stairs, was open; and in the shadow a darker outline was visible of a man, with his elbows on the window-stone, looking down upon them.
“Look at his eyes — like two live coals!” gasped Tom.
The landlord could not see all this so sharply, being confused, and not so long-sighted as Tom.
“Time, sir,” called Tony Turnbull, turning cold as he thought he saw a pair of eyes shining down redly at him— “time for honest folk to be in their beds, and asleep!”
“As sound as your sexton!” said the jeering voice from above.
“Come out of this,” whispered the landlord fiercely to his hostler, plucking him hard by the sleeve.
They got into the house, and shut the door.
“I wish we were shot of him,” said the landlord, with something like a groan, as he leaned against the wall of the passage. “I’ll sit up, anyhow — and, Tom, you’ll sit wi’ me. Cum into the gunroom. No one shall steal the dead man out of my yard while I can draw a trigger.”
The gunroom in the George is about twelve feet square. It projects into the stableyard and commands a full view of the old coachhouse; and, through a narrow side window, a flanking view of the back door of the inn, through which the yard is reached.
Tony Turnbull took down the blunderbuss — which was the great ordnance of the house — and loaded it with a stiff charge of pistol bullets.
He put on a greatcoat which hung there, and was his covering when he went out at night, to shoot wild ducks. Tom made himself comfortable likewise. They then sat down at the window, which was open, looking into the yard, the opposite side of which was white in the brilliant moonlight.
The landlord laid the blunderbuss across his knees, and stared into the yard. His comrade stared also. The door of the gunroom was locked; so they felt tolerably secure.
An hour passed; nothing had occurred. Another. The clock struck one. The shadows had shifted a little; but still the moon shone full on the old coachhouse, and the stable where t
he guest’s horse stood.
Turnbull thought he heard a step on the backstair. Tom was watching the back-door through the side window, with eyes glazing with the intensity of his stare. Anthony Turnbull, holding his breath, listened at the room door. It was a false alarm.
When he came back to the window looking into the yard:
“Hish! Look thar!” said he in a vehement whisper.
From the shadow at the left they saw the figure of the gaunt horseman, in short cloak and jack-boots, emerge. He pushed open the stable door, and led out his powerful black horse. He walked it across the front of the building till he reached the old coachhouse door; and there, with its bridle on its neck, he left it standing, while he stalked to the yard gate; and, dealing it a kick with his heel, it sprang back with the rebound, shaking from top to bottom, and stood open. The stranger returned to the side of his horse; and the door which secured the corpse of the dead sexton seemed to swing slowly open of itself as he entered, and returned with the corpse in his arms, and swung it across the shoulders of the horse, and instantly sprang into the saddle.
“Fire!” shouted Tom, and bang went the blunderbuss with a stunning crack. A thousand sparrows’ wings winnowed through the air from the thick ivy. The watchdog yelled a furious bark. There was a strange ring and whistle in the air. The blunderbuss had burst to shivers right down to the very breech. The recoil rolled the innkeeper upon his back on the floor, and Tom Scales was flung against the side of the recess of the window, which had saved him from a tumble as violent. In this position they heard the searing laugh of the departing horseman, and saw him ride out of the gate with his ghastly burden.
Perhaps some of my readers, like myself, have heard this story told by Roger Turnbull, now host of the George and Dragon, the grandson of the very Tony who then swayed the spigot and keys of that inn, in the identical kitchen of which the fiend treated so many of the neighbours to punch.
What infernal object was subserved by the possession of the dead villain’s body, I have not learned. But a very curious story, in which a vampire resuscitation of Crooke the sexton figures, may throw a light upon this part of the tale.
Complete Works of Sheridan Le Fanu (Illustrated) Page 850