“‘I’m goin’ to have a clean search,’ says he; ‘you hold the light.’ An’ I held it, and he rummaged in the arches an’ under the stairs, an’ over in some old closet where he reached out bottles an’ stone jugs an’ canted some kags an’ one or two casks, an’ chuckled well when he heard there was somethin’ inside—but there wa’n’t nothin’ to find but things usual in a cellar, an’ then the old lantern was givin’ out an’ we come away.
“‘He spoke to me of a chist, Cap’n Tolland did,’ says uncle in a whisper. ‘He said a good sound chist was as safe a bank as there was, an’ I beat him out of such nonsense, ’count o’ fire an’ other risks.’ ‘There’s no chist in the rooms above,’ says I’; ‘no, uncle, there ain’t no sea-chist, for I’ve been here long enough to see what there was to be seen.’ Yet he wouldn’t feel contented till he’d mounted up into the toploft; ’twas one o’ them single, hip-roofed houses that don’t give proper accommodation for a real garret, like Cap’n Littlepage’s down here at the Landin’. There was broken furniture and rubbish, an’ he let down a terrible sight o’ dust into the front entry, but sure enough there wasn’t no chist. I had it all to sweep up next day.
“‘He must have took it away to sea,’ says I to the cap’n, an’ even then he didn’t want to agree, but we was both beat out. I told him where i’d always seen Mis’ Tolland get her money from, and we found much as a hundred dollars there in an old red morocco wallet. Cap’n John had been gone a good while a’ready, and she had spent what she needed. ’Twas in an old desk o’ his in the settin’ room that we found the wallet.”
“At the last minute he may have taken his money to sea,” I suggested.
“Oh yes,” agreed Mrs. Todd. “He did take considerable to make his venture to bring home, as was customary, an’ that was drowned with him as uncle agreed; but he had other property in shipping, and a thousand dollars invested in Portland in a cordage shop, but ’twas about the time shipping begun to decay, and the cordage shop failed, and in the end I wa’n’t so rich as I thought I was goin’ to be for those few minutes on the cellar stairs. There was an auction that accumulated something. Old Mis’ Tolland, the cap’n’s mother, had heired some good furniture from a sister: there was above thirty chairs in all, and they’re apt to sell well. I got over a thousand dollars when we come to settle up, and I made uncle take his five hundred; he was getting along in years and had met with losses in navigation, and he left it back to me when he died, so I had a real good lift. It all lays in the bank over to Rockland, and I draw my interest fall an’ spring, with the little Mr. Todd was able to leave me; but that’s kind o’ sacred money; ’twas earnt and saved with the hope o’ youth, an’ I’m very particular what I spend it for. Oh yes, what with ownin’ my house, I’ve been enabled to get along very well, with prudence!” said Mrs. Todd contentedly.
“But there was the house and land,” I asked—“what became of that part of the property?”
Mrs. Todd looked into the fire, and a shadow of disapproval flitted over her face.
“Poor old uncle!” she said, “he got childish about the matter. I was hoping to sell at first, and I had an offer, but he always run of an idea that there was more money hid away, and kept wanting me to delay; an’ he used to go up there all alone and search, and dig in the cellar, empty an’ bleak as ’twas in winter weather or any time. An’ he’d come and tell me he’d dreamed he found gold behind a stone in the cellar wall, or somethin’. And one night we all see the light o’ fire up that way, an’ the whole Landin’ took the road, and run to look, and the Tolland property was all in a light blaze. I expect the old gentleman had dropped fire about; he said he’d been up there to see if everything was safe in the afternoon. As for the land, ’twas so poor that everybody used to have a joke that the Tolland boys preferred to farm the sea instead. It’s ’most all grown up to bushes now, where it ain’t poor water grass in the low places. There’s some upland that has a pretty view, after you cross the brook bridge. Years an’ years after she died, there was some o’ her flowers used to come up an’ bloom in the door garden. I brought two or three that was unusual down here; they always come up and remind me of her constant as the spring. But I never did want to fetch home that guitar, some way or ’nother; I wouldn’t let it go at the auction, either. It was hangin’ right there in the house when the fire took place. I’ve got some o’ her other little things scattered about the house: that picture on the mantelpiece belonged to her.”
I had often wondered where such a picture had come from, and why Mrs. Todd had chosen it; it was a French print of the statue of the Empress Josephine in the Savane at old Fort Royal, in Martinique.
CHAPTER 6
Mrs. Todd drew her chair closer to mine; she held the cat and her knitting with one hand as she moved, but the cat was so warm and so sound asleep that she only stretched a lazy paw in spite of what must have felt like a slight earthquake. Mrs. Todd began to speak almost in a whisper.
“I ain’t told you all,” she continued; “no, I haven’t spoken of all to but very few. The way it came was this,” she said solemnly, and then stopped to listen to the wind, and sat for a moment in deferential silence, as if she waited for the wind to speak first. The cat suddenly lifted her head with quick excitement and gleaming eyes, and her mistress was leaning forward toward the fire with an arm laid on either knee, as if they were consulting the glowing coals for some augury. Mrs. Todd looked like an old prophetess as she sat there with the firelight shining on her strong face; she was posed for some great painter. The woman with the cat was as unconscious and as mysterious as any sibyl of the Sistine Chapel.
“There, that’s the last struggle o’ the gale,” said Mrs. Todd, nodding her head with impressive certainty and still looking into the bright embers of the fire. “You’ll see!” She gave me another quick glance, and spoke in a low tone as if we might be overheard.
“’Twas such a gale as this the night Mis’ Tolland died. She appeared more comfortable the first o’ the evenin’; and Mrs. Begg was more spent than I, bein’ older, and a beautiful nurse that was the first to see and think of everything, but perfectly quiet an’ never asked a useless question. You remember her funeral when you first come to the Landing? And she consented to goin’ an’ havin’ a good sleep while she could, and left me one o’ those good little pewter lamps that burnt whale oil an’ made plenty o’ light in the room, but not too bright to be disturbin’.
“Poor Mis’ Tolland had been distressed the night before, an’ all that day, but as night come on she grew more and more easy, an’ was layin’ there asleep; ’twas like settin’ by any sleepin’ person, and I had none but usual thoughts. When the wind lulled and the rain, I could hear the seas, though more distant than this, and I don’ know’s I observed any other sound than what the weather made; ’twas a very solemn feelin’ night. I set close by the bed; there was times she looked to find somebody when she was awake. The light was on her face, so I could see her plain; there was always times when she wore a look that made her seem a stranger you’d never set eyes on before. I did think what a world it was that her an’ me should have come together so, and she have nobody but Dunnet Landin’ folks about her in her extremity. ‘You’re one o’ the stray ones, poor creatur’,’ I said. I remember those very words passin’ through my mind, but I saw reason to be glad she had some comforts, and didn’t lack friends at the last, though she’d seen misery an’ pain. I was glad she was quiet; all day she’d been restless, and we couldn’t understand what she wanted from her French speech. We had the window open to give her air, an’ now an’ then a gust would strike that guitar that was on the wall and set it swinging by the blue ribbon, and soundin’ as if somebody begun to play it. I come near takin’ it down, but you never know what’ll fret a sick person an’ put ’em on the rack, an’ that guitar was one o’ the few things she’d brought with her.”
I nodded assent, and Mrs.
Todd spoke still lower.
“I set there close by the bed; I’d been through a good deal for some days back, and I thought I might’s well be droppin’ asleep too, bein’ a quick person to wake. She looked to me as if she might last a day longer, certain, now she’d got more comfortable, but I was real tired, an’ sort o’ cramped as watchers will get, an’ a fretful feeling begun to creep over me such as they often do have. If you give way, there ain’t no support for the sick person; they can’t count on no composure o’ their own. Mis’ Tolland moved then, a little restless, an’ I forgot me quick enough, an’ begun to hum out a little part of a hymn tune just to make her feel everything was as usual an’ not wake up into a poor uncertainty. All of a sudden she set right up in bed with her eyes wide open, an’ I stood an’ put my arm behind her; she hadn’t moved like that for days. And she reached out both her arms toward the door, an’ I looked the way she was lookin’, an’ I see some one was standin’ there against the dark. No, ’twa’n’t Mis’ Begg; ’twas somebody a good deal shorter than Mis’ Begg. The lamplight struck across the room between us. I couldn’t tell the shape, but ’twas a woman’s dark face lookin’ right at us; ’twa’n’t but an instant I could see. I felt dreadful cold, and my head begun to swim; I thought the light went out; ’twa’n’t but an instant, as I say, an’ when my sight come back I couldn’t see nothing there. I was one that didn’t know what it was to faint away, no matter what happened; time was I felt above it in others, but ’twas somethin’ that made poor human natur’ quail. I saw very plain while I could see; ’twas a pleasant enough face, shaped somethin’ like Mis’ Tolland’s, and a kind of expectin’ look.
“No, I don’t expect I was asleep,” Mrs. Todd assured me quietly, after a moment’s pause, though I had not spoken. She gave a heavy sigh before she went on. I could see that the recollection moved her in the deepest way.
“I suppose if I hadn’t been so spent an’ quavery with long watchin’, I might have kept my head an’ observed much better,” she added humbly; “but I see all I could bear. I did try to act calm, an’ I laid Mis’ Tolland down on her pillow, an’ I was a-shakin’ as I done it. All she did was to look up to me so satisfied and sort o’ questioning, an I looked back to her.
“‘You saw her, didn’t you?’ she says to me, speakin’ perfectly reasonable. ‘’Tis my mother,’ she says again, very feeble, but lookin’ straight up at me, kind of surprised with the pleasure, and smiling as if she saw I was overcome, an’ would have said more if she could, but we had hold of hands. I see then her change was comin’, but I didn’t call Mis’ Begg, nor make no uproar. I felt calm then, an’ lifted to somethin’ different as I never was since. She opened her eyes just as she was goin’—
“‘You saw her, didn’t you?’ she said the second time, an’ I says, ‘Yes, dear, I did; you ain’t never goin’ to feel strange an’ lonesome no more.’ An’ then in a few quiet minutes ’twas all over. I felt they’d gone away together. No, I wa’n’t alarmed afterward; ’twas just that one moment I couldn’t live under, but I never called it beyond reason I should see the other watcher. I saw plain enough there was somebody there with me in the room.
CHAPTER 7
“’Twas just such a night as this Mis’ Tolland died,” repeated Mrs. Todd, returning to her usual tone and leaning back comfortably in her chair as she took up her knitting. “’Twas just such a night as this. I’ve told the circumstances to but very few; but I don’t call it beyond reason. When folks is goin’ ’tis all natural, and only common things can jar upon the mind. You know plain enough there’s somethin’ beyond this world; the doors stand wide open. ‘There’s somethin’ of us that must still live on; we’ve got to join both worlds together an’ live in one but for the other.’ The doctor said that to me one day, an’ I never could forget it; he said ’twas in one o’ his old doctor’s books.”
We sat together in silence in the warm little room; the rain dropped heavily from the eaves, and the sea still roared, but the high wind had done blowing. We heard the far complaining fog horn of a steamer up the Bay.
“There goes the Boston boat out, pretty near on time,” said Mrs. Todd with satisfaction. “Sometimes these late August storms’ll sound a good deal worse than they really be. I do hate to hear the poor steamers callin’ when they’re bewildered in thick nights in winter, comin’ on the coast. Yes, there goes the boat; they’ll find it rough at sea, but the storm’s all over.”1
THE STONEGROUND GHOST TALES, by E. G. Swain
Originally published in 1912.
COMPILED FROM THE RECOLLECTIONS OF THE REVEREND ROLAND BATCHEL, VICAR OF THE PARISH
THE MAN WITH THE ROLLER
On the edge of that vast tract of East Anglia, which retains its ancient name of the Fens, there may be found, by those who know where to seek it, a certain village called Stoneground. It was once a picturesque village. Today it is not to be called either a village, or picturesque. Man dwells not in one “house of clay,” but in two, and the material of the second is drawn from the earth upon which this and the neighbouring villages stood. The unlovely signs of the industry have changed the place alike in aspect and in population. Many who have seen the fossil skeletons of great saurians brought out of the clay in which they have lain from pre-historic times, have thought that the inhabitants of the place have not since changed for the better. The chief habitations, however, have their foundations not upon clay, but upon a bed of gravel which anciently gave to the place its name, and upon the highest part of this gravel stands, and has stood for many centuries, the Parish Church, dominating the landscape for miles around.
Stoneground, however, is no longer the inaccessible village, which in the middle ages stood out above a waste of waters. Occasional floods serve to indicate what was once its ordinary outlook, but in more recent times the construction of roads and railways, and the drainage of the Fens, have given it freedom of communication with the world from which it was formerly isolated.
The Vicarage of Stoneground stands hard by the Church, and is renowned for its spacious garden, part of which, and that (as might be expected) the part nearest the house, is of ancient date. To the original plot successive Vicars have added adjacent lands, so that the garden has gradually acquired the state in which it now appears.
The Vicars have been many in number. Since Henry de Greville was instituted in the year 1140 there have been 30, all of whom have lived, and most of whom have died, in successive vicarage houses upon the present site.
The present incumbent, Mr. Batchel, is a solitary man of somewhat studious habits, but is not too much enamoured of his solitude to receive visits, from time to time, from schoolboys and such. In the summer of the year 1906 he entertained two, who are the occasion of this narrative, though still unconscious of their part in it, for one of the two, celebrating his 15th birthday during his visit to Stoneground, was presented by Mr. Batchel with a new camera, with which he proceeded to photograph, with considerable skill, the surroundings of the house.
One of these photographs Mr. Batchel thought particularly pleasing. It was a view of the house with the lawn in the foreground. A few small copies, such as the boy’s camera was capable of producing, were sent to him by his young friend, some weeks after the visit, and again Mr. Batchel was so much pleased with the picture, that he begged for the negative, with the intention of having the view enlarged.
The boy met the request with what seemed a needlessly modest plea. There were two negatives, he replied, but each of them had, in the same part of the picture, a small blur for which there was no accounting otherwise than by carelessness. His desire, therefore, was to discard these films, and to produce something more worthy of enlargement, upon a subsequent visit.
Mr. Batchel, however, persisted in his request, and upon receipt of the negative, examined it with a lens. He was just able to detect the blur alluded to; an examination under a powerful glass, in fact r
evealed something more than he had at first detected. The blur was like the nucleus of a comet as one sees it represented in pictures, and seemed to be connected with a faint streak which extended across the negative. It was, however, so inconsiderable a defect that Mr. Batchel resolved to disregard it. He had a neighbour whose favourite pastime was photography, one who was notably skilled in everything that pertained to the art, and to him he sent the negative, with the request for an enlargement, reminding him of a long-standing promise to do any such service, when as had now happened, his friend might see fit to ask it.
This neighbour who had acquired such skill in photography was one Mr. Groves, a young clergyman, residing in the Precincts of the Minster near at hand, which was visible from Mr. Batchel’s garden. He lodged with a Mrs. Rumney, a superannuated servant of the Palace, and a strong-minded vigorous woman still, exactly such a one as Mr. Groves needed to have about him. For he was a constant trial to Mrs. Rumney, and but for the wholesome fear she begot in him, would have converted his rooms into a mere den. Her carpets and tablecloths were continually bespattered with chemicals; her chimney-piece ornaments had been unceremoniously stowed away and replaced by labelled bottles; even the bed of Mr. Groves was, by day, strewn with drying films and mounts, and her old and favourite cat had a bald patch on his flank, the result of a mishap with the pyrogallic acid.
The Fourth Ghost Story MEGAPACK: 25 Classic Haunts! Page 41