The Black Reaper

by Bernard Capes

  He reaped swiftly and steadily, swinging like a pendulum; but, though the sheaves fell to him right and left, no swish of the scythe came to us, nor any sound but the beating of our own hearts.

  Now, from the first moment of my looking, no doubt was in my lost soul but that this was him we had destroyed come back to verify his prophecy in ministering to the vengeance of the Lord of Hosts; and at the thought a deep groan rent my bosom, and was echoed by those about me. But scarcely was it issued when a second terror smote me as that I near reeled. Margery – my babe! put to sleep there in the path of the Black Reaper!

  At that, though they called to me, I sprang forward like a madman, and running along the meadow, through the neck of the glass, reached the little thing, and stooped and snatched her into my arms. She was sound and unfrighted, as I felt with a burst of thankfulness; but, looking about me, as I turned again to fly, I had near dropped in my tracks for the sickness and horror I experienced in the nearer neighbourhood of the apparition. For, though it never raised its head, or changed the steady swing of its shoulders, I knew that it was aware of and was reaping at me. Now, I tell you, it was ten yards away, yet the point of the scythe came gliding upon me silently, like a snake, through the stalks, and at that I screamed out and ran for my life.

  I escaped, sweating with terror; but when I was sped back to the men, there was all the village collected, and our vicar to the front, praying from a throat that rattled like a dead leaf in a draught. I know not what he said, for the low cries of the women filled the air; but his face was white as a smock, and his fingers writhed in one another like a knot of worms.

  ‘The plague is upon us!’ they wailed. ‘We shall be mowed down like ripe corn!’

  And even as they shrieked the Black Reaper paused, and, putting away his scythe, stooped and gathered up a sheaf in his arms and stood it on end. And, with the very act, a man – one that had been forward in yesterday’s business – fell down amongst us yelling and foaming; and he rent his breast in his frenzy, revealing the purple blot thereon, and he passed blaspheming. And the reaper stooped and stooped again, and with every sheaf he gathered together one of us fell stricken and rolled in his agony, while the rest stood by palsied.

  But, when at length all that was cut was accounted for, and a dozen of us were gone each to his judgment, and he had taken up his scythe to reap anew, a wild fury woke in the breasts of some of the more abandoned and reckless amongst us.

  ‘It is not to be tolerated!’ they cried. ‘Let us at once fire the corn and burn this sorcerer!’

  And with that, some five or six of them, emboldened by despair, ran up into the little field, and, separating, had out each his flint and fired the crop in his own place, and retreated to the narrow part for safety.

  Now the reaper rested on his scythe, as if unexpectedly acquitted of a part of his labour; but the corn flamed up in these five or six directions, and was consumed in each to the compass of a single sheaf: whereat the fire died away. And with its dying the faces of those that had ventured went black as coal; and they flung up their arms, screaming, and fell prone where they stood, and were hidden from our view.

  Then, indeed, despair seized upon all of us that survived, and we made no doubt but that we were to be exterminated and wiped from the earth for our sins, as were the men of Anathoth. And for an hour the Black Reaper mowed and trussed, till he had cut all from the little upper field and was approached to the neck of juncture with the lower and larger. And before us that remained, and who were drawn back amongst the trees, weeping and praying, a fifth of our comrades lay foul, and dead, and sweltering, and all blotched over with the dreadful mark of the pestilence.

  Now, as I say, the reaper was nearing the neck of juncture; and so we knew that if he should once pass into the great field towards us and continue his mowing, not one of us should be left to give earnest of our repentance.

  Then, as it seemed, our vicar came to a resolution, moving forward with a face all wrapt and entranced; and he strode up the meadow path and approached the apparition, and stretched out his arms to it entreating. And we saw the other pause, awaiting him; and, as he came near, put forth his hand, and so, gently, on the good old head. But as we looked, catching at our breaths with a little pathos of hope, the priestly face was thrown back radiant, and the figure of him that would give his life for us sank amongst the yet standing corn and disappeared from our sight.

  So at last we yielded ourselves fully to our despair; for if our pastor should find no mercy, what possibility of it could be for us!

  It was in this moment of an uttermost grief and horror, when each stood apart from his neighbour, fearing the contamination of his presence, that there was vouchsafed to me, of God’s pity, a wild and sudden inspiration. Still to my neck fastened the little Margery – not frighted, it seemed, but mazed – and other babes there were in plenty, that clung to their mothers’ skirts and peeped out, wondering at the strange show.

  I ran to the front and shrieked: ‘The children! the children! He will not touch the little children! Bring them and set them in his path!’ And so crying I sped to the neck of the meadow, and loosened the soft arms from my throat, and put the little one down within the corn.

  Now at once the women saw what I would be at, and full a score of them snatched up their babes and followed me. And here we were reckless for ourselves; but we knelt the innocents in one close line across the neck of land, so that the Black Reaper should not find space between any of them to swing his scythe. And having done this, we fell back with our hearts bubbling in our breasts, and we stood panting and watched.

  He had paused over that one full sheaf of his reaping; but now, with the sound of the women’s running, he seized his weapon again and set to upon the narrow belt of corn that yet separated him from the children. But presently, coming out upon the tender array, his scythe stopped and trailed in his hand, and for a full minute he stood like a figure of stone. Then thrice he walked slowly backwards and forwards along the line, seeking for an interval whereby he might pass; and the children laughed at him like silver bells, showing no fear, and perchance meeting that of love in his eyes that was hidden from us.

  Then of a sudden he came to before the midmost of the line, and, while we drew our breath like dying souls, stooped and snapped his blade across his knee, and, holding the two parts in his hand, turned and strode back into the shadow of the dripping well. There arrived, he paused once more, and, twisting him about, waved his hand once to us and vanished into the blackness. But there were those who affirmed that in that instant of his turning, his face was revealed, and that it was a face radiant and beautiful as an angel’s.

  Such is the history of the wild judgment that befell us, and by grace of the little children was foregone; and such was the stranger whose name no man ever heard tell, but whom many have since sought to identify with that spirit of the pestilence that entered into men’s hearts and confounded them, so that they saw visions and were afterwards confused in their memories.

  But this I may say, that when at last our courage would fetch us to that little field of death, we found it to be all blackened and blasted, so as nothing would take root there then or ever since; and it was as if, after all the golden sand of the hour-glass was run away and the lives of the most impious with it, the destroyer saw fit to stay his hand for sake of the babes that he had pronounced innocent, and for such as were spared to witness to His judgment. And this I do here, with a heart as contrite as if it were the morrow of the visitation, the which with me it ever has remained.

  THE VANISHING HOUSE

  ‘My grandfather,’ said the banjo, ‘drank “dog’s-nose”, my father drank “dog’s-nose”, and I drink “dog’s-nose”. If that ain’t heredity, there’s no virtue in the board schools.’

  ‘Ah!’ said the piccolo, ‘you’re always a-boasting of your science. And so, I suppose, your son’ll drink “dog’s-nose”, too?’

  ‘No,’ retorted the banjo, with a rumbling laugh, li
ke wind in the bung-hole of an empty cask; ‘for I ain’t got none. The family ends with me; which is a pity, for I’m a full-stop to be proud on.’

  He was an enormous, tun-bellied person – a mere mound of expressionless flesh, whose size alone was an investment that paid a perpetual dividend of laughter. When, as with the rest of his company, his face was blackened, it looked like a specimen coal on a pedestal in a museum.

  There was Christmas company in the Good Intent, and the sanded tap-room, with its trestle tables and sprigs of holly stuck under sooty beams, reeked with smoke and the steam of hot gin and water.

  ‘How much could you put down of a night, Jack?’ said a little grinning man by the door.

  ‘Why,’ said the banjo, ‘enough to lay the dustiest ghost as ever walked.’

  ‘Could you, now?’ said the little man.

  ‘Ah!’ said the banjo, chuckling. ‘There’s nothing like settin’ one sperit to lay another; and there I could give you proof number two of heredity.’

  ‘What! Don’t you go for to say you ever see’d a ghost?’

  ‘Haven’t I? What are you whisperin’ about, you blushful chap there by the winder?’

  ‘I was only remarkin’, sir, ’twere snawin’ like the devil!’

  ‘Is it? Then the devil has been misjudged these eighteen hundred and ninety odd years.’

  ‘But did you ever see a ghost?’ said the little grinning man, pursuing his subject.

  ‘No, I didn’t, sir,’ mimicked the banjo, ‘saving in coffee grounds. But my grandfather in his cups see’d one; which brings us to number three in the matter of heredity.’

  ‘Give us the story, Jack,’ said the ‘bones’, whose agued shins were extemporising a rattle on their own account before the fire.

  ‘Well, I don’t mind,’ said the fat man. ‘It’s seasonable; and I’m seasonable, like the blessed plum-pudden, I am; and the more burnt brandy you set about me, the richer and headier I’ll go down.’

  ‘You’d be a jolly old pudden to digest,’ said the piccolo.

  ‘You blow your aggrawation into your pipe and sealing-wax the stops,’ said his friend.

  He drew critically at his ‘churchwarden’ a moment or so, leaned forward, emptied his glass into his capacious receptacles, and, giving his stomach a shift, as if to accommodate it to its new burden, proceeded as follows:

  ‘Music and malt is my nat’ral inheritance. My grandfather blew his “dog’s-nose”, and drank his clarinet like a artist; and my father—’

  ‘What did you say your grandfather did?’ asked the piccolo.

  ‘He played the clarinet.’

  ‘You said he blew his “dog’s-nose”.’

  ‘Don’t be an ass, Fred!’ said the banjo, aggrieved. ‘How the blazes could a man blow his dog’s nose, unless he muzzled it with a handkercher, and then twisted its tail? He played the clarinet, I say; and my father played the musical glasses, which was a form of harmony pertiklerly genial to him. Amongst us we’ve piped out a good long century – ah! we have, for all I look sich a babby bursting on sops and spoon meat.’

  ‘What!’ said the little man by the door. ‘You don’t include them cockt hatses in your experience?’

  ‘My grandfather wore ’em, sir. He wore a play-actin’ coat, too, and buckles to his shoes, when he’d got any; and he and a friend or two made a permanency of “waits” (only they called ’em according to the season), and got their profit goin’ from house to house, principally in the country, and discoursin’ music at the low rate of whatever they could get for it.’

  ‘Ain’t you comin’ to the ghost, Jack?’ said the little man hungrily.

  ‘All in course, sir. Well, gentlemen, it was hard times pretty often with my grandfather and his friends, as you may suppose; and never so much as when they had to trudge it across country, with the nor’-easter buzzin’ in their teeth and the snow piled on their cockt hats like lemon sponge on entry dishes. The rewards, I’ve heard him say – for he lived to be ninety, nevertheless – was poor compensation for the drifts, and the influenza, and the broken chilblains; but now and again they’d get a fair skinful of liquor from a jolly squire, as ’d set ’em up like boggarts mended wi’ new broomsticks.’

  ‘Ho-haw!’ broke in a hurdle-maker in a corner; and then, regretting the publicity of his merriment, put his fingers bashfully to his stubble lips.

  ‘Now,’ said the banjo, ‘it’s of a pertikler night and a pertikler skinful that I’m a-going to tell you; and that night fell dark, and that skinful were took a hundred years ago this December, as I’m a Jack-pudden!’

  He paused for a moment for effect, before he went on:

  ‘They were down in the sou’-west country, which they little knew; and were anighing Winchester city, or should ’a’ been. But they got muzzed on the ungodly downs, and before they guessed, they was off the track. My good hat! there they was, as lost in the snow as three nut-shells a-sinkin’ into a hasty pudden. Well, they wandered round; pretty confident at first, but getting madder and madder as every sense of their bearings slipped from them. And the bitter cold took their vitals, so they saw nothing but a great winding sheet stretched abroad for to wrap their dead carcasses in.

  ‘At last my grandfather he stopt and pulled hisself together with an awful face, and says he: “We’re Christmas pie for the carrying-on crows if we don’t prove ourselves human. Let’s fetch our pipes and blow our trouble into ’em.” So they stood together, like as if they were before a house, and they played “Kate of Aberdare” mighty dismal and flat, for their fingers froze to the keys.

  ‘Now, I tell you, they hadn’t climbed over the first stave, when there come a skirl of wind and spindrift of snow as almost took them off their feet; and, on the going down of it, Jem Sloke, as played the hautboy, dropped the reed from his mouth, and called out, “Sakes alive! if we fools ain’t been standin’ outside a gentleman’s gate all the time, and not knowin’ it!”

  ‘You might ’a’ knocked the three of ’em down wi’ a barley straw, as they stared and stared, and then fell into a low, enjoyin’ laugh. For they was standin’ not six fut from a tall iron gate in a stone wall, and behind these was a great house showin’ out dim, with the winders all lighted up.

  ‘“Lord!” chuckled my grandfather, “to think o’ the tricks o’ this vagarious country! But, as we’re here, we’ll go on and give ’em a taste of our quality.”

  ‘They put new heart into the next movement, as you may guess; and they hadn’t fair started on it, when the door of the house swung open, and down the shaft of light that shot out as far as the gate there come a smiling young gal, with a tray of glasses in her hands.

  ‘Now she come to the bars; and she took and put a glass through, not sayin’ nothin’, but invitin’ someone to drink with a silent laugh.

  ‘Did anyone take that glass? Of course he did, you’ll be thinkin’; and you’ll be thinkin’ wrong. Not a man of the three moved. They was struck like as stone, and their lips was gone the colour of sloe berries. Not a man took the glass. For why? The moment the gal presented it, each saw the face of a thing lookin’ out of the winder over the porch, and the face was hidjus beyond words, and the shadder of it, with the light behind, stretched out and reached to the gal, and made her hidjus, too.

  ‘At last my grandfather give a groan and put out his hand; and, as he did it, the face went, and the gal was beautiful to see agen.

  ‘“Death and the devil!” said he. “It’s one or both, either way; and I prefer ’em hot to cold!”

  ‘He drank off half the glass, smacked his lips, and stood staring a moment.

  ‘“Dear, dear!” said the gal, in a voice like falling water, “you’ve drunk blood, sir!”

  ‘My grandfather gave a yell, slapped the rest of the liquor in the faces of his friends, and threw the cup agen the bars. It broke with a noise like thunder, and at that he up’d with his hands and fell full length into the snow.’

  There was a pause. The little man by the door was tw
isting nervously in his chair.

  ‘He came to – of course, he came to?’ said he at length.

  ‘He come to,’ said the banjo solemnly, ‘in the bitter break of dawn; that is, he come to as much of hisself as he ever was after. He give a squiggle and lifted his head; and there was he and his friends a-lyin’ on the snow of the high downs.’

  ‘And the house and the gal?’

  ‘Narry a sign of either, sir, but just the sky and the white stretch; and one other thing.’

  ‘And what was that?’

  ‘A stain of red sunk in where the cup had spilt.’

  There was a second pause, and the banjo blew into the bowl of his pipe.

  ‘They cleared out of that neighbourhood double quick, you’ll bet,’ said he. ‘But my grandfather was never the same man agen. His face took purple, while his friends’ only remained splashed with red, same as birth marks; and, I tell you, if ever he ventur’d upon “Kate of Aberdare”, his cheeks swelled up to the reed of his clarinet, like as a blue plum on a stalk. And forty years after, he died of what they call solution of blood to the brain.’

  ‘And you can’t have better proof than that,’ said the little man.

  ‘That’s what I say,’ said the banjo. ‘Next player, gentlemen, please.’

  THE THING IN THE FOREST

  Into the snow-locked forests of Upper Hungary steal wolves in winter; but there is a footfall worse than theirs to knock upon the heart of the lonely traveller.

  One December evening Elspet, the young, newly wedded wife of the woodman Stefan, came hurrying over the lower slopes of the White Mountains from the town where she had been all day marketing. She carried a basket with provisions on her arm; her plump cheeks were like a couple of cold apples; her breath spoke short, but more from nervousness than exhaustion. It was nearing dusk, and she was glad to see the little lonely church in the hollow below, the hub, as it were, of many radiating paths through the trees, one of which was the road to her own warm cottage yet a half-mile away.