A Bottomless Grave

by A Bottomless Grave

  In the morning the doctor called in to see us, as he had promised to do, and with him and Kitty as witnesses we determined to open the chest or box, and relieve our minds of doubts as to what it contained. There might be property—in fact we had no doubt but what there was—and possibly traces of family connections, or friends with whom we ought to communicate.

  The key was turned; the lid raised. The ticking of a bed, old, yellow, and discoloured, was folded over the contents. As we essayed to remove it, it fell to fragments in our hands, disclosing—good heavens!—such a sight .as eyes have rarely rested upon. Kitty shrieked; I almost fainted, and Harry involuntarily caught me in his arms. Even the doctor blanched, and fell back a step or two. For there lay, under the fragments of the old ticking, the remains of a man. Little more than a skeleton, little more than a heap of rags, and more or less mouldy dust, hidden amongst which was a costly watch and chain, a set of studs, and a diamond ring of very great price—trinkets whose value would have kept the lady who lay dead in comfort for two or three years.

  Who was this man? and what was the motive that led to this strange enclosure of his body? Were the remains those of a husband from whom, like Queen Jane, she could not part? or was it the body of a murdered man—a guilty lover—a jealous spouse, thrust from sight and concealed at the expense of a life-watch? This was the secret of the eccentricity of the woman who had kept ghastly companionship under our roof so long.

  I remembered her book, and putting my hand into my pocket pulled it forth; for in the solemn hour of death, during the grief and fatigue that followed, and the subsequent foolish alarm of the night, I had forgotten it. Closing the lid over the ghastly spectacle, turning the key in the lock, and securing also the chamber-door, was the work of a short time; and afterwards we gathered in our little parlour together, to learn the terrible facts which Harry read us, and which I here copy from.

  THE CONTENTS OF THE CLASPED VOLUME

  I know not whether I am mad or sane. I know not whether I was mad when I did it. There is madness in our family. My mother died raving mad. The old earl, my grandfather, was methodically mad, and was kept under disguised restraint in his ancestral mansion, that the world might not know it. But it oozed out, as things concealed usually do, with exaggerations. If I am mad, I was not accountable for it, and cannot be judged for it. And if I am sane, I have expiated by a long life-watch of cruel and horrible self-torture. To live all my days in a house converted into a mausoleum; to be condemned to sit upon an unburied coffin; to be encumbered everywhere with a tenant who should be in the tomb; to live alone with death; to eat side by side with a skeleton; to taste food out of a blood-red hand, and have a blood-red sky ever before me—are parts of my punishment. I never see a blue sky or a grey distance. Everything has a sanguinary haze over it, as if I looked through spectacles of flame-colour. And yet I did not shed blood-ah, no, I did not do that.

  I have formed a friendship for this woman, and I should like to talk to her; yet I cannot divulge my secret. She seems to love her husband; yet not as I loved mine. As I loved him? As I do love him—passionately, wildly, fearfully, madly, so that I can never take my gaze off his coffin; so that I rise in the darkness and silence of the night to kiss and embrace the cold wood; and I feel my passion and my remorse eating out my heart. I cannot weep. I never shed a tear now, as I never shed a tear then. My grief is cold and tearless, as my rage was cold and tearless and my happiness cold and tearless when he lived. Outwardly, only outwardly. Within I was and am a human volcano, and the fire is consuming my heart and brain, sense and being, slowly, slowly—heaven, how slowly ! It is retribution.

  In my girlhood I was beautiful, and gifted with extraordinary talents. Whatever I undertook I mastered. I studied astrology, and cast my nativity. I saw the doom then, but did not comprehend it. Could we literally know the future, of what use would it be? Should we be warned, advised, or guided? No ! Doom is doom, and we should rush on blindly towards it.

  In every accomplishment I excelled. And yet I was but fifteen years of age, living in retirement at a country seat with my governess, when I met my future husband. I was sketching the stump of a tree in a grove, he out with dog and gun. Our eyes met with a flash of light, and we loved each other. He was so handsome, a heathen might have thought him a deity descended from the clouds. His hair was fair, rich, and waving, over eyes blue as heaven, his complexion more delicate, if possible, than my own. His voice was soft, rich, and manly. He had travelled, and was as well read as myself, I did not discover all this at first. But we loved as our eyes met. Then we were impelled to speak. We walked home and saw my chaperone—an interview which resulted in his seeking my father, whose parliamentary duties yet held him in London. No parent could object to such an unexceptionable suitor as Lionel; but an obstacle existed on his side, whose father, Lord—(I will betray no names, not even to her I fancy my friend; but for the credit of those so unwillingly related, suppress all nomenclature, and carry shame and crime alone to the grave)—Lord—refused to sanction his son’s union with the daughter of a lunatic, the grandchild of an idiot.

  But Lionel and I were mad for love. We met; we eloped; we married, and fled to the Continent to avoid the reproaches and interference of angry parents.

  After I had consented to elope, I looked round our place for a receptacle wherein I might pack a few clothes I intended to take with me. In the coach-house I saw the old box or chest destined to play so awful a part in my wretched story. I contrived to deposit what I needed unobserved; and in the silence of the night, when all slept, I aroused the young groom, who slept over the stable, and offered him a handsome gift of gold, yellow and shining in the light of the lamp I held, if he would harness the horses and take me and that dingy box to where Lionel awaited us.

  The coachman, an old family servant, might have refused to drive so young a mistress on so doubtful a journey. But Sam was of an age when. such deeds raise sympathy in the breast; so he took his reward, and I, with my box, was hurried from my home.

  Weary of travelling, we returned to England, and rented a small house—a mere cottage—not far from Broadstairs, where, as we thought, we ran little risk of being seen by anyone who knew us. My husband, being fond of bathing, sought the shore every morning, and I sat in the garden until he returned.

  We had not been at Broadstairs very long when I fancied there was a change in his manner. I was certain some secret rested upon his mind, and I became aware also, that though he went to the shore, he ceased to bathe. Sitting alone with busy thoughts I grew jealous, and determined to watch him; so instead of remaining at home, one day I hurried along a by-road to a part of the esplanade that overlooked the sands. I cast my eyes downwards, and saw him walking with a young lady about my own age. After a time they left the sands and walked towards our home. They were too preoccupied to detect that they were followed, but sat down to talk by a quiet bank near a cornfield, where I hid myself amongst the wheat. I was not near enough to hear his words, to which she listened so earnestly, or hers, on which he seemed to hang with tender interest. I noticed him holding her hands fondly, twining her curls in his fingers; and I saw him kiss her before they parted. I watched this day after day, and yet I said nothing. She only passed a few minutes each time in his company, as if fearful of being missed by her friends. But was not that enough? was it not too much for a young loving wife to witness?

  One morning I noticed a bouquet of flowers, just gathered, lying on the escritoire where he had been writing. Full of suspicion I diverted his glance to another part of the room, and with a hasty glance read the words scribbled upon a slip of paper: ‘I will meet you at sunset on the sands, and, if your plans are ripe enough, we will leave Broadstairs tomorrow.’ He returned to his desk, folded the note, and went out with it and the flowers. Could I not guess how the one would be concealed in the other, and for whom? Did I not know the golden-haired siren with the sweet baby-face that had bewitched him?

  That morning I spent at home, a wretche
d prey to love, jealousy, and wrath. At all hazards the sunset meeting must be prevented. Should I charge him with perfidy, upbraid, entreat? Should I prevail? Should I risk failure? No; a thousand times no. As our dinner-hour drew near, a foolish, an evil, a vile idea entered my miserable mind.. I was mad then; I know now that I was mad. I laughed when I remembered the laudanum in a tiny bottle on the mantelshelf of my dressing-room. I emptied it into the wine decanter. Lionel drank wine, but I did not. After dinner he slept. Coffee was brought, but still his slumber lasted. It was as I wished. I sat and watched him. The hours went on slowly. I sent the servants to bed, and the house was very quiet. It grew late, the wax lights—there was no gas—burned down low; he still slept very heavily. One, two, sounded—then three. It was broad daylight; and I drew up the blinds; for I was getting restless and alarmed. Daylight was let in, and it fell upon the arm-chair and upon the face of a dead man. I dropped at his feet; I tried to pray, but knelt there wordless and thoughtless. Then surely I was mad—carefully cunningly, strangely mad. As Heaven is my witness, I had only meant to cause a sleep to stop that meeting and to put off an explanation so bitterly humiliating, so stormy in the aspect of its gathering clouds.

  I knelt before my dead husband and laughed. I had no part in the laughter; it was as if the voice of some strange spirit issued from my lips, and sounded curiously in my ear. I was aroused suddenly by hearing the servants come downstairs. I was alone with him; and they would say I had murdered him, and the fair girl with the golden hair and the baby’s face would stand by and see me strangled out of life on a scaffold. How I found strength for the terrible task I cannot tell, but I took Lionel in my arms and carried him into our sleeping- chamber, which adjoined, threw open the windows that led from the dining-room into the garden, and then locked myself and my crime away together. I laid him on the floor by the great box, and knelt down.

  Suddenly an idea came into my head. I opened the box, and taking out my clothing made it into a bundle. There was a closet in the room which I had once opened, and had seen amongst other domestic curiosities the old ticking of a bed. I took it out and covered it over Lionel, and with the same strange strength lifted him into the box. He was barely dead then, for his limbs were not stiff, and I folded them into the space. Then I locked up the box and dressed, and went in to breakfast. A note lay on the table. It was contained in a little pink envelope, directed in a girlish hand. As my eyes rested upon it my jealousy and anger rushed to life again. I felt glad Lionel was dead. I took up the note which she with the yellow hair and pink face must have sent, and tearing it open read, ‘Dear Lionel’—dear Lionel ! How the letters ran before my eyes! Did she dare to call him her dear Lionel ! Ay, it was there, written upon the pink paper with perfumed ink.

  Dear Lionel,

  I have pleaded your cause with papa and mamma, but cannot move them; and because they think I must have seen you here, our governess is ordered to bring us all home by the first train tomorrow.. But I do not despair; for if I can do nothing at present, I will yet reconcile them to you some day. I fear I shall not be allowed to write, but in silence and absence do not doubt that I am, and ever shall remain,

  Your affectionate sister,

  Edith.

  His sister! Ah! was ever climax so terrible? This, then, must be his favourite sister Edith, of whom he had so often talked, but who was unknown to me. Alas! why had he kept their meeting secret? That, too, was obvious: could he expose me to the mortification of knowing that she was pleading for my recognition by his family, or that he was forced to meet a dearly-loved sister by stealth because he had chosen me to be his wife?

  And Lionel was dead. I hardly comprehended that fact. Fear was upon me. I must fly, and I must conceal the deed. Twenty miles from my own home a lonely house stood in the midst of a wood. Report called it haunted, and no one of the simple country folk dared approach, far less inhabit it. In a feigned name, I wrote to the landlord, and requested he would let it to me, with permission to enter immediately, saying that I was anxious to secure a good house at the low rent I did not doubt he would be happy to accept. I would have given any price for the house, but I wished to give a likely reason, not the true one. My offer was accepted by return of post.

  Meanwhile I had told my two servants that their master had left early in the morning for town, whither he wished me to follow him, as we found it necessary to take a long and unexpected journey. I had paid all debts when the landlord’s letter came. Hurrying to London I there disposed of our valuable plate, and whatever I possessed, except a little linen, a few jewels, and the horrible sarcophagus, hereafter my life-watch. I was anxious to gain my new abode, as I knew the delays of a day or two would cause detection. But my route was purposely circuitous and broken to baflle any efforts that might be made to trace me, though under the family ban it was hardly likely.

  The chest was placed in a large room—a sort of loft—at the top of the house; and after a few preparations had been made by three women who were induced to come to the haunted place whilst it was day, I was left alone. The fact of my having a large box put in the loft excited no suspicion. The conjecture was that it contained books.

  There, without servants, without the companionship of a living soul, I dwelt alone for many years, until upon the death of the old landlord a new master of the soil desired to pull the house down. Then with my chest I travelled from place to place, a haunted, restless woman, asking of myself eternally, ‘Am I sane or mad?’

  I had written so much of my history, in this poor cottage at Hampstead, to give it some day to one who has been kind to me; but going over the details of my life has raised in my mind a horrible suspicion, more exquisitely agonising than all that has gone before—a suspicion the bare form of which, as it suddenly came before me, cast me into that frenzied fit which has closed the weary life of one. who neither wants nor wishes to die—one who only desires to live her vague life on and on, gazing eternally at the sarcophagus. The idea, the certainty so terrible in its nature, is, that Lionel was not dead when I placed him in the chest. Lionel was under the influence of the narcotic, but living —Lionel my love, may, husband, was put living into the tomb and stifled by his beautiful wife’s mad hands; and his young wife of sixteen summers locked up his life and the secret of her crime and sat down heartlessly, beside it to perform her cruel life-watch. Let her die.

  The Haunted Chair

  by RICHARD MARSH

  As with so many other Victorian writers, the reputation of Richard Marsh (1857-1915) rests nowadays on a single work, yet he was one of the era’s more successful and prolific authors.

  Educated at Eton and Oxford; Marsh started full-time writing at an early age and went on to publish over seventy books. He travelled widely, had many friends in the theatre and was a fanatical devotee of all sports, spending many days at Wimbledon and Lords. In fact, his entry in Who’s Who, under ‘Recreations’, is simply ‘loves them all’.

  Richard Marsh specialised in three kinds of fiction, all successful: humorous stories (featuring among others solicitor’s office boy, Sam Briggs); detective stories (in which he invented one of the first fictional women detectives, Judith Lee); and tales of terror and the supernatural. It is for his novel in the last category The Beetle (1897) that he is now remembered, which is sad, for he wrote many other fine stories of the macabre. Two of his forgotten story collections contained several splendid ghost stories, Marvels and Mysteries (1900) and Between the Dark and the Daylight (1902), from which comes‘The Haunted Chair’.

  The time is certainly ripe for a revival of interest in Richard Marsh; his work has been neglected long enough. Someone else who shares this view is Marsh’s grandson—the famous ghost story writer and anthologist, Robert Aickman.

  I

  ‘Well that’s the most staggering thing I’ve ever known!’

  As Mr Philpotts entered the smoking-room, these were the words—with additions—which fell upon his, not unnaturally, startled ears. Since Mr. Bloxham was the o
nly person in the room, it seemed only too probable that the extraordinary language had been uttered by him—and, indeed, his demeanour went far to confirm the probability He was standing in front of his chair, staring about him in a manner which suggested considerable mental perturbation, apparently unconscious of the fact that his cigar had dropped either from his lips or his fingers and was smoking merrily away on the brand-new carpet which the committee had just laid down. He turned to Mr Philpotts in a state of what seemed really curious agitation.

  I say, Philpotts, did you see him?’

  Mr Philpotts looked at him in silence for a moment, before he drily said, ‘I heard you.’

  But Mr Bloxham was in no mood to be put of in this manner. He seemed, for some cause, to have lost the air of serene indifference for which he was famed—he was in a state of excitement, which, for him, was quite phenomenal.