by Otto Penzler
VIII
Upon the evening of the day when Felicity was taken to Penn, Michael sat in his rooms, writing his first love letter. From five to six, from six to seven o’clock, he wrote. There seemed so few words in the world with which to say so much. When the letter was finished, he sent it to the post and, when he had washed and dressed again, he walked to Half Moon Street to call upon his uncle.
The hush of death had already come to Benjamin Grinling’s house. The furniture in the drawing-room was covered: the gilt frames of the paintings were shrouded in sheets of black paper. The butler seemed to creak as if risen from the dead, as he came to the door when Michael rang the bell.
“The old gentleman is not so well to-day, Master Michael,” he said. “He was poorly this morning and I was for sending you a note, sir, but he would have none of it. When I told him you were coming this evening he seemed to be more happy, sir. It will be a rare tonic for him, I am thinking, for he has not seen you these four days.”
Michael climbed the stairs slowly. He tapped lightly upon his uncle’s door and then he walked into the darkened room, upon the tips of his toes. One candle burned behind a shade, upon a table beside the bed. Benjamin Grinling lay back, withered and still, his eyes open and turned towards Michael. “I knew you would come, my boy,” he said. Michael drew a chair up to the side of the bed, and as he sat down he leaned over the figure of the old man. “Yes, Uncle Benjamin, I have come,” he said. “I would come every day if I thought you would not be tired with talking to me.”
“There will not be many days now, Michael, so you need not spare me. I lie here all day thinking of the things I have not said to you. But there it is.”
Michael was silent.
“You have something to tell me, Michael, I know. You have something to tell me, my boy. I can see it in your eyes.”
“Yes, Uncle, I have, and I do hope you will not be angry with me.”
“Ah, I know, I know. You think because I am an old man that I am a fool. Oh, no!” A little chuckle came into his voice and he raised himself. “Give me another pillow … there … on the chair.”
Michael placed the pillow behind his head. Benjamin Grinling chuckled again. “You think you can surprise an old man! I passed surprising many a long year ago, Michael. Many a long year ago. I know, yes, I know. You are in love with Felicity Merryweather and you have asked her to marry you?”
“Yes, Uncle.”
“And has she said you ‘Yes’ or ‘No’?”
“She has said ‘Yes,’ Uncle.”
“Well, well! If John Merryweather and I are not a clever pair of old cronies! I suppose you think you did it all by yourself. Oh no, Michael, my son. We planned it all five years ago. Ha! Ha! What a clever pair of cronies we were.”
“But, Uncle, I … I …” Michael spluttered and remained silent.
“You shall have all, my boy. All. My blessing you have now. My blessing you have always had, for you have been a good boy, Michael. Ever since that day. Do you remember … the inn, and our glasses of sherry before the fire? Our first glasses of sherry together! Well, there won’t be any more sherry together now for us. But the cellar is full of good wine for you to drink the health of a younger generation, my son. All is for you, Michael. All is for you.”
Benjamin Grinling lay still for a moment. Michael stretched out his hand and he touched the older man’s thin fingers as they lay on the cover of the bed. He spoke once more. “Now you must go, Michael, for I am tired. Bring Felicity to me some day soon, before I die. Because she will live in this house with you when I am gone. Or perhaps you will want another house and not wish to remember this. Some day, Michael, buy Felicity a dress of heliotrope silk, a full flowing skirt of heliotrope and ask her to stand upon the white rug, the skin of the polar bear, in the drawing-room. They have rolled it up now because I do not use the room any longer. Ask her to stand there, Michael, and remember that your Aunt Florence stood there like an autumn crocus in the snow. Yes, like an autumn crocus in the snow. I have seen them, Michael, heliotrope or saffron, it does not matter. That was a little joke between your Aunt Flossie and me, Michael. Always have your little jokes, because they are like the autumn crocuses, the last beauty of the year. Does Felicity laugh at little jokes, not only big jokes, but little, silly jokes?”
“Yes, Uncle.”
“Then you will be happy, my boy. Goodnight.”
When he returned to his rooms, Michael wrote still another letter to Felicity.
Uncle Benjamin has said “Yes,” my dearest. And he has supported his spiritual blessing with more worldly promises which matter to me only in that they will make you more comfortable and happy. But I fear that he will not live very long. The thought of his death is the only sadness in my wonderful happiness.
Michael paused then, before he signed his name to the letter. He had walked down Half Moon Street only twenty minutes before, past the house of which he was once afraid. He no longer embraced the memory of his first night in London. The practical man in him made it possible for him to turn away from the old dread. He saw Felicity now as the living symbol of his contentment, not as the figure of his dream. He had taught himself to call the experience a dream and in this word he sought and found his comfort. The house had been still and quiet. The old For Sale notice was still upon the railings, an almost unreadable notice now. He braced his shoulders as the signal of his victory and he wrote at the end of the letter, Your devoted and loving Michael.
IX
Benjamin Grinling died at four o’clock in the afternoon of the twenty-third of December. Michael was busy at the counting house, for he was to travel to Penn next morning and there was much to do. A messenger came to him with the news and he hurried across London, a London of white streets and pitiless winter wind. Half Moon Street seemed to be hushed in the knowledge of death. The snow was piled high against the railings: a boy with a torch shambled down the cleared way between the banks of snow, whistling. But he stopped his clamour as he came to Benjamin Grinling’s house. The door was open, and within, Michael was standing at the foot of the stairs, listening to the servant’s story. “He died in my arms, sir. I had just taken up his beef tea, sir, which the physic man ordered for him. He called me, sir; it was my name he said at the last, sir. He just called, ‘Sadler, I feel very weak now. Come near to me, Sadler.’ Those were his last words, sir. I went over and lifted him for he had fallen low in the bed, sir. As I lifted him, he died, just like a baby, with never a murmur.”
Michael went to his uncle’s room. The awful secret of death held him beside the body for a long time. He stood against the bed, looking down at the old, peaceful face. The lines of agitation and thought were already faded away and Benjamin Grinling looked younger. There was too a serene smile about the mouth, as if some new and wonderful knowledge had already come to him. Beside the bed was a Bible. Michael had always seen it near to his uncle and he touched it now, as a tangible souvenir of the living man. He picked it up and ran his finger along the edge of the pages. They fell open in his hand and, from inside the back cover, three dry and faded autumn crocuses fell at his feet.
Michael left the house about seven o’clock and went to his club. He dined quickly and returned to Half Moon Street, for there was much to do. He noticed a change as he passed towards his uncle’s house. The For Sale notice on the house of his early adventure was removed from the railings and a newly painted board was suspended on a bracket from the first floor window. Michael remained in his uncle’s house until half-past eleven. The dismal servitors of death came to him, and there were letters to write; one to John Merryweather and one to Felicity. Their marriage must wait now. Despair over his misfortune took the place of Michael’s sorrow for a little time. And even the glow of acquiring possessions struggled with the other emotions which came to him. He lifted the black paper cover of the big Canaletto picture in the drawing-room. It was his now. He dismissed the realisation as being an offence against the solemnity of the moment. But the co
nfidence of being a man with his own estate already touched him, lightly. When he went upstairs, in the last moment, to see his uncle’s body again, all feelings but those of remorse and desolation left him. He had loved the old man more than as his benefactor. Michael took his hat and coat from the hall with a weight of desolation upon him. He closed the door behind him and walked out into the snow.
It was upon such a night as this that he had dined with his uncle Benjamin fifteen years ago. The expanse of snow was the same; the stillness, the filth marks of other feet, leaving deep shadows in the white. The sameness of the scene drew a string of memories before Michael’s eyes—a conglomeration of fruit trees in the orchard at Reading, the wheelbarrow leaning against the apple tree, the firescreen in his uncle’s room, the ink pot on the table in his office, the faint tap his pen made when he dipped it, the inn at Knightsbridge and the cylinder of cucumber upon his plate for his first meal in London—one scene tumbling at the heels of the other—the drive to his uncle’s house, the dinner, and the snow in Half Moon Street, afterwards, like this, white and silent.
Michael looked up. A more searching light would have shown his whitened face and his eyes, wide with terror. For there lay across the path in front of him, the same wedge of yellow light, coming from the open door of the house which was “for sale.” He stumbled quickly into the light as if it were part of him, as if it were inevitably waiting for him. He leaned one hand upon the railing and, when he had looked beside him, he leaned forward and peered through the open door, to the lighted hall inside. All was the same. The carpet, the pictures on the wall, the sunlight which beat so incongruously against the night darkness outside. Michael stepped nearer. He saw the carpeted stairs leading to the upper part of the house. For here also the sunlight came. As Michael took one more pace into the full tide of the light from within, he heard the sound of human groaning, coming from the lower room. Fifteen years faded from him. He was here again, younger, afraid. The groaning ceased and again he heard the long pitiful scream. This time he knew the voice. Even in its terror, it was the voice of Felicity, calling to him. He rushed into the house. The print of Queen Victoria and the year printed upon it found a place in the phantasmagoria as he passed to the door of the evil room. There he paused. He could not move: he could not raise his hands to help or protest. He looked back, over his shoulder, towards the open, outer door: the snow was falling again. Here in the room there were no candles. Sunlight touched the hyacinths and daffodils in the bronze urns upon the tables. Lying upon the floor was the form of Felicity in a light summer dress. Bent over her was the same man, pressing his thumbs into her throat. Michael saw her face turn and he saw again, this time in terror, the face he knew so well, white, framed in the tangle of red-gold hair. He saw her hands clutch the rug as before, drawing it up towards her body. The white fingers released the rug and they fell, weak and limp, among the primroses and snowdrops which had fallen from a broken vase. He saw the man weaken his hold upon Felicity’s throat and then stand erect. He leaned over to a vase, and taking the hyacinths and daffodils from the water, he scattered them over Felicity’s body. He scattered the snowdrops upon her red-golden hair. Thus far Michael had observed the horrible scene before. He waited now. The murderer knelt down and seemed to peer into Felicity’s eyes: then he turned for the first time, and looked towards the door. Michael fell back against the wall and then he ran into the white silent street, for it had been his own face that looked at him from the sunlit room.
He ran towards his uncle’s house. It seemed dark and empty. He beat his hands against the door, but nobody came to him. He beat them against the brass knocker until they bled. His feet pounded the snow into a mess. Michael called, “Uncle Benjamin! Oh, Jesus! Oh, Uncle Benjamin! Jesus in Heaven help me!” He whimpered and fell on to the doorstep, all strength and protest abandoning him in his melancholy.
A night watchman found Michael’s body upon the doorstep, when the first light of the morning was coming to Half Moon Street. The snow had almost covered him and his face was buried deep in the drift against the door. They carried him into the house and placed him before the fire. But he was dead and neither the flames nor Sadler’s warm hands could awaken life in him again. When the lawyer came in the evening, he found a letter upon the table, which Michael had not seen or opened. Felicity had written to him:
Springfields,
Penn,
Tuesday.
My Darling Michael,
You must come down to stay with us for Saturday and Sunday, no matter how your wicked office holds you away from me. Father came home last night with a plan for us. He has found a house which he thinks could be made comfortable and beautiful and it is near to your uncle’s house. It is actually in Half Moon Street, but Michael, there is a silly story which has frightened people from living in it for many years. It has been kept in good order, but superstition says that the house is haunted. We are proof against such nonsense, aren’t we? Mother has not one good word to say for the scheme as she says people should live in an atmosphere of happiness. But I told her that if the ghost were a kind ghost, we would not mind him staying with us and that if he were an unkind ghost our love would drive him away.
Father is in two minds about the whole matter and I feel that the plan will not come to anything now. But we must see the haunted house, mustn’t we? I am in a flutter of shopping lists which Mother makes me prepare in duplicate. I said to her yesterday that if I had known being married involved so much list making, I would have remained a spinster for the rest of my life. She says that I must not be facetious about sacred things. But you would have known that it was only one of those silly little jokes, wouldn’t you? So you must throw down your horrid pen and come to us for Saturday: desert the pen you love for the Penn I love. You see! That is another little joke, darling Michael, in case you are so busy with your horrid office that you do not see little jokes in the morning.
With all my love, to my Dearest Michael,
Your Felicity.
A NIGHT OF HORROR
Dick Donovan
ALTHOUGH ONE OF THE most successful authors of Victorian and Edwardian detective stories and a regular contributor to the same Strand magazine in which Sherlock Holmes found fame, the pseudonymous Dick Donovan’s mysteries are seldom read today. His melodramatic, sensational plots featured physically active detectives—the most popular being Dick Donovan in first-person narratives—taking on secret societies, master villains, and innocent people coerced into crime while hypnotized or under the influence of sinister drugs. The lack of texture in his prose, the sparseness of background context, and the stick-figure characters all contributed to the diminishment of his reputation. Although he wrote more than fifty volumes of detective stories and novels, James Edward Preston Muddock (later changed to Joyce Emmerson Preston Muddock) (1842–1934) claimed in his autobiography, Pages from an Adventurous Life (1907), to be disappointed in their popularity, preferring his historical and nongenre fiction (much as Arthur Conan Doyle lamented the adulation given his Sherlock Holmes stories).
Born in Southampton, Muddock traveled extensively throughout Asia, the Pacific, and Europe as a special correspondent to The London Daily News and the Hour and as a regular contributor to other periodicals. When he turned to writing mystery stories, he named his Glasgow detective Dick Donovan after a famous eighteenth-century Bow Street Runner. The stories became so popular that he took it for his pseudonym.
The town of Flin Flon, Manitoba, takes its name from a character in Donovan’s lost race novel, The Sunless City (1905), in which Flintabbatey Flonatin discovers a world through an underwater gold-lined cavern. When a copper-lined cavern was discovered in Canada, the subsequent mine was named for the protagonist in a (blessedly) shortened form.
“A Night of Horror” was first published in Tales of Terror (London, Chatto & Windus, 1899).
A Night
of Horror
DICK DONOVAN
Bleak Hill Castle
“
My dear old Chum,—Before you leave England for the East I claim the redemption of a promise you made to me some time ago that you would give me the pleasure of a week or two of your company. Besides, as you may have already guessed, I have given up the folly of my bachelor days, and have taken unto myself the sweetest, dearest little woman that ever walked the face of the earth. We have been married just six months, and are as happy as the day is long. And then this place is entirely after your own heart. It will excite all your artistic fancies, and appeal with irresistible force to your romantic nature. To call the building a castle is somewhat pretentious, but I believe it has been known as the Castle ever since it was built, more than two hundred years ago. Hester—need I say that Hester is my better half!—is just delighted with it, and if either of us was in the least degree superstitious, we might see or hear ghosts every hour of the day. Of course, as becomes a castle, we have a haunted room, though my own impression is that it is haunted by nothing more fearsome than rats. Anyway, it is such a picturesque, curious sort of chamber that if it hasn’t a ghost it ought to have. But I have no doubt, old chap, that you will make one of us, for, as I remember, you have always had a love for the eerie and creepy, and you cannot forget how angry you used to get with me sometimes for chaffing you about your avowed belief in the occult and supernatural, and what you were pleased to term the ‘unexplainable phenomena of psychomancy.’ However, it is possible you have got over some of the errors of your youth but whether or not, come down, dear boy, and rest assured that you will meet with the heartiest of welcomes.