“Exactly. She broke the tree in falling. But no death has ever taken place in the house, so far as we were concerned. You can make yourself quite easy on that point. Mr M’Leod’s extra thousand for what you called the ‘clean bill of health’ was something towards my cousins’ estate when we sold. It was my duty as their lawyer to get it for them – at any cost to my own feelings.”
I know better than to argue when the English talk about their duty. So I agreed with my solicitor.
“Their sister’s death must have been a great blow to your cousins,” I went on. The bath-chair was behind me.
“Unspeakable,” Baxter whispered. “They brooded on it day and night. No wonder. If their theory of poor Aggie making away with herself was correct, she was eternally lost!”
“Do you believe that she made away with herself?”
“No, thank God! Never have! And after what happened to Mary last night, I see perfectly what happened to poor Aggie. She had the family throat too. By the way, Mary thinks you are a doctor. Otherwise she wouldn’t like your having been in her room.”
“Very good. Is she convinced now about her sister’s death?”
“She’d give anything to be able to believe it, but she’s a hard woman, and brooding along certain lines makes one groovy. I have sometimes been afraid for her reason – on the religious side, don’t you know. Elizabeth doesn’t matter. Brain of a hen. Always had.”
Here Arthurs summoned me to the bath-chair and the ravaged face, beneath its knitted Shetland wool hood, of Miss Mary Moultrie.
“I need not remind you, I hope, of the seal of secrecy – absolute secrecy – in your profession,” she began. “Thanks to my cousin’s and my sister’s stupidity, you have found out –” she blew her nose.
“Please don’t excite her, sir,” said Arthurs at the back.
“But, my dear Miss Moultrie, I only know what I’ve seen, of course, but it seems to me that what you thought was a tragedy in your sister’s case, turns out, on your own evidence, so to speak, to have been an accident – a dreadfully sad one – but absolutely an accident.”
“Do you believe that too?” she cried. “Or are you only saying it to comfort me?”
“I believe it from the bottom of my heart. Come down to Holmescroft for an hour – for half an hour – and satisfy yourself.”
“Of what? You don’t understand. I see the house every day – every night. I am always there in spirit – waking or sleeping. I couldn’t face it in reality.”
“But you must,” I said. “If you go there in the spirit the greater need for you to go there in the flesh. Go to your sister’s room once more, and see the window – I nearly fell out of it myself. It’s – it’s awfully low and dangerous. That would convince you,” I pleaded.
“Yet Aggie had slept in that room for years,” she interrupted.
“You’ve slept in your room here for a long time, haven’t you? But you nearly fell out of the window when you were choking.”
“That is true. That is one thing true,” she nodded. “And I might have been killed as – perhaps – Aggie was killed.”
“In that case your own sister and cousin and maid would have said you had committed suicide, Miss Moultrie. Come down to Holmescroft, and go over the place just once.”
“You are lying,” she said quite quietly. “You don’t want me to come down to see a window. It is something else. I warn you we are Evangelicals. We don’t believe in prayers for the dead. “As the tree falls –’ ”
“Yes. I daresay. But you persist in thinking that your sister committed suicide –”
“No! No! I have always prayed that I might have misjudged her.”
Arthurs at the bath-chair spoke up: “Oh, Miss Mary! you would ’ave it from the first that poor Miss Aggie ’ad made away with herself; an’, of course, Miss Bessie took the notion from you. Only Master – Mister John stood out, and – and I’d ’ave taken my Bible oath you was making away with yourself last night.”
Miss Mary leaned towards me, one finger on my sleeve.
“If going to Holmescroft kills me,” she said, “you will have the murder of a fellow-creature on your conscience for all eternity.”
“I’ll risk it,” I answered. Remembering what torment the mere reflection of her torments had cast on Holmescroft, and remembering, above all, the dumb Thing that filled the house with its desire to speak, I felt that there might be worse things.
Baxter was amazed at the proposed visit, but at a nod from that terrible woman went off to make arrangements. Then I sent a telegram to M’Leod bidding him and his vacate Holmescroft for that afternoon. Miss Mary should be alone with her dead, as I had been alone.
I expected untold trouble in transporting her, but to do her justice, the promise given for the journey, she underwent it without murmur, spasm, or unnecessary word. Miss Bessie, pressed in a corner by the window, wept behind her veil, and from time to time tried to take hold of her sister’s hand. Baxter wrapped himself in his newly-found happiness as selfishly as a bridegroom, for he sat still and smiled.
“So long as I know that Aggie didn’t make away with herself,” he explained, “I tell you frankly I don’t care what happened. She’s as hard as a rock – Mary. Always was. She won’t die.”
We led her out on to the platform like a blind woman, and so got her into the fly. The half-hour crawl to Holmescroft was the most racking experience of the day. M’Leod had obeyed my instructions. There was no one visible in the house or the gardens; and the front door stood open.
Miss Mary rose from beside her sister, stepped forth first, and entered the hall.
“Come, Bessie,” she cried.
“I daren’t. Oh, I daren’t.”
“Come!” Her voice had altered. I felt Baxter start. “There’s nothing to be afraid of.”
“Good heavens!” said Baxter. “She’s running up the stairs. We’d better follow.”
“Let’s wait below. She’s going to the room.”
We heard the door of the bedroom I knew open and shut, and we waited in the lemon-coloured hall, heavy with the scent of flowers.
“I’ve never been into it since it was sold,” Baxter sighed. “What a lovely restful place it is! Poor Aggie used to arrange the flowers.”
“Restful?” I began, but stopped of a sudden, for I felt all over my bruised soul that Baxter was speaking truth. It was a light, spacious, airy house, full of the sense of well-being and peace – above all things, of peace. I ventured into the dining-room where the thoughtful M’Leods had left a small fire. There was no terror there, present or lurking; and in the drawing-room, which for good reasons we had never cared to enter, the sun and the peace and the scent of the flowers worked together as is fit in an inhabited house. When I returned to the hall, Baxter was sweetly asleep on a couch, looking most unlike a middle-aged solicitor who had spent a broken night with an exacting cousin.
There was ample time for me to review it all – to felicitate myself upon my magnificent acumen (barring some errors about Baxter as a thief and possibly a murderer), before the door above opened, and Baxter, evidently a light sleeper, sprang awake.
“I’ve had a heavenly little nap,” he said, rubbing his eyes with the backs of his hands like a child. “Good Lord! That’s not their step!”
But it was. I had never before been privileged to see the Shadow turned backward on the dial – the years ripped bodily off poor human shoulders – old sunken eyes filled and alight – harsh lips moistened and human.
“John,” Miss Mary called, “I know now. Aggie didn’t do it!” and “She didn’t do it!” echoed Miss Bessie and giggled.
“I did not think it wrong to say a prayer,” Miss Mary continued. “Not for her soul, but for our peace. Then I was convinced.”
“Then we got conviction,” the younger sister piped.
“We’ve misjudged poor Aggie, John. But I feel she knows now. Wherever she is, she knows that we know she is guiltless.”
“Yes, she kn
ows. I felt it too,” said Miss Elizabeth.
“I never doubted,” said John Baxter, whose face was beautiful at that hour. “Not from the first. Never have!”
“You never offered me proof, John. Now, thank God, it will not be the same any more. I can think henceforward of Aggie without sorrow.” She tripped, absolutely tripped, across the hall. “What ideas these Jews have of arranging furniture!” She spied me behind a big cloisonné vase.
“I’ve seen the window,” she said remotely. “You took a great risk in advising me to undertake such a journey. However, as it turns out . . . I forgive you, and I pray you may never know what mental anguish means! Bessie! Look at this peculiar piano! Do you suppose, Doctor, these people would offer one tea? I miss mine.”
“I will go and see,” I said, and explored M’Leod’s new-built servants’ wing. It was in the servants’ hall that I unearthed the M’Leod family, bursting with anxiety.
“Tea for three, quick,” I said. “If you ask me any questions now, I shall have a fit!” So Mrs M’Leod got it, and I was butler, amid murmured apologies from Baxter, still smiling and self-absorbed, and the cold disapproval of Miss Mary, who thought the pattern of the china vulgar. However, she ate well, and even asked me whether I would not like a cup of tea for myself.
They went away in the twilight – the twilight that I had once feared. They were going to an hotel in London to rest after the fatigues of the day, and as their fly turned down the drive, I capered on the doorstep, with the all-darkened house behind me.
Then I heard the uncertain feet of the M’Leods, and bade them not to turn on the lights, but to feel – to feel what I had done; for the Shadow was gone, with the dumb desire in the air. They drew short, but afterwards deeper, breaths, like bathers entering chill water, separated one from the other, moved about the hall, tiptoed upstairs, raced down, and then Miss M’Leod, and I believe her mother, though she denies this, embraced me. I know M’Leod did.
It was a disgraceful evening. To say we rioted through the house is to put it mildly. We played a sort of Blind Man’s Buff along the darkest passages, in the unlighted drawing-room, and little dining-room, calling cheerily to each other after each exploration that here, and here, and here, the trouble had removed itself. We came up to the bedroom – mine for the night again – and sat, the women on the bed, and we men on chairs, drinking in blessed draughts of peace and comfort and cleanliness of soul, while I told them my tale in full, and received fresh praise, thanks, and blessings.
When the servants, returned from their day’s outing, gave us a supper of cold fried fish, M’Leod had sense enough to open no wine. We had been practically drunk since nightfall, and grew incoherent on water and milk.
“I like that Baxter,” said M’Leod. “He’s a sharp man. The death wasn’t in the house, but he ran it pretty close, ain’t it?”
“And the joke of it is that he supposes I want to buy the place from you,” I said. “Are you selling?”
“Not for twice what I paid for it – now,” said M’Leod. “I’ll keep you in furs all your life, but not our Holmescroft.”
“No – never our Holmescroft,” said Miss M’Leod. “We’ll ask him here on Tuesday, mamma.” They squeezed each other’s hands.
“Now tell me,” said Mrs M’Leod – “that tall one I saw out of the scullery window – did she tell you she was always here in the spirit? I hate her. She made all this trouble. It was not her house after she had sold it. What do you think?”
“I suppose,” I answered, “she brooded over what she believed was her sister’s suicide night and day – she confessed she did – and her thoughts being concentrated on this place, they felt like a – like a burning glass.”
“Burning glass is good,” said M’Leod.
“I said it was like a light of blackness turned on us,” cried the girl, twiddling her ring. “That must have been when the tall one thought worst about her sister and the house.”
“Ah, the poor Aggie!” said Mrs M’Leod. “The poor Aggie, trying to tell every one it was not so! No wonder we felt Something wished to say Something. Thea, Max, do you remember that night –”
“We need not remember any more,” M’Leod interrupted. “It is not our trouble. They have told each other now.”
“Do you think, then,” said Miss M’Leod, “that those two, the living ones, were actually told something – upstairs – in your – in the room?”
“I can’t say. At any rate they were made happy, and they ate a big tea afterwards. As your father says, it is not our trouble any longer – thank God!”
“Amen!” said M’Leod. “Now, Thea, let us have some music after all these months. ‘With mirth, thou pretty bird,’ ain’t it? You ought to hear that.”
And in the half-lighted hall, Thea sang an old English song that I had never heard before.
With mirth, thou pretty bird, rejoice
Thy Maker’s praise enhanced;
Lift up thy shrill and pleasant voice,
Thy God is high advanced!
Thy food before He did provide,
And gives it in a fitting side,
Wherewith be thou sufficed!
Why shouldst thou now unpleasant be,
Thy wrath against God venting,
That He a little bird made thee,
Thy silly head tormenting,
Because He made thee not a man?
Oh, Peace! He hath well thought thereon,
Therewith be thou sufficed!
The Grove of Ashtaroth
John Buchan
Location: Welgevonden, South Africa.
Time: June, 1910.
Eyewitness Description: “And then I honestly began to be afraid. I, a prosaic modern Christian gentleman, a half-believer in casual faiths, was in the presence of some hoary mystery of sin far older than creeds or Christendom. There was fear in my heart.”
Author: John Buchan (1875–1940) was another man for whom the start of the 20th century would mean a significant shift in his fortunes from “half barrister and half writer”, to quote his own words. The early years of the new century were spent in South Africa, which would provide the raw material for some of his later books, notably the fantasy adventure Prester John (1910), and the spur five years later for his immortal spy thriller, The 39 Steps. “The Grove of Ashtaroth” draws on his knowledge of South African supernaturalism to tell the story of a young man who falls under the spell of an old temple dedicated to the worship of an ancient goddess. It is a significant story among Buchan’s work in that critics have in the past used the part-Jewish hero as an example of his anti-Semitism. In fact, although Buchan did make the occasional tasteless remark about Jews in his fiction – as did many other leading writers of the period – he numbered several among his friends and was one of the first important literary figures to denounce Hitler’s persecution of the race during his rise to power.
We were sitting around the camp fire, some thirty miles north of a place called Taqui, when Lawson announced his intention of finding a home. He had spoken little the last day or two, and I had guessed that he had struck a vein of private reflection. I thought it might be a new mine or irrigation scheme, and I was surprised to find that it was a country house.
“I don’t think I shall go back to England,” he said, kicking a sputtering log into place. “I don’t see why I should. For business purposes I am far more useful to the firm in South Africa than in Throgmorton Street. I have no relations left except a third cousin, and I have never cared a rush for living in town. That beastly house of mine in Hill Street will fetch what I gave for it, – Isaacson cabled about it the other day, offering for furniture and all. I don’t want to go into Parliament, and I hate shooting little birds and tame deer. I am one of those fellows who are born Colonial at heart, and I don’t see why I shouldn’t arrange my life as I please. Besides, for ten years I have been falling in love with this country, and now I am up to the neck.”
He flung himself back in the camp-chair til
l the canvas creaked, and looked at me below his eyelids. I remember glancing at the lines of him, and thinking what a fine make of a man he was. In his untanned field-boots, breeches, and grey shirt he looked the born wilderness-hunter, though less than two months before he had been driving down to the City every morning in the sombre regimentals of his class. Being a fair man, he was gloriously tanned, and there was a clear line at his shirt-collar to mark the limits of his sunburn. I had first known him years ago, when he was a broker’s clerk working on half commission. Then he had gone to South Africa, and soon I heard he was a partner in a mining house which was doing wonders with some gold areas in the North. The next step was his return to London as the new millionaire – young, good-looking, wholesome in mind and body, and much sought after by the mothers of marriageable girls. We played polo together, and hunted a little in the season, but there were signs that he did not propose to become the conventional English gentleman. He refused to buy a place in the country, though half the Homes of England were at his disposal. He was a very busy man, he declared, and had not time to be a squire. Besides, every few months he used to rush out to South Africa. I saw that he was restless, for he was always badgering me to go big-game hunting with him in some remote part of the earth. There was that in his eyes, too, which marked him out from the ordinary blonde type of our countrymen. They were large and brown and mysterious, and the light of another race was in their odd depths.
To hint such a thing would have meant a breach of friendship, for Lawson was very proud of his birth. When he first made his fortune he had gone to the Heralds to discover his family, and those obliging gentlemen had provided a pedigree. It appeared that he was a scion of the house of Lowson or Lowieson, an ancient and rather disreputable clan on the Scottish side of the Border. He took a shooting in Teviotdale on the strength of it, and used to commit lengthy Border ballads to memory. But I had known his father, a financial journalist who never quite succeeded, and I had heard of a grandfather who sold antiques in a back street at Brighton. The latter, I think, had not changed his name, and still frequented the synagogue. The father was a progressive Christian, and the mother had been a blonde Saxon from the Midlands. In my mind there was no doubt, as I caught Lawson’s heavy-lidded eyes fixed on me. My friend was of a more ancient race than the Lowsons of the Border.
The Mammoth Book of Modern Ghost Stories Page 15