The Dead of Night

by Oliver Onions

  And then this, with the totally unexpected shock of its concluding words.

  This woman which appears to me (said he) lived a neighbour here to my father, and died about eight years since. Her name was Dorothy Dingley. She never speaks to me: but passeth by hastily, and always leaves the footpath to me, and she commonly meets me – this is the shocking thing –

  – she commonly meets me twice or three times in the length of the field.

  2

  At what may be called the sheer mechanical novelty of the encounter – not to go any further – one puts down the Reverend Mr Ruddle’s record at this point and tries to collect one’s thoughts. The ingenious cruelty of the idea makes us catch our breath. Of course we do not believe a word of it. It is merely something that the boy told Mr Ruddle, who passes it on at his own risk. He takes no responsibility except that of a tale-bearer, and to find him a mere carrier of gossip is a little disappointing after our first impression of him. In the meantime, we are merely asked to believe that, in a certain part of the county of Cornwall, at intervals between the June of 1664 and the June of the following year, the factor of space was annihilated, and something existed in a place that was already natur­ally and normally occupied.

  And the factor of time went too; for if, as this boy said, the hallucination happened to him two or three times in the length of a field, why not oftener? Why not at every step he took? Why not a running stream of apparitions, so continuous, that this woman-shape did not ‘appear’ at all, but was merely permanently there, constant in its ubiquity?

  It appeared that the boy himself had a hazy sort of recollection of the person of this Dorothy Dingley. ‘Though the shape of the face was in my memory, yet I could not recall the name of the person, but did suppose it was some woman who lived thereabout, and had frequent occasion that way.’ This, at any rate, we unreservedly believe, for it is of the very texture of our young memories. The boy was about eight years old when Mistress Dingley died. Ask a boy of eight what is his earliest memory and you will get an answer of sorts. But ask him the same question at sixteen and already he is at a loss. He will not so much remember as re-echo his former statement. It is not at all surprising that this boy should remember only tardily that the woman whose shape he saw was dead. The word ‘dead’ conveyed nothing to him. So at first he had no fear. He saw so little to be afraid of that he often spoke to this woman whose business brought her so frequently that way. It was only slightly disconcerting that he never had any reply.

  But the first day of fear was rapidly approaching. This day must have been the very first day when she met him, not once, but twice. That must have been fear to demonstration, and with the shock of it there must have vanished all possibility of this wayfarer being an ordinary woman. And in his fear he changed his way to school, ‘taking the under horse-road, and then she always met me in the narrow lane, between the quarry park and the nursery, which – ’ we read it in its unstressed simplicity, – ‘which was worse.’ Evidently, then, her business was with the boy himself, and was not confined to the field that lay between his home and his school.

  All this, he told the parson, had been going on for a year. No need to dwell on the increasingly familiar daily dread of those twelve months. Enough that from a merry sprightly lad he had become sottish and melancholick.

  I prayed continually that God would either free me from it, or let me know the meaning of it. Night and day, sleeping and waking, the shape was ever running in my mind, and I often did repeat these places in Scripture (with which he took a small Bible out of his pocket): ‘Thou scarest me with dreams and terrifiest me through visions’: and ‘In the morning thou shalt say, Would God it were evening, and at evening thou shalt say, Would God it were morning, for the fear of thine heart wherewith thou shalt fear and for the sight of thine eyes with which thou shalt see.’

  And when at last the whole thing came out, it was not the boy himself who told his parents. Besides the brother who had ranged to London, there was a middle brother, who, we note in passing, is the only member of the family Mr Ruddle sees fit to name. We fasten on it, as it were, that this lad’s name was William. Boy-like, the unhappy youth told his trouble first to brother William. And brother William told his father and mother.

  Already we can guess which of these it was who wore the breeches in that troubled house. It was the mother who had fetched the boy from the orchard, insisting that Parson Ruddle should see him at once. It was the mother, we may be sure, who, hearing that a man so under­standing with boys was in the neighbourhood, had despatched her ancient husband to young Elliott’s funeral, with orders to bring this Mr Ruddle back. Her command had lain behind the old gentle­man’s almost unmannerly importunity, she had scolded him when he had returned with no parson by his side. She, and surely nobody else, had sent off the messenger who had twice pestered the parson while he was still in the Elliotts’ house. And since she had a son of school age, she was presumably a good deal younger than her Latin-mumbling spouse. Disingenuousness and reluctance and reserve had character­ised Parson Ruddle’s reception. Putting two and two together, does it not seem likely that what the mother was manoeuvring for was this – to get all the help the parson could give her, but to give him as little information as possible in return? A secretive lady, one would say, who liked to keep things in her own hands. A managing lady, who ordered her husband about and wanted things done there and then. An anxious lady, the mother of one son who had ranged to London with new clothes on his back and money in the pockets of them, and of another who showed signs of following in his footsteps. But a lady, above all, at her wits’ end what to do, since she sent for parsons with one breath and with the next sharply charged her son with malingering and bade him be off to school. And to school he went.

  ‘But always,’ says the unhappy lad, ‘I met the Woman in the Way.’

  The talk between the parson and the boy lasted for close on two hours. At the end of it Mr Ruddle had definitely taken sides. He confesses that on his return to the house he was short with the parents. He tells us that the mother, ‘whose inquisitiveness had missed us’, wanted to speak to him. He ‘gave her a convenience’ – he could hardly do less – but it is noteworthy that he said not one word about the agreement to which he and the boy had come; which was, that they should go together to these uneasy Quartils at six o’clock of the following morning, to see, if they could, this presence that certainly had no business to be there.

  3

  Mr Ruddle is presently about to make a number of tremendous assertions. Let us, before he does so, clear the ground a little for him. After that he is more than welcome to have it to himself.

  He was going with the boy to enquire into the alleged comings and goings of somebody he had never known. The boy’s own recollec­tions in the matter were vague and confused. But the parents had been well acquainted with the original of this troublesome thing. She was spoken of as a neighbour, they had attended her funeral. So she can hardly have been a simple dairymaid or the daughter of a Cornish hind. She must have been a person of at least respectable degree, and not impossibly of some minor consideration and stand­ing. She had died eight years before, when the boy who was now sixteen had been eight years old.

  And, now that he was sixteen, she seemed to have singled him out for her undesired companionship. Had she troubled other boys of the neighbourhood it would quickly have become notorious. The middle brother, William, was left in peace. And already we wonder whether we ought even to wonder what her motive was. Already we scent a warning in the air – and have half a mind to drop the curtain on this obscure family history of so long ago. But even as we hesitate a new actor seems to step on the scene. He is the elder brother who has ranged away to London.

  A disease had happened in Launceston – they are Mr Ruddle’s opening words – of which some of his scholars had died. So quietly, so naturally has the story begun that for the moment it d
id not occur to us that this was the year of the Plague. Nor, for that matter, is it to be found in the records that Launceston, so far away, was one of the places from which the fugitives from London were driven back at the pitchfork’s point. But everywhere terror and foreboding stalked up and down the land, and war was awake upon the seas. Ways were foul, communications bad, home best. Add to this that London, youth, money and new clothes were very much the same then that they are today. Few and far between must have been the letters that that Cornish mother received from her prodigal in the afflicted city. He might have been dead for months and she none the wiser.

  Nor do sons become prodigals all in a moment. Sad mothers see it coming. There were innocent rustic junketings in Cornwall as else­where, but there were also pleasures less innocent. And what can a mother do when she sees her son, on the verge of manhood, weary­ing of his surroundings and fretting to range away? She will pray, supplicate, try to stay him with her arms. All that is past shall be forgotten so he will but remain with her. She will exhaust herself that his father’s house shall be a pleasant place for him, and will look about among the neighbouring families of standing in search of a girl of her own choosing, whose arms may keep him where her own have failed. Mothers were so, are so, and will always be so.

  Therefore let us picture a similar situation today. Let us suppose that, today, a mother sought a desirable wife for her restless son – but found that the young man had already contracted a less desir­able infatuation of his own. And say that all had begun innocently enough, and that half the danger lay in the mother’s own apprehen­sion. And say that this undesired young woman happened to be of such a condition that she could not well be denied the house merely because she was disliked. Do we not instantly see what would happen? Can we not picture how smilingly the bidden but unwelcome guest would sit at the board, yet how secretly armed, as if with a steel shirt under her smock? Can we not see how, under her demure looks, she would hungrily wait for the slightest occasion of offence? Would not every word be given its particular con­struction and every glance be wrested to a private meaning? We not only see; we almost hear the indignant words shaping them­selves in her breast. Not good enough for their spark of a son, she! (‘Yes, madam; I thank you, madam!’) Permitted the house, but as some­thing between the servants and themselves! (‘No, madam; indeed you are too kind, madam!’) How long would such a situation con­tinue? Not long. Something would presently happen. The visits to the house would cease. Clandestine meetings would take their place. This, too, would come to the ears of the mother. The fat would be in the fire, would flare. The young woman would march down the path with angry words in her ears and her heart already seething with schemes of revenge. This is what would happen today, and even in two-hundred-and-fifty years the ways of the heart in love and hate do not greatly change.

  Assume, then – for it commits us to no conclusion from which we cannot withdraw at any moment – that Dorothy Dingley had been such an one. Suppose her to have been of intermediate con­dition, with goods enough to keep her in idleness and no more, come into her small property too young, grown up to do as she pleased with none to check her. No need to say that she was ill-intentioned or ill-conditioned. The sense of grievance under which she laboured might have been a perfectly legitimate one. She need not even have been greatly drawn to their son. For all that – hoity-toity! It was not as if she herself was going a-begging! Far from it! There were young farmers in plenty to whom her middling fortune would be riches undreamed-of! She could have her pick of a dozen of them!

  So, misjudged and injured, would not such a young woman be willing, as the saying is, to give these people something to talk about? Can we not hear her scoffing laugh? They, to set themselves up! That woman, with her pottering old dotard of a husband! Much joy of love she had had, to marry for an orchard or so and a few gables! Let her take care – others were as good as she, and with blood in their veins too! Her son? That young cock with his hackle up? She wouldn’t have wasted a look on him except to anger that old-man’s-nurse, his mother! A turn of the head would fetch him – a glance and she could have him at her feet –

  So it may have been – or it may not. She may have been one who should have been stripped and flogged at the cart’s-tail amid the execrations of every mother of growing sons thereabouts – or she may not. She may have run from him, been caught and kissed, struggled and broken free again – or not. She may have given him the ribbon from her breast or the garter from her knee, and laughed at him and called him boy the more he tried to show himself a man – or none of these things may be true. But if she did not some other woman did, in 1665 as today. We do not know whether the youth went off to London flushed with success or in dudgeon and despite. We do not know whether the Plague took or spared him. We do not know of what illness Dorothy Dingley herself died. We only know that the bell had tolled for her as her mortal remains had been lowered into the grave, and that now, eight years later, or seven, if we reckon off the year it had lasted, something of her that was not dead met a younger brother in the Way.

  Let Parson Ruddle now speak again.

  4

  Before five o’clock in the morning the lad was in my chamber, and very brisk. I arose and went with him. The field he led me to I guessed to be about twenty acres, in an open country and about three furlongs from the house. We went into the field, and had not gone above a third part before the spectrum, in the shape of a woman, with all the circumstances he had described to me in the orchard the day before (as much as the suddenness of its appearance and evanition would permit me to discover) met us and passed us by. I was a little surprised at it and though I had taken up a firm resolution to speak to it yet I had not the power, nor indeed durst I look back, yet I took care not to show my fear to my pupil and guide: and therefore telling him that I was satisfied in the truth of his complaint, we walked to the end of the field and returned, nor did the ghost meet us at that time more than once.

  With these words Parson Ruddle burns his boats. He can no longer shelter behind the boy’s account. He has seen for himself, takes the whole thing on his own shoulders, and we know exactly where we are. If we now meet with lies, they are his lies and not the lad’s.

  And, after the first instinctive gesture of fear, he was merely ‘a little surprised’. You or I might marvel that grass and common yellow broom should grow in that dreadful place at all. We might stand in amazement that honeysuckle and roses should dare to flower in the hedges of that awful sunken lane. But apparently the whole land­scape could rock horrifically before this parson’s eyes, and, barring a natural shiver, he was merely ‘a little surprised’. Perhaps the terrific implication of it all sank in later . . .

  And now comes a break in the narrative. Word was brought to Mr Ruddle that urgent private affairs demanded his presence elsewhere. He left, promising to be back in a week’s time. This promise he was unable to keep, for his wife was taken ill. It is the first we hear that he had a wife. We have already made up our minds that Mrs Ruddle had a very remarkable husband.

  However [he says] my mind was upon the adventure; I studied the case; and about three weeks after that went again, resolving, by the help of God, to see the utmost.

  By this time the boy would be almost blithe again. He had found a sympathetic friend, able to help and returning presently. But heavy care weighed on that anxious, close-lipped woman, his mother. For the parson said not a word to her or her spouse of what he had seen. All that she knew was that her boy, who a year before had gone gaily singing about the house was a mere shadow of his former self. And he was now sixteen, which is the turn and change in a boy’s life. In love with some wench? Not unlikely; but with which wench? The neigh­bourhood was not so populous that he could keep such a secret for long. True, he denied it, but what boy would not? So once more the same thing would happen that we might expect today. She would watch his comings and goings. She would ask him questions of which the
drift did not appear. She would lay little traps for him, would send him on errands in order that she might discover in which quarters he lingered unusually long. Names would be slyly intro­duced in his presence, bits of gossip repeated to see whether he changed countenance. In a word, the history of the prodigal eldest brother would be enacted all over again.

  Then one day the boy, who had never swerved from his story of what happened to him in the field, would let fall some little detail at which the mother would prick up her ears. One sees her turn suddenly pale. Of what appearance did he say this woman was who met him? What shape of face? What colour of brows? How tall! Of what carriage?

  And then would come the sickening hour when it appeared that the boy’s description corresponded exactly with that of the woman who had already stepped between her and one of her sons.

  It is of course all supposing: nothing on earth but supposing. But it is supposing in terms of known reality. Women have been known to transfer their favours from one brother to another. But when in the history of the world before did one do so from the grave? And when did one so diabolically bide her time, waiting as it were for the ripe moment when her victim did not know what ailed him, but only that women were disturbingly different from anything he had supposed? Up to that point evil influences had been powerless against his innocence. It may be that this influence had had no choice but to wait for those seven years. But the seven years were at an end, and – lo! the hour at last! Gently, then, at first, not to frighten the quarry! Give place to him – remember that he comes from a house with gables and orchards, while you are of inferior condition! Do not answer him if he speaks, Dorothy Dingley – remember that your voice is not quite what an ordinary woman’s voice should be, for it is no perfected piece of work, but only a flimsy figure, the making of which you have busied yourself about for so long! And above all, be wary about that first time you meet him, not once, but twice again after that! He might shy at that! For he is of a different make from that ruffling blade of a brother of his! That one was only too ready to be drinking and cockfighting and wenching; but this is a pious, studious lad, with a quick and timid fancy for you to play on! Play on it, then, and be evens with that hated woman with the nodding old husband! She thought she could treat you thus and thus, did she? She had come to your funeral with weeds upon her body but triumph and joy in her heart? She had thought she had heard the last of you when the bell clanged out its note? Indeed no! You knew a trick worth two of that, Dorothy Dingley! Never mind the middle boy, young William! First the firstborn, then the youngest, will serve your turn! She to set herself up? Ha, ha! Let her wait a bit – let her wait a bit –