by Unknown
I have already said that there is a low character who lives next door to me. A few days after the dog followed me home this person sent me a letter. It was only an envelope containing a scrap of paper, but I knew that it came from him. The scrap of paper said: “Lost in — Street, February 4th, a fox-terrier; collar on neck with address. Apply, —— . Note. — Police are instituting inquiries.”
Why the gentleman next door sent me this I cannot say. My impression, however, is that he wanted to annoy me. I could, of course, have handed him over to the authorities, but I remembered that some day he might have a wife and children. In the circumstances I thought it better to let his insinuations pass, and tell my landlady to keep the dog indoors. Owing to some oversight I left the newspaper scrap on my mantelpiece, where my landlady read it. She turned red as she did so, and indeed looked so guilty that for a moment there flashed through my mind the horrid thought, What if she stole this dog? The suspicion was unworthy of me, so I took the advertisement from her and sternly asked her to fill the coalscuttle. When she returned the scrap of newspaper was gone, nor have I seen it since.
This dog which I had taken from the street, where I found it starving, brought me annoyance from various sources. I wanted a fox-terrier for a lady, and naturally I was anxious that it should be a gentle animal. Despite all I had done, the dog was never gentle to me, repeatedly taking me by the ankles. Entirely owing to this dog, I have at present to write with my left hand. It was equally vicious with my landlady, and once, when I forgot to call it back (not that it would have minded me), it bit the man next door. Having read a great deal about the dogs, however, I knew that though argumentative with men and landladies, they are often everything that could be desired with ladies and children. I had unfortunately no opportunity of trying the dog with ladies, but my landlady had a baby. Fearing that she might not be willing to lend the child for purposes of experiment, I waited till she left the house one day, when I proceeded to her apartments, where the infant lay. I lifted it up by the waistband and carried it carefully to my room, where for safety I deposited it in the coalscuttle, which was empty as usual. Then I introduced the dog and baby, and awaited results. Whether the dog would have behaved as they do in books, or have resented the baby’s not being a biscuit, will never be known, for at that moment my landlady returned. When she saw the child in the coalscuttle (this being the only time that coalscuttle was ever full) she said things which I disdain to repeat.
I forget whether it was now, or after the receipt of an insulting letter, that I began to wonder what would be the best way of getting rid of the dog. The letter said, “It will be the worse for you if you do not return within three days the dog you stole.” The note was unsigned, but I recognized the writing as that of the person who disgraces our respectable neighborhood. Of course I scorned his insinuation, and openly defied him; but the dog, I now saw, would not suit, and I cannot be expected to turn my room into a home for lost dogs. I therefore determined to do without this dog.
Two friends came to see me that evening, and they got to know at once that I now kept a dog. I told them that I had reasons of an entirely private nature for wanting to sell the dog, and pointed out the beauties of this one to them. They said, however, that they did not want a dog, and they would not even take this one for nothing. I tried to make it run after them, feeling that they ought to have a dog, but the ungrateful little brute would not go. Next morning a letter from my anonymous correspondent awaited me at the breakfast-table. It said simply, “This is your last day.” In a court of justice this could have been proved to be a threat of murder, though it had also another interpretation. I snapped my fingers, both hands, at my contemptible neighbor, who evidently did not know the kind of man he had to deal with. Then I went out with the dog. We proceeded toward the address given in the advertisement about the lost dog. It had struck me as just possible that the dog which followed me home was the dog that had been lost.
Possibly my neighbor meant to imply this, but if so, why did he not put it more plainly? Of course, had I thought for a moment that he meant to call me a thief, I would have proceeded against him at once.
I went to the address referred to, and asked the servant who answered the bell whether this dog was like the one that had been lost. She said it was the same, whereupon I explained briefly how it had followed me home. The servant entreated me to come in, as her master would like to see me. Doubtless she meant that he wanted to reward me, but I desired no reward; I merely wanted to do my duty, and I walked away very quickly from the door. I have not been bribed to make this statement.
THE FAMILY HONOR.
I.
MUCH of the story of the Glendowie Monster, now on the tongues of all in the North who are not afraid to speak, has been born of ugly fancies since the night of September 4,1890, when that happened which sent the county to bed with long candles for the rest of the month. I was at Glendowie Castle that night, and I heard the scream that made nigh two hundred people suddenly stand still in the dance; but of what is now being said I take no stock, thinking it damning to a noble house; and of what was said before that night I will repeat only the native gossip and the story of the children, which I take to be human rather than the worst horror of all, as some would have it. Thus I am left with almost naught to tell save what I saw or heard at the Castle on the night of September 4th; and to those who would have all things accounted for it will seem little, though for me more than enough.
There are those in Glendowie who hold that this Thing has been in the castle, and there held down by chains, since the year 1200, when the wild Lady Mildred gave it birth and died of sight of it; and in the daylight (but never before wine) they will speak the name of her lover; and so account for 1200 A.D. being known in the annals of that house not as a year of our Lord but as the year of the Devil. I am not sufficiently old-fashioned for such a story, and rather believe that the Thing was never in the castle until the coming home from Africa of him who was known as the Left-Handed Earl, which happened a matter of seventy years ago. The secret manner of his coming and the oddness of his attendants, with a wild story of his clearing the house of all other servants for fifteen days, during which he was not idle, raised a crop of scandal that has not yet been cut level with the earth. To be plain, it is said by those who believe witchcraft to be done with that the Left-Handed Earl brought the Thing from Africa, and in fifteen days had a home made for it in the castle — a home that none could find the way to save himself and a black servant who frequently disappeared for many days at a time, yet was known always to be within whistle of his master. Men said furtively that this Thing was the heir, and again there was the Devil’s shadow in the story, as if the Devil could be a woman.
Half a century ago the Left-Handed Earl died, and they will tell you of a three days’ search for a minister brave enough to pray by the open coffin, and that in the middle of the prayer the mourners rose to their feet and ran out of the room, because of something squatting on the corpse’s chest. There are many such stories of the Thing, against which all who might have seen shut their eyes so quickly that no two drew the same likeness. But this is no great matter, for what they saw I will not tell, and I would that none had ever told me.
There have been four earls since then, but, if the tale of the Thing be true, not one of them lawful earl. Yet until September 4, 1890, since the time of the Left-Handed Earl, it has always been the same black servant who waited on the Thing, so that many marvelled and called these two one, as they were not. Of the earls I have nothing to tell that could not be told by other men, save this, that they paced their halls by night, and have ever had an air of listening not to what was being said to them, but as if for some sudden cry from beyond. And I have heard tell that though brave men in war, they would not go into a dark place: even for a wife, which was the bribe offered to one of them. —
It is not a pretty story, except for what is told of the Monster’s love of children; and though until September 4, 1890, I
never believed what was told of the Thing and these children, I believe it now. “What they say is that it was so savage that not even the black servant could have gone within reach of it and lived; yet with children scarce strong enough to walk, save on all-fours, it would play for hours even as they played, but with a mother’s care for them. There are men of all ages in these parts who hold that they were with it in their childhood and loved it, though now they shudder at a picture they recall, I think, but vaguely. And some of them, doubtless, are liars. It may be wondered why the lords of Glendowie dared let a child into the power of one that could have broken themselves across its knee; and two reasons are given: the first, that it knew when there were children in the castle, and would have broken down walls to reach them had they not been brought to it; the other, that compassion induced the earls to give it the only pleasure it knew. Of these children some were of the tenantry and others of guests in the castle, and I have not heard of one that dreaded the monster. To them it ever seems to have been lovable; and if half of the stories be true they would let it toss them sportively in the air, and they would sit with their arms round its neck while it made toys for them of splinters of wood or music by rattling its chains. I need not say that care was taken to keep these meetings from the parents of the children, in which conspiracy the children unconsciously joined, for their pleasant prattle of their new friend allayed suspicion rather than roused it. Nevertheless, queer rumors arose in recent times, which I dare say few believed who came from a distance; yet were they sufficiently disquieting to make guests leave their children at home, and, as I understand, on September 4,1890, several years had passed since a child had slept in the castle. On that night there were many guests, and one child, who had been in bed for some hours when the Thing broke loose.
II.
THE occasion was the coming of age of the heir, and seldom, I suppose, has there been such a company in a house renowned for hospitality. There were many persons from distant parts, which means London, and all the great folk of our county, with others not so great in that gathering, though capable of making a show at most. After the dancing begins no man is ever a prominent figure in a room to those who are there merely to look on, as I was; and I now remember, as the two whom my eyes followed with greatest pleasure, our hostess, a woman of winning manners yet cold when need be, and the lady who was shortly to become her daughter, a languid girl, pretty to look at when her lover, the heir, was by her side. I know that nearly all present that night speak now of a haggard look on the earl’s face, and of quick glances between him and his wife; I know they say that the heir danced much to keep himself from thinking, and that his arm chattered on the waists of his partners; I know the story that he had learned of the existence of the Thing that night. But I was present, and I am persuaded that at the time all thought, as I did, that never was a gayer scene even at Glendowie, never a host and hostess more cordial, never a merry-eyed heir more anxious to be courteous to all and more than courteous to one. The music was a marvel for the country. Dance succeeded dance. The hour was late, but another waltz was begun. Then suddenly —
And at once the music stopped and the dancers were as still as stone figures. It had been a horrible, inhuman scream, so loud and shrill as to tear a way through all the walls of the castle; a scream not of pain but of triumph. I think it must have lasted half a minute, and then came silence, but still no one moved: we waited as if after lightning for the thunder.
The first person I saw was the earl. His face was not white but gray. His teeth were fixed, and he was staring at the door, waiting for it to open. Some men hastened to the door, and he cast out his arms and drove them back. But he never looked at them. The heir I saw with his hands over his face. Many of the men stepped in front of the women. There was no whispering, I think. We all turned our eyes to the door.
Some ladies screamed (one, I have heard, swooned; but we gave her not a glance) when the door opened. It was only the African servant who entered, a man most of us had heard of but few had seen. He made a sign to the earl, who drew back from him and then stepped forward. The heir hurried to the door, and some of us heard this conversation:
“Not you, father; me.”
“Stay here, my son; I entreat, I command.”
“Both,” said the servant, authoritatively; and then they went out with him and the door closed.
The dancing was resumed almost immediately. This is a strange thing to tell. Only a woman could have forced us to seem once more as we were before that horrid cry; and the woman was our hostess. As the door closed my eyes met her; and I saw that she had been speaking to the musicians. She was smiling graciously, as if what had occurred had been an amusing interlude. I saw her take her place beside her partner, and begin the waltz again with the music. All looked at her with amazement, dread, pity, suspicion, but they had to dance. “Does she know nothing?” I asked myself, overhearing her laughing merrily as she was whirled past me. Or was this the Woman’s part in the tragedy while the men were doing theirs? What were they doing? It was whispered in the ballroom that they were in the open, looking for something that had escaped from the castle.
An hour, I dare say, passed, and neither the earl nor his son had returned. The dancing went on, but it had become an uncanny scene: every one trying to read the other’s face, the men uncomfortable as if feeling that they should be elsewhere, many of the women craven, only the countess in high spirits. By this time it was known to all of us that the door of the ballroom was locked on the outside. Guests bade our hostess goodnight, but could retire no further. One man dared request her to bid the servants unlock the door, and she smiled and asked him for the next waltz.
About two o’clock in the morning many of us heard a child’s scream, that came, as we thought, from the hall of the castle. A moment afterward we again heard it — this time from the shrubbery. I saw the countess shake with fear at last, but it was only for a moment. Already she was beckoning to the musicians to continue playing. One of the guests stopped them by raising his hand; he was the father of the child.
“You must bid your servants unbar that door,” he said to the countess, sternly, “or I will force it open.”
“You cannot leave this room, sir — ,” she answered, quite composedly; and then he broke out passionately, fear for his child mastering him. Something about devil’s work he said.
“There is someone on the other side of that door who would not hesitate to kill you,” she replied; and we knew that she spoke of the native servant.
“Order him to open the door.”
“I will not.”
In another moment the door would have been broken open, had she not put her back against it. Her eyes were now flashing. The men looked at each other in doubt, and some of them, I know, were for tearing her from the door. It was then that we heard the report of a gun.
It is my belief that the countess saved the life of Sir — by preventing his leaving the ballroom.
For close on another hour she stood at the door, and the servants gathered round her like men ready to support their mistress. We were now in groups, whispering and listening, and I shall tell what I heard, believing it to be all that was heard by any of us, though some of those present that night now tell stranger tales. I heard a child laughing, and I doubt not that we were meant to hear it, to appease the parents’ fears. I heard the tramp of men in the hall and on the stairs, and afterward an unpleasant dirge from above. A carriage drove up the walk and stopped at the door. Then came heavy noises on the stair, as of some weight being slowly moved down it. By and by the carriage drove off. The earl returned to the ballroom, but no one was allowed to leave it until daybreak. I lost sight of the countess when the earl came in, but many say that he whispered something to her, to which she replied “Thank God!” and then fainted. No explanation of this odd affair was given to the company; but it is believed that the Thing, whatever it was, was shot that night and taken away by the heir and the servant to Africa, there to be buri
ed.
THE WICKED CIGAR.
COUNT TOLSTOÏ has a well-considered and temperate paper in the Contemporary Review for February 1891, on the effects of smoking. He maintains that tobacco makes fiends of men, and cites several wellknown cases in which murderers could not do the deed until they had smoked a cigarette. That tobacco fires us to villany there can be no doubt, I think. That is why I smoke.