The Oxford Book of Victorian Ghost Stories

by Michael Cox

  It might be so; but why were they all agreed as to what they had seen? Why did they all speak of the tangled fair hair, and the wicked gleaming eyes? Was our house haunted? Was this the mysterious cause of the exceedingly moderate rent and the house-agent's profuse civility?

  The nurse did not recover strength, and being worse than useless in her present weak, hysterical condition, I sent her down to her country home for change of air, and hired another temporarily in her place.

  The newcomer was a stout, small, cheerful woman of about forty. I liked her face the moment I saw her; for, besides its smiling, honest expression, there was a good deal of decided character in the large firm features. 'You appear to be a sensible person,' I said, when giving her her first instructions in the nursery, 'and I think I can rely on you. You know my nurse is leaving because of illness, and that illness was caused by her being frightened by—a ghost-story.' I paused; but the woman remained unmoved, listening to me in respectful silence.

  'The servants downstairs have got some nonsense of the kind into their heads,' I went on; 'they will try to frighten you, too, and tell you they have seen-' I could not go on. For my life I could not calmly give her the description of that shadowy image of fear.

  'They cannot frighten me, ma'am,' said my new nurse quietly. 'I am not afraid of spirits.'

  I thought she spoke in jest, and smiled.

  'I am not indeed, ma'am,' she repeated. 'I have lived where there were such things seen, but they never harmed me.'

  'You don't mean to say you believe such nonsense?' said I, hypocritically trying to speak carelessly.

  'Oh yes, ma'am, I do! I could not disbelieve it,' said the nurse, opening her eyes with earnestness, 'I know the story of this house, ma'am.'

  'What story?' I cried.

  The woman coloured and looked confused.

  'I beg your pardon, ma'am—I mean what people say is seen here.'

  'What do they say? Do not frighten me,' I said, and my voice quivered in spite of me; 'I have heard nothing but what the servants said.'

  The nurse looked deeply concerned.

  'I am very stupid, ma'am; I beg your pardon for repeating such stories to you—I daresay it is only idle people's gossip.'

  She went about her duties, and I went—not into my dressing-room—but down into the drawing-room, where I sat by the window looking out until my husband returned.

  Two or three weeks more passed away without any more alarms. The summer had deepened into its longest days and hottest sunshine; the gay season had reached and passed its meridian of wealth, beauty, luxury, extravagance, success, misery, hopes, and disappointments. I had enjoyed it very much at first; but I soon wearied of it as my bodily strength weakened in the ordeal of constant excitement, late hours, hot rooms, heavy perfumed atmosphere, ices, and diaphanous ball-dresses.

  'Poor Maid Marian,' George said, 'she is pining for her green wild woods.' However, by following the doctor's advice—the same whom he had summoned the night of the nurse's illness, and whom we both liked very much—and living more quietly, I was able to enjoy quiet entertainments and my favourite operas very fairly, although my red brunette cheeks had faded dismally.

  'An invitation for us, Helen, I know, and that is Willesden's writing.'

  It was a sultry morning at the close of June. I felt tired and languid, and it was with a bad grace I tore open the envelope lying beside the breakfast tray.

  'Yes, "Colonel and Mrs. Willesden request the pleasure"-Why,

  George, it is for this evening!'

  'Written the day before yesterday, though—delayed somehow,' said George, reading over my shoulder. 'Well, Helen, what do you say? It is only for a quiet, friendly dinner, and I like Willesden very much.'

  'No, dear,' I replied wearily. 'You can go and make apologies for me. I am tired of dinner-parties, and, besides, George is not well.'

  'My dear, the young urchin is far better than yourself,' replied George, dissecting a sardine with amazing relish; 'but just as you like, Nellie. There's "Mudie's last" on the sofa-table, and perhaps it is as well you should stay quiet this evening, and amuse yourself reading it.'

  But 'Mudie's last' failed to possess either interest or the power of amusing me in the long, quiet evening hours, after I had fidgeted about George whilst he was dressing, until he spoiled two white ties, and played with my darlings, and heard them lisp their prayers, and sang them asleep; after the clock had struck eight, and through the open windows the echoes of footsteps in the hot, dusty street grew fewer and fewer. No, 'Mudie's last' was a failure, as far as I was concerned; and, after a faint attempt at practising an intricate Morceau de Salon, I lay down on my pet chintz-covered couch, near the window, to look at the sky and the stars—when they came.

  The house was as still as the grave, save for the far-off sound of some of the servants' voices; for I had given leave to Harriet and the housemaid for an evening out, escorted and protected by Charles— gravest and most stupid of butlers, between whom and my maid there existed tender relations, which were to be consummated by 'the goodwill of a public' from master, and a silk wedding-dress from mistress, some happy future day.

  Accordingly they had donned all their finery, and set off in high glee; at least, I had heard much giggling and rustling of ribbons, and Charles's dignified cockney accents, as he opened the area gate wide for the young ladies' crinolines, and then dead silence again. Cook and the nurse were ensconced in one of the garret windows comparing notes and chatting busily, and all the lower part of the house was left to darkness and to me.

  Dead silence—and the 'ting, ting' of the little French clock on the mantelpiece marked the half-hour after eight. Dear me, how dark it was growing! this brooding storm I supposed, which had been making me feel so languid and restless. I wish it would come down and cool the air—not tonight, though. Dear me, how lonely it is! I wish George were home. Those women are talking very loudly—I wonder nurse would—here I got drowsy, and my eyes ached looking for the stars that had not come.

  In a few minutes I roused again, my maternal anxiety changing into indignation as I heard the women's voices growing louder and shriller, and some doors opened and shut violently.

  What can nurse be thinking of? They will wake the children most certainly, and Georgie was so long in falling asleep—quite feverish, my own boy! I shall really reprove her very plainly. I never needed to do so before. What could she be thinking of?

  Dead silence again. Well, this was lonely; I was inclined to ring for lights, and turn on all the burners in the chandelier by way of company. Then I remembered there were some wax matches in one of the drawers of a writing-tray just at hand, and thought I would light the gas myself instead of bringing the servants down—yes—but—I wanted company. It was so dark and dreary, and—and—I was afraid.

  Afraid to stir—afraid to get off the couch on which I was lying— afraid to look at the door! a numbing, chilling tide of icy fear ebbing through every vein—afraid to draw a breath—afraid to move hand or foot, in a nightmare of supernatural terror. At last, by a violent effort, I sprang at the bell-handle, and pulled it frantically, and as soon as I had done so, with a sudden revulsion of feeling, I felt thoroughly ashamed of my childish cowardice, although I could not have helped it, and it had overcome me as suddenly as unexpectedly. How George would have laughed at me!

  There were those servants talking again, tramping about and banging the doors as before. Really, this was unbearable; cook must be in one of her fits of temper, and certainly had forgotten herself strangely.

  And, as the quarrelsome tones grew louder and louder—evidently in bitter recrimination, although I could not catch a word—my own anger rose proportionately, and, forgetting loneliness and darkness in my indignant anxiety lest my children should be waked by this most unseemly behaviour of the servants, I ran hastily out of the room and up the wide staircase.

  The dim light from the clouded evening sky, still further subdued by the gold and purple-stained glas
s of the conservatory door, streamed faintly down the steps from the first landing, and by it, just as I had ascended half way, I discovered the short, thick-set figure of the nurse rushing down—of course, in answer to my ring, I supposed.

  Involuntarily I stepped aside to avoid coming in violent contact with her as she fled past. No, it was not the nurse; and the woman following her in headlong haste, sweeping by me so that the current of air from their floating dresses struck icily cold on my brow where the clammy dew of perspiration had started in great drops, was—was-Merciful Heavens! What was that tall figure, with the coarse, disordered, yellow hair, the white face, and glittering, steel-blue eyes, that glinted fiendishly on me for one dreadful instant, and then vanished? Vanished as the pursued and pursuing figures had vanished in the shadows of the wide, lofty hall, without sound of voice or footstep?

  I would have cried out—would have shrieked, if every nerve had not been paralyzed. I could not doubt the evidence of my senses—if I could have done so the cold, unearthy horror which sickened my very soul would have borne its undeniable testimony that I had beheld the impersonation of the hidden curse that rested on this dwelling.

  I stood there rigid and immovable, as if that blighting Medusa-glance had indeed changed me into stone.

  It may have been but a very few minutes—it seemed to me a cycle of painful ages, when the light of a brightly burning lamp shone before me, and I heard the cheerful sound of the new nurse's voice in my ears:

  'Come along, cook. Bless your heart, my dear! you needn't be nervous; there's no occasion. Mrs. Russell, ma'am, aren't you well, ma'am?'

  'No,' I said faintly, staggering to the woman's outstretched hands. 'Not down there—upstairs to the children.'

  She turned as I bade her, and supported me up the stairs and into the nursery, the cook following close at my skirts, muttering fervent prayers and ejaculations.

  The sight of the peacefully sleeping little ones did far more to restore me than all the essences and chafing and unlacing which the two women busily administered.

  I had got suddenly ill when coming upstairs was the explanation I gave, which the cook, I plainly perceived, most thoroughly doubted, at least without the cause she suspected being assigned, which, even in the midst of my terror-stricken condition, I refrained from giving. I did not speak to the nurse either of what had happened, but I felt that she knew as well as if she had been by my side all the time. But when George returned I told him.

  Distressed and alarmed on my account though he was, yet he did not, as before, refuse credence to my story. 'We must leave the house, George. I should die here very soon,' I said.

  'Yes, Helen; of course we must leave if you have anything to distress or terrify you in this manner, though it does seem absurd to be driven out of one's house and home by a thing of this kind. Someone's practical joke, or a trick prompted by malice against the owner of the property in order to lessen its value. I have heard of such things often.'

  'George, it is nothing of the kind,' I said earnestly; 'you know it is not.'

  'No, I don't,' said George shortly and grimly, as he opened his case of revolvers, 'and I wish I did.'

  The night passed away quietly, to our ears at least; but next morning when George had concluded the usual morning prayers, instead of the usual move of the servants, they remained clustered at the door, Charles with an exceedingly elongated visage standing slightly in advance of the group as spokesman.

  'Please, sir and ma'am, we can't tell what to do.'

  'Why, go and do your work,' retorted George, with a nervous tug at his moustache and an uneasy glance at me.

  Charles shook his head slowly. 'It can't be done, sir—can't be done, ma'am. Why, no living Christian, not to speak of humble, but respectable servants,' said Charles with a flourish, quite unconscious of the nice distinction he had made, 'could stand it any longer.'

  'What is the matter, pray?' said my husband.

  'Ghosts, sir—spirits, sir—unclean spirits,' said Charles, in an awestruck whisper which was re-echoed in the cook's 'Lor' 'a' mercy!' as she dodged back from the doorway with the housemaid holding fast to one of her ample sleeves, and the lady's maid holding fast to the other. The new nurse, quietly dandling the baby in her arms, was alone unmoved.

  'What stories have you been listening to now?' said their master, with a slight laugh and a frown.

  'No stories, sir; but what we've seen with our eyes and understanded with our ears, and—and—comprehended with our hearts,' said Charles, with an unsuccessful attempt at quoting Scripture. 'What was it as walked the floors last night between one and two, sir? What was it as talked and shrieked and run and raced? What was it as frightened the mistress on the stairs last evening?' And the whole posse of them turned to me, triumphantly awaiting my testimony.

  I was feeling very ill, and looking so, I daresay, having struggled downstairs in order to prevent the servants having any additional confirmation of their surmises.

  'That is no affair of yours,' said George gravely; 'your mistress is in delicate health, and was feeling unwell all day.'

  'Will you allow me to speak, please, sir?' said the nurse, and, as her master nodded assent, she turned to the frightened group with a pleasant smile.

  'You have no cause to be afraid, cook, or Mr. Charles, or any of you,' said she, addressing the most important functionary first—'not in the least. I am only a servant like the rest, and here a shorter time than any one; but I think you are very foolish to unsettle yourselves in a good situation and frighten yourselves. You needn't think they'll harm you. Fear God and do your duty, and you needn't mind wandering, poor, lonely souls-'

  'Lor' 'a' mercy! 'ow you do talk, Mrs. Hamley!' said the cook indignantly.

  'I've seen them more times than one—many and many a time, Mrs. Cook; and they never harmed a hair of my head,' said the nurse, 'nor they'll never harm yours.'

  'Well, then,' said the cook, packing into the hall, followed by her satellites, 'not to be made Queen Victorier of, nor Hemperor of Rooshia neither, would I stay to be frightened out of my seven senses, and made into a lunatic creature like poor Mary was!'

  'Please to make better omelettes for luncheon, cook, than you did yesterday,' said George calmly, though he looked pale and angry enough, 'and leave me to deal with the ghosts—I'll settle accounts with them!'

  The nurse turned quickly and looked earnestly at him: 'I would not say that, sir—God forbid,' said she in an undertone, and the next moment was singing softly and blithely as she carried the children away to their morning bath.

  George and I looked at each other in silence.

  'I wish we had never come into this house, dear,' I said.

  'I wish from my heart that we never had, Helen,' he responded; 'but we must manage to stay the season out, at all events. It would be too absurd to run away like frightened hares, not to speak of the expense and trouble we have gone to.'

  'We can get it taken off our hands without loss, perhaps,' I suggested. 'See the house-agent, George.'

  'I have seen him,' he replied.

  'Well?'

  'Oh! all politeness and amiability, of course. Deeply regretted that we should have any occasion to find fault. No other tenants ever did. Happy to do anything in the way of clearing up this little mystery, etcetera. Of course he was laughing at me in his sleeve.'

  Again, as after our previous alarms, days passed on and lengthened into weeks in undisturbed quietude. George had a good many business matters to arrange; the children looked as rosy and healthy as in their country home, from their constant walking and playing in the airy, pleasant parks. My own health was not very good; and Dr Winchester was kindest and wisest of grave, gentlemanly doctors; so, all things considered, we stayed in London until August—very willingly, too— and only spoke of an excursion of a few weeks to the Isle of Man as a probability in September. Only on my husband's account, I wished for any change. Something seemed to affect his health strangely, although he never complained of
anything beyond the usual lassitude and want of tone which a gay London season might be expected to bequeath him. He was sleepless, frequently depressed, nervous, and irritable; and still he vehemently declared he was quite well, and seemed almost annoyed when I urged him to put his business aside for the present and leave town.

  He had been induced to enter into a large mining speculation, and had, besides, some heavy money matters to arrange, connected with his sister's marriage settlements, which he expected would be required about Christmas. So, all things considered, he had some cause for looking as haggard as he did.

  'It will be as well for him to leave London, Mrs. Russell, as soon as he can,' said Dr Winchester at the close of one of his pleasant 'run-in' visits. 'His nerves are shaky. We men get nervous nearly as often as the ladies, though we don't confess to the fact quite so openly. A little unstrung, you know—nothing more. A few weeks in sea or mountain air will quite brace him up again.'