The Collected Supernatural and Weird Fiction of Sabine Baring-Gould

by Sabine Baring-Gould

  Interviews were sought by the editors or agents of local newspapers to ascertain whether reporters were desired to describe the wedding, and as to the length of the notices that were to be inserted, whether all the names of the donors of presents were to be included, and their gifts registered. Verily Lady Lacy and Betty were kept in a whirl of excitement, and their time occupied from morning till night, and their brains exercised from night to morning. Glass and china and plate had to be hired for the occasion, wine ordered. Fruit, cake, ices commanded. But all things come to an end, even the preparations for a wedding.

  At last the eventful day arrived, bright and sunny, a true May morning.

  The bridesmaids arrived, each wearing the pretty brooch presented by Captain Fontanel. Their costume was suitable to the season, of primrose-yellow, with hats turned up, white, with primroses. The pages were in green velvet, with knee-breeches and three-cornered hats, lace ruffles and lace fronts. The butler had made the claret-cup and the champagne-cup, and after a skirmish over the neighbourhood some borage had been obtained to float on the top. Lady Lacy was to hold a reception after the ceremony, and a marquee had been erected in the grounds, as the cottage could not contain all the guests invited. The dining-room was delivered over for the exposing of the presents. A carriage had been commanded to convey the happy couple to the station, horses and driver with white favours. With a sigh of relief in the morning, Lady Lacy declared that she believed that nothing had been forgotten.

  The trunks stood ready packed, all but one, and labelled with the name of Mrs. Fontanel. A flag flew on the church tower. The villagers had constructed a triumphal arch at the entrance to the grounds. The people from farms and cottages had all turned out, and were already congregating about the churchyard, with smiles and heartfelt wishes for the happiness of the bride, who was a mighty favourite with them, as indeed was also Lady Lacy.

  The Sunday-school children had clubbed their pence, and had presented Betty, who had taught them, with a silver set of mustard-pot, pepper caster, and salt-cellar.

  “Oh, dear!” said Betty, “what shall I do with all these sets of mustard-and pepper-pots? I have now received eight.”

  “A little later, dear,” replied her aunt, “you can exchange those that you do not require.”

  “But never that set given me by my Sunday-school pets,” said Betty.

  Then came in flights of telegrams of congratulation.

  And at the last moment arrived some more wedding presents.

  “Good gracious me!” exclaimed the girl, “I really must manage to acknowledge these. There will be just time before I begin to dress.”

  So she tripped upstairs to her boudoir, a little room given over to herself in which to do her water-colour painting, her reading, to practise her music. A bright little room to which now, as she felt with an ache, she was to bid an eternal goodbye!

  What happy hours had been spent in it! What daydreams had been spun there!

  She opened her writing-case and wrote the required letters of thanks.

  “There,” said she, when she had signed the fifth. “This is the last time I shall subscribe myself Elizabeth Mountjoy, except when I sign my name in the church register. Oh! how my back is hurting me. I was not in bed till two o’clock and was up again at seven, and I have been on the tear for the whole week. There will be just time for me to rest it before the business of the dressing begins.” She threw herself on the sofa and put up her feet. Instantly she was asleep—in a sound, dreamless sleep.

  When Betty opened her eyes she heard the church bells ringing a merry peal. Then she raised her lids, and turning her head on the sofa cushion saw—a bride, herself in full bridal dress, with the white veil and the orange-blossoms, seated at her side. The gloves had been removed and lay on the lap.

  An indescribable terror held her fast. She could not cry out.

  She could not stir. She could only look.

  Then the bride put back the veil, and Betty, studying the white face, saw that this actually was not herself; it was her dead sister, Letice.

  Then the bride put back the veil, and Betty, studying the white face, saw that this actually was not herself; it was her dead sister, Letice.

  The apparition put forth a hand and laid it on her and spoke: “Do not be frightened. I will do you no harm. I love you too dearly for that, Betty. I have been married in your name; I have exchanged vows in your name; I have received the ring for you; put it on your finger, it is not mine; it in no way belongs to me. In your name I signed the register. You are married to Charles Fontanel and not I. Listen to me. I will tell you all, and when I have told you everything you will see me no more. I will trouble you no further; I shall enter into my rest. You will see before you only the wedding garments remaining. I shall be gone. Hearken to me. When I was dying, I died in frantic despair, because I had never known what were the pleasures of life. My last cries, my last regrets, my last longings were for the pomps and vanities.”

  She paused, and slipped the gold hoop on to the forefinger of Betty’s hand.

  Then she proceeded—

  “When my spirit parted from my body, it remained a while irresolute whither to go. But then, remembering that my aunt had declared that I never would go to Heaven, I resolved on forcing my way in there out of defiance; and I soared till I reached the gates of Paradise. At them stood an angel with a fiery sword drawn in his hand, and he laid it athwart the entrance. I approached, but he waved me off, and when the point of the flaming blade touched my heart, there passed a pang through it, I know not whether of joy or of sorrow. And he said: ‘Letice, you have not been a good girl; you were sullen, resentful, rebellious, and therefore are unfit to enter here. Your longings through life, and to the moment of death, were for the world and its pomps and vanities. The last throb of your heart was given to repining for them. But your faults were due largely to the mistakes of your rearing. And now hear your judgement. “You shall not pass within these gates till you have returned to earth and partaken of and had your fill of its pomps and vanities. As for that old cat, your aunt’—but no, Betty, he did not say quite that; I put it in, and I ought not to have done so. I bear her no resentment; I wish her no ill. She did by me what she believed to be right. She acted towards me up to her lights; alas for me that the light which was in her was darkness! The angel said: ‘As for your aunt, before she can enter here, she will want illumining, enlarging, and sweetening, and will have to pass through Purgatory.’ And oh, Betty, that will be gall and bitterness to her, for she did not believe in Purgatory, and she wrote a controversial pamphlet against it.

  “Then said the angel: ‘Return, return to the pomps and vanities. ’ I fell on my knees, and said: ‘Oh, suffer me but to have one glimpse of that which is within!’ ‘Be it so,’ he replied. ‘One glimpse only whilst I cast my sword on high.’ Thereat he threw up the flaming brand, and it was as though a glorious flash of lightning filled all space. At the same moment the gates swung apart, and I saw what was beyond. It was but for one brief moment, for the sword came down, and the angel caught it by the handle, and instantly the gates were shut. Then, sorrowfully, I turned myself about and went back to earth. And, Betty, it was I who took and read your novels. It was I who went to Lady Belgrove’s ball in your place.

  “It was I who sat instead of you at Her Majesty’s and heard Carmen. It was I who took your place at Henley Regatta, and I—I, instead of you, received the protestation of Charles Fontanel’s affection, and there in the boat-house I received the first and last kiss of love. And it was I, Betty, as I have told you, who took your place at the altar to-day. I had the pleasures that were designed for you—the ball-dress, the dances, the fair words, the music of the opera, the courtship, the excitement of the regatta, the reading of sensational novels. It was I who had what all girls most long for, their most supreme bliss of wearing the wedding-veil and the orange-blossoms. But I have reached my limit. I am full of the pomps and vanities, and I return on high. You will see me no mor
e.”

  “Oh, Letice,” said Betty, obtaining her speech, “you do not grudge me the joys of life?”

  The fair white being at her side shook her head.

  “And you desire no more of the pomps and vanities?”

  “No, Betty. I have looked through the gates.”

  Then Betty put forth her hands to clasp the waist of her sister, as she said fervently—

  “Tell me, Letice, what you saw beyond.”

  “Betty—everything the reverse of Salem Chapel.”

  The White Flag

  (A tale from A Book of Ghosts)

  A percentage of the South African Boers—how large or how small that percentage is has not been determined—is possessed of a rudimentary conscience, much as the oyster has incipient eyes, and the snake initiatory articulations for feet, which in the course of long ages may, under suitable conditions, develop into an active faculty.

  If Jacob Van Heeren possessed any conscience at all it was the merest protoplasm of one.

  He occupied Heerendorp, a ramshackle farmhouse under a kopje, and had cattle and horses, also a wife and grown-up sons and daughters.

  When the war broke out Jacob hoisted the white flag at the gable, and he and his sons indulged their sporting instincts by shooting down such officers and men of the British army as went to the farm, unsuspecting treachery.

  Heerendorp by this means obtained an evil notoriety, and it was ordered to be burnt, and the women of Jacob’s family to be transferred to a concentration camp where they would be mollycoddled at the expense of the English taxpayer. Thus Jacob and his sons were delivered from all anxiety as to their womankind, and were given a free field in which to exercise their mischievous ingenuity. As to their cattle and horses that had been commandeered, they held receipts which would entitle them to claim full value for the beasts at the termination of hostilities.

  Jacob and his sons might have joined one of the companies under a Boer general, but they preferred independent action, and their peculiar tactics, which proved eminently successful.

  That achievement in which Jacob exhibited most slimness, and of which he was pre-eminently proud, was as follows: feigning himself to be wounded, he rolled on the ground, waving a white kerchief, and crying out for water. A young English lieutenant at once filled a cup and ran to his assistance, when Jacob shot him through the heart.

  When the war was over Van Heeren got his farm rebuilt and restocked at the expense of the British taxpayer, and received his wife and daughters from the concentration camp, plump as partridges.

  So soon as the new Heerendorp was ready for occupation, Jacob took a large knife and cut seventeen notches in the doorpost.

  “What is that for, Jacob?” asked his wife.

  “They are reminders of the Britishers I have shot.”

  “Well,” said she, “if I hadn’t killed more Rooineks than that, I’d be ashamed of myself.”

  “Oh, I shot more in open fight. I didn’t count them; I only reckon such as I’ve been slim enough to befool with the white flag,” said the Boer.

  Now the lieutenant whom Jacob Van Heeren had killed when bringing him a cup of cold water, was Aneurin Jones, and he was the only son of his mother, and she a widow in North Wales. On Aneurin her heart had been set, in him was all her pride. Beyond him she had no ambition. About him every fibre of her heart was entwined. Life had to her no charms apart from him. When the news of his death reached her, unaccompanied by particulars, she was smitten with a sorrow that almost reached despair. The joy was gone out of her life, the light from her sky. The prospect was a blank before her. She sank into profound despondency, and would have welcomed death as an end to an aimless, a hopeless life.

  But when peace was concluded, and some comrades of Aneurin returned home, the story of how he had met his death was divulged to her.

  Then the passionate Welsh mother’s heart became as a live coal within her breast. An impotent rage against his murderer consumed her. She did not know the name of the man who had killed him, she but ill understood where her son had fallen. Had she known, had she been able, she would have gone out to South Africa, and have gloried in being able to stab to the heart the man who had so treacherously murdered her Aneurin. But how was he to be identified?

  The fact that she was powerless to avenge his death was a torture to her. She could not sleep, she could not eat, she writhed, she moaned, she bit her fingers, she chafed at her incapacity to execute justice on the murderer. A feverish flame was lit in her hollow cheeks. Her lips became parched, her tongue dry, her dark eyes glittered as if sparks of unquenchable fire had been kindled in them.

  She sat with clenched hands and set teeth before her dead grate, and the purple veins swelled and throbbed in her temples.

  Oh! if only she knew the name of the man who had shot her Aneurin!

  Oh! if only she could find out a way to recompense him for the wrong he had done!

  These were her only thoughts. And the sole passage in her Bible she could read, and which she read over and over again, was the story of the Importunate Widow who cried to the judge, “Avenge me of mine adversary!” and who was heard for her persistent asking.

  Thus passed a fortnight. She was visibly wasting in flesh, but the fire within her burned only the fiercer as her bodily strength failed.

  Then, all at once, an idea shot like a meteor through her brain. She remembered to have heard of the Cursing Well of St. Elian, near Colwyn. She recalled the fact that the last “Priest of the Well,” an old man who had lived hard by, and who had initiated postulants into the mysteries of the well, had been brought before the magistrates for obtaining money under false pretences, and had been sent to gaol at Chester; and that the parson of Llanelian had taken a crowbar and had ripped up the wall that enclosed the spring, and had done what lay in his power to destroy it and blot out the remembrance of the powers of the well, or to ruin its efficacy.

  But the spring still flowed. Had it lost its virtues? Could a parson, could magistrates bring to naught what had been for centuries?

  She remembered, further, that the granddaughter of the “Priest of the Well” was then an inmate of the workhouse at Denbigh. Was it not possible that she should know the ritual of St. Elian’s spring?—should be able to assist her in the desire of her heart?

  Mrs. Winifred Jones resolved on trying. She went to the workhouse and sought out the woman, an old and infirm creature, and had a conference with her. She found the woman, a poor, decrepit creature, very shy of speaking about the well, very unwilling to be drawn into a confession of the extent of her knowledge, very much afraid of the magistrates and the master of the workhouse punishing her if she had anything to do with the well; but the intensity of Mrs. Jones, her vehemence in prosecuting her inquiries, and, above all, the gift of half a sovereign pressed into her palm, with the promise of another if she assisted Mrs. Winifred in the prosecution of her purpose, finally overcame her scruples, and she told all that she knew.

  “You must visit St. Elian’s, madam,” said she, “when the moon is at the wane. You must write the name of him whose death you desire on a pebble, and drop it into the water, and recite the sixty-ninth Psalm.”

  “But,” objected the widow, “I do not know his name, and I have no means of discovering it. I want to kill the man who murdered my son.”

  The old woman considered, and then said: “In this case it is different. There is a way under these circumstances. Murdered, was your son?”

  “Yes, he was treacherously shot.”

  “Then you will have to call on your son by name, as you let fall the pebble, and say: ‘Let him be wiped out of the book of the living. Avenge me of mine adversary, O my God.’ And you must go on dropping in pebbles, reciting the same prayer, till you see the water of the spring boil up black as ink. Then you will know that your prayer has been heard, and that the curse has wrought.”

  Winifred Jones departed in some elation.

  She waited till the moon changed, and then
she went to the spring. It was near a hedge; there were trees by it. Apparently it had been unsought for many years. But it still flowed. About it lay scattered a few stones that had once formed the bounds.

  She looked about her. No one was by. The sun was declining, and would soon set. She bent over the water—it was perfectly clear. She had collected a lapful of rounded stones.

  Then she cried out: “Aneurin! come to my aid against your murderer. Let him be blotted out of the book of the living. Avenge me on my adversary, O my God!” and she dropped a pebble into the water.

  Then rose a bubble. That was all.

  She paused but for a moment, then again she cried: “Aneurin! come to my aid against your murderer. Let him be blotted out of the book of the living. Avenge me on my adversary, O my God!”

  Once more a pebble was let fall. It splashed into the spring, but there was no change save that ripples were sent against the side.

  A third—then a fourth—she went on; the sun sent a shaft of yellow glory through the trees over the spring.

  Then someone passed along the road hard by, and Mrs. Winifred Jones held her breath, and desisted till the footfall had died away.

  But then she continued, stone after stone was dropped, and the ritual was followed, till the seventeenth had disappeared in the well, when up rose a column of black fluid boiling as it were from below, the colour of ink; and the widow pressed her hands together, and drew a sigh of relief; her prayer had been heard, and her curse had taken effect.

  She cast away the rest of the pebbles, let down her skirt, and went away rejoicing.

  ******

  It so fell out that on this very evening Jacob Van Heeren had gone to bed early, as he had risen before daybreak, and had been riding all day. His family were in the outer room, when they were startled by a hoarse cry from the bedroom. He was a short-tempered, imperious man, accustomed to yell at his wife and children when he needed them; but this cry was of an unusual character, it had in it the ring of alarm. His wife went to him to inquire what was the matter. She found the old Boer sitting up in bed with one leg extended, his face like dirty stained leather, his eyes starting out of his head, and his mouth opening and shutting, lifting and depressing his shaggy, grey beard, as though he were trying to speak, but could not utter words.