The Collected Supernatural and Weird Fiction of Sabine Baring-Gould

by Sabine Baring-Gould

  “Pete!” she called to her eldest son, “come here, and see what ails your father.”

  Pete and others entered, and stood about the bed, staring stupidly at the old man, unable to comprehend what had come over him.

  “Fetch him some brandy, Pete,” said the mother; “he looks as if he had a fit.”

  When some spirits had been poured down his throat the farmer was revived, and said huskily: “Take it away! Quick, take it off!”

  “Take what away?”

  “The white flag.”

  “There is none here.”

  “It is there—there, wrapped about my foot.”

  The wife looked at the outstretched leg, and saw nothing. Jacob became angry, he swore at her, and yelled: “Take it off; it is chilling me to the bone.”

  “There is nothing there.”

  “But I say it is. I saw him come in——”

  “Saw whom, father?” asked one of the sons.

  “I saw that Rooinek lieutenant I shot when he was bringing me drink, thinking I was wounded. He came in through the door——”

  “That is not possible—he must have passed us.”

  “I say he did come. I saw him, and he held the white rag, and he came upon me and gave me a twist with the flag about my foot, and there it is—it numbs me. I cannot move it. Quick, quick, take it away.”

  “I repeat there is nothing there,” said his wife.

  “Pull off his stocking,” said Pete Van Heeren; “he has got a chill in his foot, and fancies this nonsense. He has been dreaming.”

  “It was not a dream,” roared Jacob; “I saw him as clearly as I see you, and he wrapped my foot up in that accursed flag.”

  “Accursed flag!” exclaimed Samuel, the second son. “That’s a fine way to speak of it, father, when it served you so well.”

  “Take it off, you dogs!” yelled the old man, “and don’t stand staring and barking round me.”

  The stocking was removed from his leg, and then it was seen that his foot—the left foot—had turned a livid white.

  “Go and heat a brick,” said the housewife to one of her daughters; “it is just the circulation has stopped.”

  But no artificial warmth served to restore the flow of blood, and the natural heat.

  Jacob passed a sleepless night.

  Next morning he rose, but limped; all feeling had gone out of the foot. His wife vainly urged him to keep to his bed. He was obstinate, and would get up; but he could not walk without the help of a stick. When clothed, he hobbled into the kitchen and put the numbed foot to the fire, and the stocking sole began to smoke, it was singed and went to pieces, but his foot was insensible to the heat. Then he went forth, aided by the stick, to his farmyard, hoping that movement would restore feeling and warmth; but this also was in vain. In the evening he seated himself on a bench outside the door, whilst his family ate supper. He ordered them to bring food to him. He felt easier in the open air than within doors.

  Whilst his wife and children were about the table at their meal, they heard a scream without, more like that of a wounded horse than a man, and all rushed forth, to find Jacob in a paroxysm of terror only less severe than that of the preceding night.

  “He came on me again,” he gasped; “the same man, I do not know from whence—he seemed to spring out of the distance. I saw him first like smoke, but with a white flicker in it; and then he got nearer and became more distinct, and I knew it was he; and he had another of those white napkins in his hand. I could not call for help—I tried, I could utter no sound, till he wrapped it—that white rag—round my calf, and then, with the cold and pain, I cried out, and he vanished.”

  “Father,” said Pete, “you fell asleep and dreamt this.”

  “I did not. I saw him, and I felt what he did. Give me your hand. I cannot rise. I must go within. Good Lord, when will this come to an end?”

  When lifted from his seat it was seen that his left leg dragged. He had to lean heavily on his son on one side and his wife on the other, and he allowed himself, without remonstrance, to be put to bed.

  It was then seen that the dead whiteness, as of a corpse, had spread from the foot up the calf.

  “He is going to have a paralytic stroke, that is it,” said Pete. “You, Samuel, must ride for a doctor tomorrow morning, not that he can do much good, if what I think be the case.”

  On the second day the old man persisted in his determination to rise. He was deaf to all remonstrance, he would get up and go about, as far as he was able. But his ability was small. In the evening, as the sun went down, he was sitting crouched over the fire. The family had finished supper, and all had left the room except his wife, who was removing the dishes, when she heard a gasping and struggling by the fire, and, turning her head, saw her husband writhing on his stool, clinging to it with his hands, with his left leg out, his mouth foaming, and he was snorting with terror or pain.

  She ran to him at once. “Jacob, what is it?”

  “He is at me again! Beat him off with the broom!” he screamed. “Keep him away. He is wrapping the white flag round my knee.”

  Pete and the others ran in, and raised their father, who was falling out of his seat, and conveyed him to bed.

  It was now seen that his knee had become hard and stiff, his calf was as if frozen; the whiteness had extended upwards to the knee.

  Next day a surgeon arrived. He examined the old man, and expressed his conviction that he had a stroke. But it was a paralytic attack of an unusual character, as it had in no way affected his speech or his left arm and hand. He recommended hot fomentations.

  Still the farmer would not be confined to bed; he insisted on being dressed and assisted into the kitchen.

  One stick was not now sufficient for him, and Samuel contrived for him crutches. With these he could drag himself about, and on the fourth evening he laboriously worked his way to a cow-stall to look at one of his beasts that was ill.

  Whilst there he had a fourth attack. Pete, who was without, heard him yell and beat at the door with one of his crutches. He entered, and found his father lying on the floor, quivering with terror, and spluttering unintelligible words. He lifted him, and drew him without, then shouted to Samuel, who came up, and together they carried him to the house.

  Only when there, and when he had drunk some brandy, was he able to give an account of what had taken place. He had been looking at the cow, and feeling it, when down out of the hayloft had come leaping the form of the Rooinek lieutenant, which had sprung in between him and the cow, and, stooping, had wrapped a white rag round his thigh, above the knee. And now the whole of his leg was dead and livid.

  “There is nothing for it, father, but to have your leg amputated,” said Pete. “The doctor told me as much. He said that mortification would set in if there was no return of circulation.”

  “I won’t have it off! What good shall I be with only one leg?” exclaimed the old man.

  “But father, it will be the sole means of saving your life.”

  “I won’t have my leg off!” again repeated Jacob.

  Pete said in a low tone to his mother: “Have you seen any dark spots on his leg? The doctor said we must look for them, and, when they come, send for him at once.”

  “No,” she replied, “I have not noticed any, so far.”

  “Then we will wait till they appear.”

  On the fifth day the farmer was constrained to keep his bed. He had now become a prey to abject terror. So sure as the hour of sunset came, did a new visitation occur. He listened for the clock to sound each hour of the day, and as the afternoon drew on he dreaded with unspeakable horror the advent of the moment when again the apparition would be seen, and a fresh chill be inflicted. He insisted that his wife or Pete should remain in the room with him. They took it in turns to sit by his bedside.

  Through the little window the fire of the setting sun smote in and fell across the suffering man.

  It was his wife’s turn to be in attendance.

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p; All at once a gurgling sound broke from his throat. His eyes started from his face, his hair bristled, and with his hands he worked himself into a sitting posture, and he heaved himself on to his pillow, and would have broken his way through the backboard of his bed, could he have done so.

  “What is it, Jacob?” asked his wife, throwing down the garment which she was mending, and coming to his assistance. “Lie down again. There is nothing here.”

  He could not speak. His teeth were chattering, and his beard shaking, foam-bubbles formed on his lips, and great sweat-drops on his brow.

  “Pete! Samuel!” she called, “come to your father.”

  The young men ran in, and they forcibly laid the old Boer in bed, prostrate.

  And now it was found that the right foot had turned dead, like the left.

  ******

  On the evening of the seventeenth day after the visit to the well of Llanelian, Mrs. Winifred Jones was sitting on the side of her bed in the twilight. She had lighted no candle. She was musing, always on the same engrossing topic, the wrong that had been done to her and her son, and thirsting with a feverish thirst for vengeance on the wrongdoer.

  Her confidence in the expedient to which she had resorted was beginning to fail. What was this recourse to the well but a falling in with an old superstition that had died out with the advance of knowledge, and under the influence of a wholesome feeling? Was any trust to be placed in that woman at the workhouse? Was she deceiving her for the sake of the half-sovereign? And yet—she had seen a token that her prayer would prove efficacious. There had risen through the crystal water a column of black fluid.

  Could it be that a widow’s prayer should meet with no response? Was wrong to prevail in the world? Were the weak and oppressed to have no means of procuring the execution of justice on the evildoers? Was not God righteous in all His ways? Would it be righteous in Him to suffer the murderer of her son to thrive? If God be merciful, He is also just. If His ear is open to the prayer for help, He must as well listen to the cry for vengeance.

  Since that evening at the spring she had been unable to pray as usual, to pray for herself—her only cry had been: “Avenge me on my adversary!” If she tried to frame the words of the Lord’s Prayer, she could not do so. They escaped her; her thoughts travelled to the South African veldt. Her soul could not rise to God in the ecstasy of love and devotion; it was choked with hate—an overwhelming hate.

  She was in her black weeds; the hands, thin and white, were on her lap, nervously clasping and unclasping the fingers. Had anyone been there, in the grey twilight of a summer night, he would have been saddened to see how hard and lined the face had become, how all softness had passed from the lips, how sunken were the eyes, in which was only a glitter of wrath.

  Suddenly she saw standing before her, indistinct indeed, but unmistakable, the form of her lost son, her Aneurin, and he held a white napkin in his right hand, and this napkin emitted a phosphorescent glow.

  She tried to cry out; to utter the beloved name; she tried to spring to her feet and throw herself into his arms! But she was unable to stir hand, or foot, or tongue. She was as one paralysed, but her heart bounded within her bosom.

  “Mother,” said the apparition, in a voice that seemed to come from a vast distance, yet was articulate and audible—“Mother, you called me back from the world of spirits, and sent me to discharge a task. I have done it. I have touched him on the foot and calf and knee and thigh, on hand and elbow and shoulder, on one side and on the other, on his head, and lastly on his heart, with the white flag—and now he is dead. I did it in all sixteen times, and with the sixteenth he died. I chilled him piecemeal with the white flag; the sixteenth was laid on his heart, and that stopped beating.”

  Then she lifted her hands slightly, and her stiffened tongue relaxed so far that she was able to murmur: “God be thanked!”

  “Mother,” continued the apparition, “there is a seventeenth remaining.”

  She tried to clasp her hands on her lap, but the fingers were no longer under her control; they had fallen to the side of the chair-bed, and hung there lifeless. Her eyes stared wildly at the spectre of her son, but without love in them; love had faded out of her heart, and given place to hate of his murderer.

  “Mother,” proceeded the vision, “you summoned me, and even in the world of spirits the soul of a child must respond to the cry of a mother, and I have been permitted to come back and to do your will. And now I am suffered to reveal something to you: to show you what my life would have been had it not been cut short by the shot of the Boer.”

  He stepped towards her, and put forth a vaporous hand and touched her eyes. She felt as though a feather had been passed over them. Then he raised the luminous sheet and shook it. Instantly all about her was changed.

  Mrs. Winifred Jones was not in her little Welsh cottage; nor was it night. She was no longer alone. She stood in a court, in full daylight. She saw before her the judge on his seat, the barristers in wig and gown, the press reporters with their notebooks and pens, a dense crowd thronging every portion of the court. And she knew instinctively, before a word was spoken, without an intimation from the spirit of her son, that she was standing in the Divorce Court. And she saw there as co-respondent her son, older, changed in face, but more altered in expression. And she heard a tale unfolded—full of dishonour, and rousing disgust.

  She was now able to raise her hands—she covered her ears; her face, crimson with shame, sank on her bosom. She could endure the sight, the words spoken, the revelations made, no longer, and she cried out: “Aneurin! Aneurin! for the Lord’s sake, no more of this! Oh, the day, the day, that I have seen you standing here.”

  At once all passed; and she was again in her bedroom in Honeysuckle Cottage, North Wales, seated with folded hands on her lap, and looking before her wonderingly at the ghostly form of her son.

  “Is that enough, mother?”

  She lifted her hands deprecatingly.

  Again he shook the glimmering white sheet, and it was as though drops of pearly fire fell out of it.

  And again—all was changed.

  She found herself at Monte Carlo; she knew it instinctively. She was in the great saloon, where were the gaming-tables. The electric lights glittered, and the decorations were superb. But all her attention was engrossed on her son, whom she saw at one of the tables, staking his last napoleon. It was indeed her own Aneurin, but with a face on which vice and its consequent degradation were written indelibly.

  He lost, and turned away, and left the hall and its lights. His mother followed him. He went forth into the gardens. The full moon was shining, and the gravel of the terraces was white as snow. The air was fragrant with the scent of oranges and myrtles. The palms cast black shadows on the soil. The sea lay still as if asleep, with a gleam over it from the moon.

  Mrs. Winifred Jones tracked her son, as he stole in and out among the shrubs, amid the trees, with a sickening fear at her heart. Then she saw him pause by some oleanders, and draw a revolver from his pocket and place it at his ear. She uttered a cry of agony and horror, and tried to spring forward to dash the weapon from his hand.

  Then all changed.

  She was again in her little room in the dusk, and the shadowy form of Aneurin was before her.

  “Mother,” said the spirit, “I have been permitted to come to you and to show to you what would have been my career if I had not died whilst young, and fresh, and innocent. You have to thank Jacob Van Heeren that he saved me from such a life of infamy, and such an evil death by my own hand. You should thank, and not curse him.” She was breathing heavily. Her heart beat so fast that her brain span; she fell on her knees.

  “Mother,” the apparition continued, “there were seventeen pebbles cast into the well.”

  “Yes, Aneurin,” she whispered.

  “And there is a seventeenth white flag. With the sixteenth Jacob Van Heeren died. The seventeenth is reserved for you.”

  “Aneurin! I am not fit to die.
”

  “Mother, it must be, I must lay the white flag over your head.”

  “Oh! my son, my son!”

  “It is so ordained,” he proceeded; “but there are Love and Mercy on high, and you shall not be veiled with it till you have made your peace. You have sinned. You have thrust yourself into the council-chamber of God. You have claimed to exercise vengeance yourself, and not left it to Him to whom vengeance in right belongs.”

  “I know it now,” breathed the widow.

  “And now you must atone for the curses by prayers. You have brought Jacob Van Heeren to his death by your imprecations, and now, fold your hands and pray to God for him—for him, your son’s murderer. Little have you considered that his acts were due to ignorance, resentment for what he fancied were wrongs, and to having been reared in a mutilated and debased form of Christianity. Pray for him, that God may pardon his many and great transgressions, his falsehood, his treachery, his self-righteousness. You who have been so greatly wronged are the right person to forgive and to pray for his soul. In no other way can you so fully show that your heart is turned from wrath to love. Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive them that trespass against us.”

  She breathed a “Yes.”

  Then she clasped her hands. She was already on her knees, and she prayed first the great Exemplar’s prayer, and then particularly for the man who had wrecked her life, with all its hopes. And as she prayed the lines in her face softened, and the lips lost their hardness, and the fierce light passed utterly away from her eyes, in which the lamp of Charity was once more lighted, and the tears formed and rolled down her cheeks.

  And still she prayed on, bathed in the pearly light from the summer sky at night. Without, in the firmament, twinkled a star; and a night-bird began to sing.