The Collected Supernatural and Weird Fiction of Sabine Baring-Gould

by Sabine Baring-Gould

  In the twinkling of an eye all was changed in the Vicar of Swanton. He straightened himself. His expression altered to what it never had been before. The cheeks became firm, and lines formed about the mouth indicative of force of character and of self-restraint. The eye assumed an eager look as into far distances, as seeking something beyond the horizon.

  The vicar walked to the mirror over the mantelshelf.

  “Bless me!” he said, “I must go to the barber’s and have these whiskers off.” And he hurried downstairs.

  After a little pause in the proceedings, Mrs. Baker, now very trim, with a blue ribbon round her neck hanging down in streamers behind, ushered up Mr. Stork. The lawyer had a faded appearance, as if he had been exposed to too strong sunlight; he walked in with an air of lack of interest, and sank into a chair.

  “My dear old master,” said Leveridge, “it is my purpose to restore to you all your former energy, and to supply you with what you may possibly have lacked previously.”

  He signed to the white-haired family solicitor he had called into fictitious being, and waved his hand.

  At once Mr. Stork stood up and shook his legs, as though shaking out crumbs from his trousers. His breast swelled, he threw back his head, his eye shone clear and was steady.

  “Mr. Leveridge,” said he, “I have long had my eye on you, sir—had my eye on you. I have marked your character as one of uncompromising probity. I hate shiftiness, I abhor duplicity. I have been disappointed with my clerks. I could not always trust them to do the right thing. I want to strengthen and brace my firm. But I will not take into partnership with myself any but one of the strictest integrity. Sir! I have marked you—I have marked you, Mr. Leveridge. Call on me tomorrow morning, and we will consider the preliminaries for a partnership. Don’t talk to me of buying a partnership.”

  “I have not done so, sir.”

  “I know you have not. I will take you in, sir, for your intrinsic value. An honest man is worth his weight in gold, and is as scarce as the precious metal.”

  Then, with dignity, Mr. Stork withdrew, and passed Mr. Box, the grocer, mounting the stairs.

  “Well, Mr. Box,” said Leveridge, “how wags the world with you?”

  “Badly, sir, badly since you booked me. I mentioned to you, sir, that I trusted my little business would for a while go on by its own momentum. It has, sir, it has, but the momentum has been downhill. I can’t control it. I have not the personality to do so, to serve as a drag, to urge it upwards. I am in daily expectation, sir, of a regular smash up.”

  “I am sorry to hear this,” said Leveridge. “But I think I have found a means of putting all to rights. Presto!” He waved his hand and the imaginary character of the stockbroker had actualised himself in the body of Mr. Box.

  “I see how to do it. By ginger, I do!” exclaimed the grocer, a spark coming into his eye. “I’ll run my little concern on quite other lines. And look ye here, Mr. Leveridge. I bet you my bottom dollar that I’ll run it to a tremendous success, become a second Lipton, and keep a yacht.”

  As Mr. Box bounced out of the room and proceeded to run downstairs, he ran against and nearly knocked over Mrs. Baker; the lady was whispering to and coquetting with Mr. Wotherspoon, who was on the landing. That gentleman, in his condition of lack of individuality, was like a teetotum spun in the hands of the designing Mrs. Baker, who put forth all the witchery she possessed, or supposed that she possessed, to entangle him in an amorous intrigue.

  “Come in,” shouted Joseph Leveridge, and Mr. Wotherspoon, looking hot and frightened and very shy, tottered in and sank into a chair. He was too much shaken and perturbed by the advances of Mrs. Baker to be able to speak.

  “There,” said Joseph, addressing his hero. “You cannot do better than animate that feeble creature. Go!”

  Instantly Mr. Wotherspoon sprang to his feet. “By George!” said he. “I wonder that never struck me before. I’ll at once volunteer to go out to South Africa, and have a shot at those canting, lying, treacherous Boers. If I come back with a score of their scalps at my waist, I shall have deserved well of my country. I will volunteer at once. But—I say, Leveridge—clear that hulking, fat old landlady out of the way. She blocks the stairs, and I can’t kick down a woman.”

  When Mr. Wotherspoon was gone—“Well,” said Poppy, “what have you got for me?”

  “If you will come with me, Poppy dear, I will serve you as well as the rest.”

  “I hope better than you did that odious little widow. But she is well paid out.”

  “Follow me to the riverside,” said Joseph; “at 8.33 p. m. I am due there, and so is another—a lady.”

  “And pray why did you not make her come here instead of lugging me all the way down there?”

  “Because I could not make an appointment with a young lady in my bachelor’s apartments.”

  “That’s all very fine. But I am there.”

  “Yes, you—but you are only an imaginary character, and she is a substantial reality.”

  “I think I had better accompany you,” said Lady Mabel.

  “I think not. If your ladyship will kindly occupy my fauteuil till I return, that chair will ever after be sacred to me. Come along, Poppy.”

  “I’m game,” said she.

  On reaching the riverside Joseph saw that Miss Vincent was walking there in a listless manner, not straight, but swerving from side to side. She saw him, but did not quicken her pace, nor did her face light up with interest.

  “Now, then,” said he to Poppy, “what do you think of her?”

  “She ain’t bad,” answered the fictitious character; “she is very pretty certainly, but inanimate.”

  “You will change all that.”

  “I’ll try—you bet.”

  Asphodel came up. She bowed, but did not extend her hand.

  “Miss Vincent,” said Joseph. “How good of you to come.”

  “Not at all. I could not help. I have no free-will left. When you wrote Come—I came, I could do no other. I have no initiative, no power of resistance.”

  “I do hope, Miss Vincent, that the thing you so feared has not happened.”

  “What thing?”

  “You have not been snapped up by a fortune-hunter?”

  “No. People have not as yet found out that I have lost my individuality. I have kept very much to myself—that is to say, not to myself, as I have no proper myself left—I mean to the semblance of myself. People have thought I was anaemic.”

  Leveridge turned aside: “Well, Poppy!”

  “Right you are.”

  Leveridge waved his hand. Instantly all the inertia passed away from the girl, she stood erect and firm. A merry twinkle kindled in her eye, a flush was on her cheek, and mischievous devilry played about her lips.

  “I feel,” said she, “as another person.”

  “Oh! I am so glad, Miss Vincent.”

  “That is a pretty speech to make to a lady! Glad I am different from what I was before.”

  “I did not mean that—I meant—in fact, I meant that as you were and as you are you are always charming.”

  “Thank you, sir!” said Asphodel, curtsying and laughing.

  “Ah! Miss Vincent, at all times you have seemed to me the ideal of womanhood. I have worshipped the very ground you have trod upon.”

  “Fiddlesticks.”

  He looked at her. For the moment he was bewildered, oblivious that the old personality of Asphodel had passed into his book and that the new personality of Poppy had invaded Asphodel.

  “Well,” said she, “is that all you have to say to me?”

  “All?—oh, no. I could say a great deal—I have ordered my supper for nine o’clock.”

  “Oh, how obtuse you men are! Come—is this leap year?”

  “I really believe that it is.”

  “Then I shall take the privilege of the year, and offer you my hand and heart and fortune—there! Now it only remains with you to name the day.”

  “Oh! Miss Vinc
ent, you overcome me.”

  “Stuff and nonsense. Call me Asphodel, do Joe.”

  ******

  Mr. Leveridge walked back to his lodgings as if he trod on air. As he passed by the churchyard, he noticed the vicar, now shaven and shorn, labouring at a laden wheelbarrow. He halted at the rails and said: “Why, vicar, what are you about?”

  “The sexton has begun a grave for old Betty Goodman, and it is unfinished. He must dig another.” He turned over the wheelbarrow and shot its contents into the grave.

  “But what are you doing?” again asked Joseph.

  “Burying the Mitre hymnals,” replied the vicar. The clock struck a quarter to nine.

  “I must hurry!” exclaimed Joseph.

  On reaching his lodgings he found Major Dolgelly Jones in his sitting-room, sitting on the edge of his table tossing up a tennis-ball. In the armchair, invisible to the major, reclined Lady Mabel.

  “I am so sorry to be late,” apologised Joseph. “How are you, sir?”

  “Below par. I have been so ever since you put me into your book. I have no appetite for golf. I can do nothing to pass the weary hours but toss up and down a tennis-ball.”

  “I hope——” began Joseph; and then a horror seized on him. He had no personality of his creation left but that of Lady Mabel. Would it be possible to translate that into the major?

  He remained silent, musing for a while, and then said hesitatingly to the lady: “Here, my lady, is the body you are to individualise.”

  “But it is that of a man!”

  “There is no other left.”

  “It is hardly delicate.”

  “There is no help for it.”

  Then turning to the major, he said: “I am very sorry—it really is no fault of mine, but I have only a female personality to offer to you, and that elderly.”

  “It is all one to me,” replied the major, “catch”—he caught the ball. “Many of our generals are old women. I am agreeable. Place aux dames.”

  “But,” protested Lady Mabel, “you made me a member of a very ancient titled house that came over with the Conqueror.”

  “The personality I offer you,” said I to the major, “though female is noble; the family is named in the roll of Battle Abbey.”

  “Oh!” said Dolgelly Jones, “I descend from one of the royal families of Powys, lineally from Caswallon Llanhir and Maelgwn Gwynedd, long before the Conqueror was thought of.”

  “Well, then,” said Leveridge, and waved his hand.

  In Swanton it is known that the major now never plays golf; he keeps rabbits.

  ******

  It is with some scruple that I insert this record in the Book of Ghosts, for actually it is not a story of ghosts. But a greater scruple moved me as to whether I should be justified in revealing a professional secret, known only among such as belong to the Confraternity of Writers of Fiction. But I have observed so much perplexity arise, so much friction caused, by persons suddenly breaking out into a course of conduct, or into actions, so entirely inconsistent with their former conduct as to stagger their acquaintances and friends. Henceforth, to use a vulgarism, since I have let the cat out of the bag, they will know that such persons have been used up by novel writers that have known them, and who have replaced the stolen individualities with others freshly created. This is the explanation, and the explanation has up to the present remained a professional secret.

  The Merewigs

  (A tale from A Book of Ghosts)

  During the time that I lived in Essex, I had the pleasure of knowing Major Donelly, retired on half-pay, who had spent many years in India; he was a man of great powers of observation, and possessed an inexhaustible fund of information of the most valuable quality, which he was ready to communicate to his intimates, among whom was I.

  Major Donelly is now no more, and the world is thereby the poorer. Major Donelly took an interest in everything—anthropology, mechanics, archaeology, physical science, natural history, the stock market, politics. In fact, it was not possible in conversation to broach a subject with which he was wholly unacquainted, and concerning which he was not desirous of acquiring further information. A man of this description is not to be held by lightly. I grappled him to my heart.

  One day when we were taking a constitutional walk together, I casually mentioned the “Red Hills.” He had never heard of them, inquired, and I told him what little I knew on the matter. The Red Hills are mounds of burnt clay of a brick-red colour, found at intervals along the fringe of the marshes on the east coast. Of the date of their formation and the purpose they were destined to discharge, nothing has been certainly ascertained. Theories have been formed, and have been held to with tenacity, but these are unsupported by sound evidence. And yet, one would have supposed that these mysterious mounds would have been subjected to a careful scientific exploration to determine by the discovery of flint tools, potsherds, or coins to what epoch they belong, and that some clue should be discovered as to their purport. But at the time when I was in Essex, no such study had been attempted; whether any has been undertaken since I am unable to say.

  I mentioned to Donelly some of the suppositions offered as to the origin of these Red Hills; that they represented salt-making works, that they were funereal erections, that they were artificial bases for the huts of fishers.

  “That is it,” said the major, “no doubt about it. To keep off the ague. Do you not know that burnt clay is a sure protection against ague, which was the curse of the Essex marsh land? In Central Africa, in the districts that lie low and there is morass, the natives are quite aware of the fact, and systematically form a bed of burnt clay as a platform on which to erect their hovels. Now look here, my dear friend, I’d most uncommonly like to take a boat along with you, and explore both sides of the Blackwater to begin with, and its inlets, and to tick down on the ordnance map every red hill we can find.”

  “I am quite ready,” I replied. “There is one thing to remember. A vast number of these hills have been ploughed down, but you can certainly detect where they were by the colour of the soil.”

  Accordingly, on the next fine day we engaged a boat—not a rower—for we could manage it between us, and started on our expedition.

  The country around the Blackwater is flat, and the land slides into the sea and river with so slight an incline, that a good extent of debatable ground exists, which may be reckoned as belonging to both. Vast marshes are found occasionally flooded, covered with the wild lavender, and in June flushed with the sea-thrift. They nourish a coarse grass, and a bastard samphire. These marshes are threaded, cobweb fashion, by myriads of lines of water and mud that intercommunicate. Woe to the man who either stumbles into, or in jumping falls into, one of these breaks in the surface of land. He sinks to his waist in mud. At certain times, when no high tides are expected, sheep are driven upon these marshes and thrive. They manage to leap the runnels, and the shepherd is aware when danger threatens, and they must be driven off.

  Nearer the mainland are dykes thrown up, none know when, to reclaim certain tracts of soil, and on the land side are invariably stagnant ditches, where mosquitoes breed in myriads. Further up grow oak trees, and in summer to these the mosquitoes betake themselves in swarms, and may be seen in the evening swaying in such dense clouds above the trees that these latter seem to be on fire and smoking. Major Donelly and I leisurely paddled about, running into creeks, leaving our boat, identifying our position on the map, and marking in the position of such red hills or their traces as we lighted on.

  Major Donelly and I pretty well explored the left bank up to a certain point, when he proposed that we should push across to the other.

  “I should advise doing thoroughly the upper reach of the Blackwater,” said he, “and we shall then have completed one section.”

  “All right,” I responded, and we turned the boat’s head to cross. Unhappily, we had not calculated that the estuary was full of mud-banks. Moreover, the tide was ebbing, and before very long we grounded.r />
  “Confound it!” said the major, “we are on a mud-bank. What a fix we are in.”

  We laboured with the oars to thrust off, but could touch no solid ground, to obtain purchase sufficient for our purpose.

  Then said Donelly: “The only thing to be done is for one of us to step onto the bank and thrust the boat off. I will do that. I have on an old shabby pair of trousers that don’t matter.”

  “No, indeed, you shall not. I will go,” and at the word I sprang overboard. But the major had jumped simultaneously, and simultaneously we sank in the horrible slime. It had the consistency of spinach. I do not mean such as English cooks send us to table, half-mashed and often gritty, but the spinach as served at a French table d’hôte, that has been pulped through a fine hair sieve. And what is more, it apparently had no bottom. For aught I know it might go down a mile in depth towards the centre of the globe, and it stank abominably. We both clung to the sides of the boat to save ourselves from sinking altogether.

  There we were, one on each side, clinging to the bulwarks and looking at one another. For a moment or two neither spoke. Donelly was the first to recover his presence of mind, and after wiping his mouth on the gunwale from the mud that had squirted over it, he said: “Can you get out?”

  “Hardly,” said I.

  We tugged at the boat, it squelched about, splashing the slime over us, till it plastered our heads and faces and covered our hands.

  “This will never do,” said he. “We must get in together, and by instalments. Look here! when I say ‘three,’ throw in your left leg if you can get it out of the mud.”

  “I will do my best.”