The Collected Supernatural and Weird Fiction of Mrs Molesworth

by Mary Molesworth

  Helen looked at first, as this recital went on, as if she were wavering between a return to her old dislike to being interfered with, and gratitude to Malcolm for his undeserved devotion. The good angel triumphed, as Malcolm, who was watching her anxiously, quickly perceived.

  “I did not interfere with you, Helen,” he said in a low voice, “but it was the greatest comfort to me to be able to protect and care for you, even though you did not know it.”

  The tears started to Helen’s eyes.

  “Oh, Malcolm, I know how good you are, but——”

  “Never mind any ‘buts,’” said Mrs. Lindsay brightly, catching the last word. “‘All’s well, that ends well.’”

  “I know now who foraged for us so successfully,” said Edith. “Who was the mysterious friend that gave Mrs. Jones the mushrooms!”

  “And nearly betrayed myself by laughing at the door, when passing I heard Helen’s enthusiastic thanks to Mrs. Jones,” said Malcolm.

  “Yes, and frightened me horribly by so doing,” added Helen, “as I really began to think that clock was bewitched, and had a special ill-will against me. In fact it took the place of my conscience for the time being.”

  “I have the very greatest regard for the clock,” said Malcolm demurely, “and I intend to make Mrs. Jones an offer for it forthwith.”

  “Please don’t,” said Helen piteously. “I daresay it is very silly, but I really don’t quite like that clock, though, after all, its warning of ill-luck has brought the very reverse to me. But I have not heard yet what kept Edith out so late, or how in the world you and Mrs. Lindsay met her at the Black Lake.”

  “The Black Lake?” said Mrs. Lindsay, “what do you mean?”

  Whereupon Edith hastened on with that part of her story relating to her own adventures. She, it appeared, feeling confident in Mrs. Lindsay’s ready kindness, and never doubting but what she would at once respond to her appeal by coming to nurse Helen, instead of going to the Black Lake to sketch, as Helen imagined, set off on the pony to meet her friend at the station, having proposed to her to come by a certain train. Overtaking Griffith on the road to Llanfair, as she expected from Mrs. Jones’s account, he accompanied her to the village, where she gave over the pony to his care.

  As she entered the station she saw a return train about to start for the Junction about half an hour’s journey from where she was. Finding by her watch that she was in ample time, it struck her that she might as well go so far to meet her friend, but on arriving at the Junction she was startled to find that with the new month a change had taken place in the trains, and that consequently Mrs. Lindsay could not arrive till late in the evening. Worse still she herself could not now get back to Helen till she was frightened to think what hour, the evening train in question not going farther than Llanfar, the station near the Junction at which she and her sister had by mistake got out on their arrival, and which was fifteen miles from the Black Nest.

  It is needless to describe her distress of mind all the long hours she had to sit in the little waiting-room at the Junction; or her corresponding delight when, on the train coming up, she descried looking out of a window the familiar face of Malcolm Willoughby, and found that he was accompanied by his sister whom he had gone to meet half-way on her journey.

  Helen woke at noon the next day feeling indescribably happy, she could not tell why till the sight of Mrs. Lindsay’s sweet face recalled to her mind all her misery of the night before and the relief and happiness with which it had ended. “How little I deserve it!” thought she humbly and gratefully, “and how can I ever repay Malcolm for his goodness?”

  Their dull little parlour looked very different now that it was enlivened by the presence of the two newcomers; and Helen could scarcely believe it to be the same room in which, but yesterday, she had passed hours of such agonising suspense. So thoroughly penitent and softened did she feel that she offered no opposition to anything proposed, and it was therefore arranged that as soon as Helen was well enough to travel they should all return home together to relieve poor Aunt Fanny’s anxiety.

  “I wonder,” said Helen, with a little sigh, a few days afterwards, when they were packing up their painting materials, “I wonder if I shall ever finish my sketch of the Black Lake.”

  “I don’t like to make rash promises,” said Malcolm, “but if somebody I know is very good perhaps next summer she may see the Black Lake again, provided she will neither catch cold nor tumble off her pony.”

  Edith laughed and Helen blushed.

  “But there’s one thing still,” said Edith, “which I don’t understand. Why, Malcolm, did you always shut your door as the clock struck thirteen?”

  “Very simply explained,” replied he. “The first night I was here I was sitting up reading till midnight and thought I heard it strike thirteen. I thought it very odd, and for a night or two I listened till it began to strike and then opened my door to make sure I was not mistaken. And one night I went out with my candle to examine the clock, trying to make out the cause of it, and to see if I could put it right. No man, they say, can resist meddling with a clock even though he is no mechanical genius.”

  “All the same,” said Edith triumphantly, “notwithstanding your examinations, you and no one else can tell the reason why that clock does strike thirteen.”

  The Shadow in the Moonlight

  (A story from Uncanny Tales)

  PART 1

  We never thought of Finster St. Mabyn’s being haunted. We really never did.

  This may seem strange, but it is absolutely true. It was such an extremely interesting and curious place in many ways that it required nothing extraneous to add to its attractions. Perhaps this was the reason.

  Now-a-days, immediately that you hear of a house being “very old,” the next remark is sure to be “I hope it is”—or “is not”—that depends on the taste of the speaker—“haunted”.

  But Finster was more than very old; it was ancient and, in a modest way, historical. I will not take up time by relating its history, however, or by referring my readers to the chronicles in which mention of it may be found. Nor shall I yield to the temptation of describing the room in which a certain royalty spent one night, if not two or three nights, four centuries ago, or the tower, now in ruins, where an even more renowned personage was imprisoned for several months. All these facts— or legends—have nothing to do with what I have to tell. Nor, strictly speaking, has Finster itself, except as a sort of prologue to my narrative.

  We heard of the house through friends living in the same county, though some distance farther inland. They—Mr. and Miss Miles, it is convenient to give their name at once—knew that we had been ordered to leave our own home for some months, to get over the effects of a very trying visitation of influenza, and that sea-air was specially desirable.

  We grumbled at this. Seaside places are often so dull and commonplace. But when we heard of Finster we grumbled no longer.

  “Dull” in a sense it might be, but assuredly not “commonplace”. Janet Miles’s description of it, though she was not particularly clever at description, read like a fairy tale, or one of Longfellow’s poems.

  “A castle by the sea—how perfect!” we all exclaimed. “Do, oh, do fix for it, mother!”

  The objections were quickly over-ruled. It was rather isolated, said Miss Miles, standing, as was not difficult to trace in its name, on a point of land—a corner rather—with sea on two sides. It had not been lived in, save spasmodically, for some years, for the late owner was one of those happy, or unhappy people, who have more houses than they can use, and the present one was a minor. Eventually it was to be overhauled and some additions and alterations made, but the trustees would be glad to let it at a moderate rent for some months, and had intended putting it into some agents’ hands when Mr. Miles happened to meet one of them, who mentioned it to him.

  There was nothing against it; it was absolutely healthy. But the furniture was old and shabby, and there was none too much of
it. If we wanted to have visitors we should certainly require to add to it. This, however, could easily be done, our informant went on to say. There was a very good upholsterer and furniture dealer at Raxtrew, the nearest town, who was in the habit of hiring out things to the officers at the fort. “Indeed,” she added, “we often pick up charming old pieces of furniture from him for next to nothing, so you could both hire and buy.”

  Of course, we should have visitors—and our own house would not be the worse for some additional chairs and tables here and there, in place of some excellent monstrosities Phil and Nugent and I had persuaded mother to get rid of. “If I go down to spy the land with father,” I said, “I shall certainly go to the furniture dealer’s and have a good look about me.”

  I did go with father. I was nineteen—it is four years ago— and a capable sort of girl. Then I was the only one who had not been ill, and mother had been the worst of all, mother and Dormy—poor little chap—for he nearly died.

  He is the youngest of us—we are four boys and two girls.

  Sophy was then fifteen. My own name is Leila.

  If I attempted to give any idea of the impression Finster St. Mabyn’s made upon us, I should go on for hours. It simply took our breath away. It really felt like going back a few centuries merely to enter within the walls and gaze round you. And yet we did not see it to any advantage, so at least said the two Miles’s who were our guides. It was a gloomy day, with the feeling of rain not far off, early in April. It might have been November, though it was not cold.

  “You can scarcely imagine what it is on a bright day,” said Janet, eager, as people always are in such circumstances, to show off her trouvaille. “The lights and shadows are so exquisite.”

  “I love it as it is,” I said. “I don’t think I shall ever regret having seen it first on a grey day. It is just perfect.”

  She was pleased at my admiration, and did her utmost to facilitate matters. Father was taken with the place, too, I could see, but he hummed and hawed a good deal about the bareness of the rooms—the bedrooms especially. So Janet and I went into it at once in a business-like way, making lists of the actually necessary additions, which did not prove very formidable after all.

  “Hunter will manage all that easily,” said Miss Miles, upon which father gave in—I believe he had meant to do so all the time. The rent was really so low that a little furniture-hire could be afforded, I suggested. And father agreed.

  “It is extremely low,” he said, “for a place possessing so many advantages.”

  But even then it did not occur to any of us to suggest “suspiciously low.” We had the Miles’s guarantee for it all, to begin with. Had there been any objection they must have known it.

  We spent the night with them and the next morning at the furniture dealer’s. He was a quick, obliging little man, and took in the situation at a glance. And his terms were so moderate that father said to me amiably: “There are some quaint odds and ends here, Leila. You might choose a few things, to use at Finster in the first place, and then to take home with us.”

  I was only too ready to profit by the permission, and with Janet’s help a few charmingly quaint chairs and tables, a three-cornered wall cabinet, and some other trifles were soon put aside for us. We were just leaving, when at one end of the shop some tempting-looking draperies caught my eye.

  “What are these?” I asked the upholsterer. “Curtains! Why, this is real old tapestry!”

  The obliging Hunter drew out the material in question.

  “They are not exactly curtains, miss,” he said. “I thought they would make nice portières. You see the tapestry is set into cloth. It was so frail when I got it that it was the only thing to do with it.”

  He had managed it very ingeniously. Two panels, so to say, of old tapestry, very charming in tone, had been lined and framed with dull green cloth, making a very good pair of portières indeed.

  “Oh, papa!” I cried, “do let us have these. There are sure to be draughty doors at Finster, and afterwards they would make perfect “portières” for the two side doors in the hall at home.”

  Father eyed the tapestry appreciatively, but first prudently inquired the price. It seemed higher in proportion than Hunter’s other charges.

  “You see, sir,” he said half apologetically, “the panels are real antique work, though so much the worse for wear.”

  “Where did they come from?” asked father. Hunter hesitated.

  “To tell you the truth, sir,” he replied, “I was asked not to name the party that I bought it from. It seems a pity to part with heir-looms, but—it happens sometimes—I bought several things together of a family quite lately. The portières have only come out of the workroom this morning. We hurried on with them to stop them fraying more—you see where they were before, they must have been nailed to the wall.”

  Janet Miles, who was something of a connoisseur, had been examining the tapestry.

  “It is well worth what he asks,” she said, in a low voice. “You don’t often come across such tapestry in England.”

  So the bargain was struck, and Hunter promised to see all that we had chosen, both purchased and hired, delivered at Finster the week before we proposed to come.

  Nothing interfered with our plans. By the end of the month we found ourselves at our temporary home—all of us except Nat, our third brother, who was at school. Dormer, the small boy, still did lessons with Sophy’s governess. The two older “boys,” as we called them, happened to be at home from different reasons—one, Nugent, on leave from India; Phil, forced to miss a term at college through an attack of the same illness which had treated mother and Dormy so badly.

  But now that everybody was well again, and going to be very much better, thanks to Finster air, we thought the ill wind had brought us some very distinct good. It would not have been half such fun had we not been a large family party to start with, and before we had been a week at the place we had added to our numbers by the first detachment of the guests we had invited.

  It was not a very large house; besides ourselves we had not room for more than three or four others. For some of the rooms—those on the top story—were really too dilapidated to suit any one but rats—“rats or ghosts,” said someone laughingly one day, when we had been exploring them.

  Afterwards the words returned to my memory.

  We had made ourselves very comfortable, thanks to the invaluable Hunter. And every day the weather grew milder and more spring-like. The woods on the inland side were full of primroses. It promised to be a lovely season. There was a gallery along one side of the house, which soon became a favourite resort; it made a pleasant lounging-place, in the day-time especially, though less so in the evening, as the fireplace at one end warmed it but imperfectly, and besides this it was difficult to light up. It was draughty, too, as there was a superfluity of doors, two of which, one at each end, we at once condemned. They were not needed, as the one led by a very long spiral staircase, to the unused attic rooms, the other to the kitchen and offices. And when we did have afternoon tea in the gallery, it was easy to bring it through the dining or drawingrooms, long rooms, lighted at their extreme ends, which ran parallel to the gallery lengthways, both of which had a door opening on to it as well as from the hall on the other side. For all the principal rooms at Finster were on the first-floor, not on the ground-floor.

  The closing of these doors got rid of a great deal of draught, and, as I have said, the weather was really mild and calm.

  One afternoon—I am trying to begin at the beginning of our strange experiences; even at the risk of long-windedness it seems better to do so—we were all assembled in the gallery at tea-time. The “children,” as we called Sophy and Dormer, much to Sophy’s disgust, and their governess, were with us, for rules were relaxed at Finster, and Miss Larpent was a great favourite with us all.

  Suddenly Sophy gave an exclamation of annoyance. “Mamma,” she said, “I wish you would speak to Dormer. He has thrown over my tea-cup
—only look at my frock!”

  “If you cannot sit still,” she added, turning herself to the boy, “I don’t think you should be allowed to come to tea here.”

  “What is the matter, Dormy?” said mother.

  Dormer was standing beside Sophy, looking very guilty, and rather white.

  “Mamma,” he said, “I was only drawing a chair out. It got so dreadfully cold where I was sitting, I really could not stay there,” and he shivered slightly.

  He had been sitting with his back to one of the locked-up doors. Phil, who was nearest, moved his hand slowly across the spot.

  “You are fanciful, Dormy,” he said, “there is really no draught whatever.”

  This did not satisfy mother.

  “He must have got a chill, then,” she said, and she went on to question the child as to what he had been doing all day, for, as I have said, he was still delicate.

  But he persisted that he was quite well, and no longer cold. “It wasn’t exactly a draught,” he said, “it was—oh! just icy, all of a sudden. I’ve felt it before—sitting in that chair.”

  Mother said no more, and Dormer went on with his tea, and when bed-time came he seemed just as usual, so that her anxiety faded. But she made thorough investigation as to the possibility of any draught coming up from the back stairs, with which this door communicated. None was to be discovered—the door fitted fairly well, and beside this, Hunter had tacked felt round the edges—furthermore, one of the thick heavy portières had been hung in front.

  An evening or two later we were sitting in the drawing room after dinner, when a cousin who was staying with us suddenly missed her fan.

  “Run and fetch Muriel’s fan, Dormy,” I said, for Muriel felt sure it had slipped under the dinner table. None of the men had as yet joined us.

  “Why, where are you going, child?” as he turned towards the farther door. “It is much quicker by the gallery.”