The other night I was sitting up late–away after nine o’clock–thinking about Christmas because it was getting near at hand. And, like everybody else who muses on that subject, I was thinking of the great changes that have taken place in regard to Christmas. I was contrasting Christmas in the old country house of a century ago, with the fires roaring up the chimneys, and Christmas in the modern apartment on the ninth floor with the gasoline generator turned on for the maid’s bath.
I was thinking of the old stage coach on the snowy road with its roof piled high with Christmas turkeys and a rosy-faced “guard” blowing on a key bugle and the passengers getting down every mile or so at a crooked inn to drink hot spiced ale–and I was comparing all that with the upper berth No. 6, car 220, train No. 53.
I was thinking of the Christmas landscape of long ago when night settled down upon it with the twinkle of light from the houses miles apart among the spruce trees, and contrasting the scene with the glare of motor lights upon the highways of today. I was thinking of the lonely highwayman shivering round with his clumsy pistols, and comparing the poor fellow’s efforts with the high class bandits of today blowing up a steel express car with nitroglycerine and disappearing in a roar of gasoline explosions.
In other words I was contrasting yesterday and today. And on the whole yesterday seemed all to the good.
Nor was it only the warmth and romance and snugness of the old Christmas that seemed superior to our days, but Christmas carried with it then a special kind of thrill with its queer terrors, its empty heaths, its lonely graveyards, and its house that stood alone in a wood, haunted.
And thinking of that it occurred to me how completely the ghost business seems to be dying out of our Christmas literature. Not so very long ago there couldn’t be a decent Christmas story or Christmas adventure without a ghost in it, whereas nowadays—
And just at that moment I looked and saw that there was a ghost in the room.
I can’t imagine how he got in, but there he was, sitting in the other easy chair in the dark corner away from the firelight. He had on my own dressing gown and one saw but little of his face.
“Are you a ghost?” I asked.
“Yes,” he said, “worse luck, I am.”
I noticed as he spoke that he seemed to wave and shiver as if he were made of smoke. I couldn’t help but pity the poor fellow, he seemed so immaterial.
“Do you mind,” he went on, in the same dejected tone, “if I sit here and haunt you for a while?”
“By all means,” I said, “please do.”
“Thanks,” he answered, “I haven’t had anything decent to work on for years and years. This is Christmas eve, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” I said, “Christmas Eve.”
“Used to be my busiest night,” the ghost complained, “best night of the whole year–and now–say,” he said, “would you believe it! I went down this evening to that dinner dance they have at the Ritz Carlton and I thought I’d haunt it–thought I’d stand behind one of the tables as a silent spectre, the way I used to in King George III’s time–“
“Well?” I said.
“They put me out!” groaned the ghost, “the head waiter came up to me and said that he didn’t allow silent spectres in the dining room. I was put out.” He groaned again.
“You seem,” I said, “rather down on your luck?”
“Can you wonder?” said the ghost, and another shiver rippled up and down him. “I can’t get anything to do. Talk of the unemployed–listen!” he went on, speaking with something like animation, “let me tell you the story of my life–“
“Can you make it short?” I said.
“I’ll try. A hundred years ago–“
“Oh, I say!” I protested.
“I committed a terrible crime, a murder on the highway–“
“You’d get six months for that nowadays,” I said.
“I was never detected. An innocent man was hanged. I died but I couldn’t rest. I haunted the house beside the highway where the murder had been done. It had happened on Christmas Eve, and so, every year on that night–“
“I know,” I interrupted, “you were heard dragging round a chain and moaning and that sort of thing; I’ve often read about it.”
“Precisely,” said the ghost, “and for about eighty years it worked out admirably. People became afraid, the house was deserted, trees and shrubs grew thick around it, the wind whistled through its empty chimneys and its broken windows, and at night the lonely wayfarer went shuddering past and heard with terror the sound of a cry scarce human, while a cold sweat–“
“Quite so,” I said, “a cold sweat. And what next?”
“The days of the motor car came and they paved the highways and knocked down the house and built a big garage there, with electricity as bright as day. You can’t haunt a garage, can you? I tried to stick on and do a little groaning, but nobody seemed to pay attention; and anyway, I got nervous about the gasoline. I’m too immaterial to be round where there’s gasoline. A fellow would blow up, wouldn’t he?”
“He might,” I said, “so what happened?”
“Well, one day somebody in the garage actually SAW me and he threw a monkey wrench at me and told me to get to hell out of the garage. So I went.”
“And after that?”
“I haunted round; I’ve kept on haunting round, but it’s no good, there’s nothing in it. Houses, hotels, I’ve tried it all. Once I thought that if I couldn’t make a hit any other way, at least I could haunt children. You remember how little children used to live in terror of ghosts and see them in the dark corners of their bedrooms? Well, I admit it was a low down thing to do, but I tried that.”
“And it didn’t work?”
“Work! I should say not. I went one night to a bedroom where a couple of little boys were sleeping and I started in with a few groans and then half materialized myself, so that I could just be seen. One of the kids sat up in bed and nudged the other and said, ‘Say! I do believe there’s a ghost in the room!’ And the other said, ‘Hold on; don’t scare him. Let’s get the radio set and see if it’ll go right through him.’
“They both hopped out of bed as brisk as bees and one called downstairs, ‘Dad, we’ve got a ghost up here! We don’t know whether he’s just an emanation or partially material. We’re going to stick the radio into him–‘ Believe me,” continued the ghost, “that was all I waited to hear. Electricity just knocks me edgeways.”
He shuddered. Then he went on.
“Well it’s been like that ever since–nowhere to go and nothing to haunt. I’ve tried all the big hotels, railway stations, everywhere. Once I tried to haunt a Pullman car, but I had hardly started before I observed a notice, ‘Quiet is requested for those already retired,’ and I had to quit.”
“Well, then,” I said, “why don’t you just get immaterial or dematerial or whatever you call it, and keep so? Why not go away wherever you belong and stay there?”
“That’s the worst of it,” answered the ghost, “they won’t let us. They haul us back. These spiritualists have learned the trick of it and they just summon us up any time they like. They get a dollar apiece for each materialization, but what do we get?”
The ghost paused and a sort of spasm went all through him. “Gol darn it,” he exclaimed, “they’re at me now. There’s a group of fools somewhere sitting round a table at a Christmas Eve party and they’re calling up a ghost just for fun–a darned poor notion of fun, I call it–I’d like to–like to–“
But his voice trailed off. He seemed to collapse as he sat and my dressing gown fell on the floor. And at that moment I heard the ringing of the bells that meant that it was Christmas midnight, and I knew that the poor fellow had been dragged off to work.
Winowed Wisdom, Stephen Leacock 1926
Mrs Daffodil’s Aide-memoire: Recently, the Smithsonian online magazine made a plea for the return of the tradition of telling ghost stories at Christmas. This is a proposition Mrs Daffodil can heartily endorse. It is true that there was a decay in the quality of Christmas ghost stories, leading to amusing articles and essays totting up the cliches of the usual Christmas spectre, such as this one by Jerome K. Jerome. Mrs Daffodil previously told of how the British ghost was doomed by the introduction of the card game Bridge.
Stephen Leacock also wrote in an essay called “The Passing of the Christmas Ghost Story,” that the logistics of modern life simply were not compatible with the Christmas ghost story.
It is a nice question whether Christmas, in the good old sense of the term, is not passing away from us. One associates it somehow with the epoch of stage-coaches, of gabled inns and hospitable country homes with the flames roaring in the open fireplaces. I often think that half the charm of Christmas, in literature at least, lay in the rough weather and in the physical difficulties surmounted by the sheer force of the glad spirit of the day. Take, for example, the immortal Christmases of Mr. Pickwick and his friends at Dingley Dell and the uncounted thousands of Christmas guests of that epoch of which they were the type. The snow blustered about them. They were red and ruddy with the flush of a strenuous journey. Great fires must be lighted in the expectation of their coming. Huge tankards of spiced ale must be warmed up for them. There must be red wine basking to a ruddier glow in the firelight. There must be warm slippers and hot cordials and a hundred and one little comforts to think of as a mark of gratitude for their arrival; and behind it all, the lurking fear that some fierce highwayman might have fallen upon them as they rode in the darkness of the wood.
Take as against this a Christmas in a New York apartment with the guests arriving by the subway and the elevator, or with no greater highwayman to fear than the taxicab driver. Warm them up with spiced ale? They’re not worth it.
The Bookman, Vol. 50, 1920
Harsh, very harsh, but perhaps a fair assessment. Something of the holiday magic was certainly lost with the introduction of electricity. When ghost story writer M.R. James held his memorable Christmas ghost story readings at Cambridge College, he did not simply press a switch to plunge the room into darkness, but extinguished, one by one, all but one of the candles in the room–and a highly effective bit of stage business it was, say those who witnessed it. Even a dimmer switch could not provide such a thrill.
Mrs Daffodil invites you to join her on the curiously named “Face-book,” where you will find a feast of fashion hints, fads and fancies, and historical anecdote
You may read about a sentimental succubus, a vengeful seamstress’s ghost, Victorian mourning gone horribly wrong, and, of course, Mrs Daffodil’s efficient tidying up after a distasteful decapitation in A Spot of Bother: Four Macabre Tales.
Linley was fond of collecting what he called “raw material” and, as a fairly successful barrister, he had good opportunity for doing so. He despised novelists and romancists, yet one day he hoped to become one of these gentry himself, hence his collection of the raw material…however, after some years he became disgusted and overwhelmed by the amount of “stuff” (as he termed it) which he had gathered together—scenes, episodes, characters, dialogues, descriptions and decorations for all or any possible type of tale; he remained, he declared, surprised at the poverty of invention of the professional story-tellers who gave so little for the public’s money in the way of good, strong, rousing drama, such as he, Robert Linley, had come across, well, more times than he cared to count…
“There isn’t anything,” he declared with some vehemence, “of which I haven’t had experience.”
“Ghosts?” I asked, and he smiled contemptuously.
“Yes, of course, I’ve had any amount of experiences with ghosts, with people who’ve seen ’em, and people who think they’ve seen ’em, and with the ghosts themselves…”
“Well,” I asked, “have you come across a real Christmas ghost story—what we used to call the old-fashioned kind? They’re getting a bit threadbare now, you know; they’ve been told over and over again, year after year; have you got a novelty in that direction?” Linley, after a moment’s pause, said that he had.
“There’s some raw material for you,” he cried, waxing enthusiastic, “the story of the Catchpoles and Aunt Ursula Beane, there’s some raw material—why, there’s everything in it—comedy, tragedy, drama, satire, farce—”
“Hold on!” I cried, “and just tell us as briefly as possible what your ‘raw material’ consists of. I’m out for a Christmas ghost story, you know, and I shall be disappointed if you don’t give us something of that kind.”
Linley made himself extremely comfortable and, with a lawyer’s relish of the right phrase and the correct turn of sentence, gave us the history of Aunt Ursula Beane, with the usual proviso, of course, that the names and places had been altered. Before he began his narration Linley insisted on the novelty of the story, and before he had finished we all of us (those select few who were privileged to hear him hold forth) agreed that it was very novel indeed.
The case of Aunt Ursula Beane, as he called her, had come under his notice in a professional way and in the following manner, commonplace enough from a lawyer’s point of view, although the subsequent case was one which the papers endeavored to work up into what is described by that overworked word “sensational.” As far as the lawyers and the public were concerned it began with an inquest on Mrs. Ursula Beane. In Linley’s carefully selected phrases the case was this:
“Mrs. Ursula Beane had died suddenly at the age of seventy-five. The doctor who had been intermittently attending her—she was an extremely robust and healthy old woman—had not been altogether satisfied with her symptoms. He had refused a death certificate, there had been an autopsy, and it was discovered that Mrs. Ursula Beane had died from arsenical poisoning. The fact established, an enquiry followed, eliciting the following circumstances. Mrs. Ursula Beane had lived for forty years in a small house at Peckham Rye which had belonged to her father and his father before him. The house had been built in the days when Peckham Rye—well, was not quite like it is now. She resided with a nephew and niece—James and Louisa Catchpole. Neither of them had ever married, neither of them had ever left Peckham Rye for more than a few weeks at a time, and the most minute investigation did not discover that either of them had had the least adventure or out-of-the-way event in their lives. They enjoyed a small annuity from a father who had been a worthy and fairly prosperous tradesman. James was, at the time of the inquest, a man over sixty and had been for many years a clerk—’confidential clerk’ as he emphasized it—with a large firm of tea merchants. He received a sufficient, if not a substantial salary and was within a year or two of a pension. His sister, Miss Louisa Catchpole, was younger—fifty or so; she also had a substantial, if not a brilliant, position as a journalist on one of those few surviving monthlies which rather shun publicity and cater for the secluded and the virtuous. She wrote occasional short stories in which the hero was always a clergyman and the heroine sans peur et sans reproche. She also wrote little weekly causeries—as I believe they are called—’Meditations in a Garden’; they were headed and adorned with a little cut of an invalid in a basket-chair gazing at a robin. In these same causeries Miss Louisa Catchpole affected month after month, year after year, with unfaltering fortitude, a vein of Christian cheerfulness, and encouraged her readers with such maxims as ‘Character is stronger than Destiny,’ ‘A man is only as strong as his faith in himself,’ and chirpings about the recurring miracle of spring, together with quotations from the more minor poets—you know the type of thing.
“It is irrelevant to our story to go into why Aunt Ursula Beane lived with those two; they seemed to be the only surviving members of their very unimportant family, and they had lived together in the house at Peckham Rye for forty years, ever since Louisa was quite a small child and had gone there to live with Aunt Ursula who, on her husband’s death, had retired to this paternal abode. Nobody could think of them as apart one from the other. During those forty years James had gone to and fro his work, Louisa had written her articles and stories, and at first had been looked after by, and afterwards had looked after, Aunt Ursula Beane. Their joint earnings kept the tiny establishment going; they were considerably helped by the fact that there was no rent to pay and they lived in modest comfort, almost with (what James would have called) ‘every luxury.’ Besides giving them the house to live in, Mrs. Beane paid them at first thirty shillings, then, as the cost of living went up, two pounds a week for what she called ‘her keep.’ What, you will say, could have been more deadly commonplace than this? But there was just one touch of mystery and romance. Aunt Ursula was reputed to be of vast wealth and a miser—this was one of those family traditions that swell and grow on human credulity from one generation to another. The late Mr. Beane was spoken of with vague awe as a very wealthy man, and it appeared that the Catchpoles believed that he had left his widow a considerable fortune which she, a true miser, had concealed all those years, but which they might reasonably hope to inherit on her death, as a reward for all their faithful kindness. Investigation proved that what had seemed rather a fantastic delusion had some startling foundation. Mrs. Ursula Beane employed a lawyer and his evidence was that her late husband, who had been a tobacconist, had left her a tidy sum of money when he had died forty years ago, amounting to fifteen thousand pounds, which had been safely invested and not touched till about five years before. What Mrs. Beane lived on came from another source—a small capital left by her father that brought her in about a hundred and fifty pounds a year; therefore this main sum had been, as I have said, untouched and had accrued during those thirty-five years into a handsome sum of nearly fifty thousand pounds. The lawyer agreed that the old lady was a miser, nothing would induce her to draw out any of this money, to mention its existence to a soul, or to make a will as to its final disposal. The lawyer, of course, was pledged to secrecy. He knew that the Catchpoles guessed at the existence of the hoard, he also knew that they were not sure about it and that they had no idea as to its magnitude. Five years before her death the old lady had drawn out all her capital—forty-eight thousand pounds—without any explanation whatever to the lawyer, and had taken it away in a black bag, going off in a taxicab from the lawyer’s office in Lincoln’s Inn. It might have been the Nibelung hoard flung into the Rhine for all the mystery that was attached to it, for nobody saw or heard of it again. Both the Catchpoles swore that they had no knowledge whatever of the old woman realizing her capital; she had certainly not banked it anywhere, she must have taken that very large sum of money in notes and, I believe, a few bonds, to that small house at Peckham Rye and in some way disposed of it. A most exhaustive search revealed not so much as a five-pound note. In the bank was just the last quarterly installment of her annuity—barely enough, as Louisa Catchpole remarked with some passion, ‘to pay the doctor and the funeral expenses.’
“There you have the situation. This old woman dead in what was almost poverty, the disappearance of this large sum of money she had realized five years previously, and the fact that she had died from arsenical poisoning. To explain this there were the usual symptoms, or excuses, whatever you like to call them; she had been having medicine with arsenic in it, and she might have taken an overdose. There had been arsenic in the house in the shape of powders for an overgrown and aged dog, and in the shape of packets of weed-killer, James had always taken an industrious interest in the patch of garden that sloped to the Common. The old lady might have committed suicide, she might have taken some of the stuff in mistake, or the Catchpoles might have been murderers. The only possible reason for suspecting foul play would have been that the Catchpoles knew of her hoard and wished to get hold of it. But this it was impossible to prove. I was briefed to watch the case for the Catchpoles. There was, of course, a certain sensation and excitement over the fact of the large sum of money, the only startling and brilliant fact about the whole commonplace, drab and rather depressing story. I myself thought it rather absurd that any question of suspicion should attach to the Catchpoles. After forty years of placid uninspired devotion to Aunt Ursula Beane, why should they suddenly decide to put her out of the way when, in the nature of things, she could not have had more than a few years to live? Their demeanor, too, impressed me very favorably. There was none of the flaunting vanity, posing or vehement talk of the real criminal, they seemed slightly bewildered, not very much disturbed, and to trust wholly in their undeniable innocence, they almost found the whole thing grotesque and I could understand their point of view. The verdict, however, was rather surprising. It was confidently expected that it would be Death from misadventure,’ but instead, the verdict was ‘Death from arsenical poisoning not self-administered.’ This is really about as near as we can get in England to the Scottish verdict ‘Not proven,’ and I was rather indignant, for it seemed to me to attach a great deal of wholly unmerited suspicion to the two Catchpoles. Still, of course, they were quite free and no direct blame was laid on them. In fact, the coroner had remarked on their devoted care of an old lady who must have been, from the various facts proved by the doctors, ‘very trying and difficult,’ as the saying goes. They conducted themselves very well after the inquest, still with that slightly bewildered patient air of resignation. It seemed to me that they did not realize the ghastly position in which they stood and, as I knew when I heard the verdict, the very narrow escape they had had from being arrested on a charge of murder. They paid all the expenses connected with the inquest at once and without any trouble. They had, as James explained with a certain mild pride, ‘savings.’ I was interested in them, they were so meek and drab, so ordinary and repressed; there was something kindly and amiable about them and they were very attached to each other. I questioned them about this mysterious hoard, the existence of which would have been difficult to believe but for the evidence of the lawyer. They did not seem very concerned, they had always known that Aunt Ursula Beane had money and, said Louisa without passion, they had always guessed that she had tried to do them out of it—she had been an extraordinarily malicious old woman, they complained, and it was quite likely that the money was buried somewhere, or had been destroyed. She was capable of feeding the fire with it, of sticking it in a hole in the ground, of throwing it into the water in a bag weighed down with stones, in fact of doing anything in the world with it except putting it to some profitable use. She was undoubtedly not right in her head.
“‘She ought to have been certified years ago,’ I declared.
“James Catchpole shook his head. ‘She was never bad enough for that,’ he announced with resignation.
“They had really been slaving and ‘bearing’ things for forty years for that money, and they took the loss of it, I thought, with extreme gallantry.
“They returned to the little house in Peckham Rye which came to them as next-of-kin. The little annuity, which was all that Aunt Ursula had left of her worldly goods after she had disposed of her main fortune, perished with her. James and Louisa would have to live on his clerkship and her journalism.”
At this point Linley stopped to ask me if we did not perceive a real strong drama in what he had told us—”A whole novel, in fact,” he added triumphantly.
“Well,” I replied, “one might make it into a whole novel by inserting incidents and imagining this and that and the other. As you have given it, it seems a dreary stretch of nothingness with a rather damp squib at the end. After all, there was no murder, I suppose the old woman took an overdose of medicine by mistake. Where,” I asked, “does the Christmas ghost story come in?”
“I will tell you if you will have just a little more patience. Well, I have said that I was interested in the Catchpoles, I even went to see them once or twice. They seemed to me to be what used to be called ‘human documents’—the very fact that they had such blank faces made me want to study them. I know there must be some repression somewhere, some desire, some hope, something beside what there appeared on the surface—this blank negation. They did not betray themselves. Louisa said she missed the old lady and that she was having quite a handsome headstone put on her grave in the vast London cemetery where she had been laid to rest. James spoke of the old lady with a certain deference, as if the fact of her being dead had made a saint of Aunt Ursula Beane.
“I continually asked them if they had had any news of the money. They shook their heads with a compassionate smile at my hopefulness. They were convinced that during those five years Aunt Ursula Beane had completely destroyed the forty-eight thousand pounds—easily destroyed, for most of it had been in hundred- and thousand-pound notes. Of course the garden had been dug over and every brick and plank in the house disturbed, with no result.
“‘And if she never left the house and garden?’ I asked.
“They told me she had. She was a robust old woman, as I said before, and she used to take long walks and every year during those five years she went away for a fortnight—sometimes with Louisa, sometimes with James, sometimes to the seaside and sometimes to lodgings in a farmhouse, and on all these different occasions she had had plenty of opportunity of getting rid of her money. Of course these five several lodgings had been searched and the country round about them, but always with no result.
“‘You see, sir,’ said James, with his meek and placid smile, his pale faded eyes gleaming at me behind the glasses, ‘she was far too cunning for all of us.’
“One winter evening about a year after the inquest the mood took me to go and visit these two curious specimens. I found them with a planchette, their eyes goggling at the sprawling writing that appeared on the piece of paper beneath. James informed me without excitement that they had ‘taken up’ spiritualism, and Miss Louisa chirped in that they were getting ‘the most wonderful results.’
“Aunt Ursula Beane had ‘come through,’ as they put it, almost at once, and was now in constant communication with them. “‘Well, I hope she can tell you what she did with the money.’ “They answered me quite seriously that that was what they were trying to find out, but that the old lady was just as tricky and malicious on the other side, as they termed it, as she had been on this, luring them on with false scents and wayward suggestions. At the same time, they declared, placidly but with intense conviction, they believed that sooner or later she would disclose to them her secret.
“I soon began to lose interest in them after this. When people of the type of the Catchpoles get mixed up with this spiritualistic business they cease to be—well, almost cease to be ‘human documents.’ I thought I’d leave ’em to it, when I received a rather urgent invitation from Miss Louisa Catchpole, begging me to be present at a ‘demonstration’ at which Aunt Ursula Beane would undoubtedly appear in person.
“I went to the little house in Peckham where the furniture, the wallpaper, even the atmosphere did not appear to have been changed all those monotonous forty years—forty-one now to be exact. There was a medium present and no one else save myself and the brother and sister. We sat round the table. The medium who beamed with a rather fussy kindness went off with surprising celerity into a trance, and soon the ‘demonstration’ took place.
“At first I was cynical, secondly I was disgusted, and thirdly, I was rather disturbed, finding myself first in the midst of farce, low charlatanry and chicanery, then suddenly in the presence of something which I could not understand. The ‘demonstration’ began by groans and squeaks issuing from the lips of the medium, greetings to Louisa and James (presumably in the voice of the defunct Aunt Ursula), various jovial references to a bottle containing poison, a few other crude remarks of that nature, and then several knocks from different parts of the room—rappings loud and quick, and then beating time, as if to a piece of music, then a sudden clatter on the table in the middle of us as if the old lady were dancing there with heavy boots on. James and Louisa sat side by side, their hands clasped, listening to all this without a shade of expression on their blank faded faces. The hideous little room was the last resort of the antimacassar, and presently these began to fly about, scraps of the horrible white crocheted tatting gliding through the air in a way which would have been very funny if it hadn’t been rather dreadful. Of course I knew that many mediums have these powers and there is nothing much in them—I mean, it can all be explained in a perfectly practical and satisfactory fashion. At the same time I did not greatly care about the exposition, and I begged the Catchpoles to bring it to an end, particularly as the old lady had nothing definite to say. James whispered that the medium must not be disturbed while she was in trance. Aunt Ursula Beane then began to sing a hymn, but with a very unpleasant inflection, worse than any outspoken mockery. While the hymn was being sung I gained the impression far more vividly than I had ever received before that Aunt Ursula Beane had been a rather terrible person. When she had finished the hymn she began in an old half-broken voice softly to curse them all in a language that was not at all agreeable to listen to, coming as it did in those querulous, ancient feminine tones. This was rather too much for me, and I shook the medium violently. She came out of her trance. Louisa and James did not seem in the least affected, drank tea, ate biscuits, and discussed in banal terms the doings of those on ‘the other side.’
“I received no more invitations from the Catchpoles and did not go near them for a considerable time. In fact, I think I had rather forgotten about them, as I had had a great many other interesting cases and a good many other interesting specimens had come my way. I had heard a vast number of stories as good as the story of Aunt Ursula Beane, but it did happen one day that I had to pass through Peckham and could not resist the passing impulse of curiosity that urged me to go and look at the house on the Common. It was ‘To Let’ or ‘To be Sold,’ according to two or three estate agents’ blatant boards on the front railing. I called next door and was received with the inevitable suspicion with which the stranger is usually regarded in small places. I did, however, discover what I had set out to discover, namely, that the Catchpoles had left the neighborhood about six months ago, and no one knew where they were. I took the trouble to go to one of the estate agents whose address was given on the board, to make further enquiries. The house was to be let or sold, it did not seem to have been considered a great prize, and it certainly had not gone off very quickly, though it was cheap enough; the neighborhood, even the estate agent admitted, ‘was not what it had been.’ Then, of course, one couldn’t deny that the Ursula Beane case and the fact that the old lady had died there, and of poison, had given a slightly sinister air to the modest stucco building. As to the Catch-poles, the estate agent did not know where they had gone; all he had was the address of a bank, nor was it any of my business, so I decided to dismiss the whole thing from my mind.
“Good raw material, no doubt, but none of it worked up sufficiently to be of much interest.”
Linley glanced round at us all triumphantly as he said this.
“But it was all rounded off as neatly as any novelist could do it. Let me tell you,” he added with unction.
“Five years afterwards I ran over to Venice for Christmas—I don’t know why, except just the perverse desire to see the wrong place at the wrong time, instead of forever the right place at the right time. I like Venice in the winter fogs, with a thin coat of ice on the canals, and if you can get a snowstorm—well, so much the better—St. Marco, to me, looks preferable with the snowflakes in front of the blue and the bronze instead of that eternal sunshine…Well, there I was in Venice, and I’m not going to bore you with any more local color or picturesque details. I was in Venice, very well satisfied with myself, very comfortable and alone. I was tolerably familiar with the city and I always stay at the same hotel. One of the first things I noticed was that a large and very pretentious palace near by had recently been handsomely and expensively ‘done up’; I soon elicited the fact that the place which I had always envied had been bought by the usual rich American who had spent a great deal of money in restoring and furnishing it, but who did not very often live there, he only came and went after the fashion of all Americans, and was supposed to travel considerably in great luxury. Once or twice I saw this American going past in a gondola, wrapped in a foreign, rather theatrical-looking cloak, lounging with a sort of ostentation of ease on the cushions. He was an elderly man with a full grey beard, and wore, even now in the winter, blue sunglasses. On two separate occasions when I was sitting on the hotel balcony in the mild winter sunlight and he was being rowed past underneath I had the impression that he was looking at me sharply and keenly behind those colored spectacles, and also the impression, which was likely enough to be correct, that I had seen him before. I meet, of course, a great many people, but even with a memory on which I rather pride myself, cannot immediately place everyone. The hotel at which I was staying—and this was one of the reasons I always selected it—did not have any of those ghastly organized gaieties at Christmas; we were left to ourselves in a poetic gloom best suited to the season and the city. I was seated by myself enjoying a delicious kind of mournful repose, piquantly in contrast with my usual life, when I received a message and a very odd one: the gentleman, Signor Hayden, the American from next door, would very much like to see me. He had observed me on the balcony, knew my name and my profession, and requested the honor of my company. Attracted by anything queer or the least out of the way, I at once accepted, and in ten minutes or so found myself in the newly-restored palace which I had so often admired and envied. The place was furnished with a good deal of taste, but rather, I suspected, the orthodox taste of the professional decorator. Mr. Hayden was not immediately visible, but, I understood, in bed ill; I expressed my willingness to go to his bedside and was shortly conducted there. The room was very handsome, the servants very well trained, and I was impressed by the fact that this rich American must be very rich indeed. One knows, of course, what these out-of-the-way little caprices of newly-restored palaces in Venice cost. The owner of this up-to-date luxury was in bed, propped up with pillows and shaded by old-fashioned mauve velvet curtains. He still wore the colored glasses, and I concluded that he had some defect in his sight. He appeared to see me perfectly well, however, and beckoned to me to approach his bedside. As I did so he removed his glasses; there was an electric standard lamp on an antique table by the bedside and the light of it was turned full on to the sick man’s face, which I immediately recognized. I was looking down into the faded, mild, light-blue eyes of James Catchpole.
“‘Very odd that you should be here,’ he smiled at me, ‘very odd indeed. You’ve always been interested in us and I thought perhaps you’d like to hear the end of the story, that is, if any story ever does end; there’s a pause in ours at this point, anyway.’
“I expressed due surprise and gratification at seeing him. In truth, I was considerably amazed. I was startled, too, to see how ill he was. He asked me to help him up in bed. He declared, without emotion, that he knew himself to be dying.
“‘Where’s Miss Louisa?’ I asked; ‘where is your sister?’
“‘She died last year,’ he answered placidly. ‘She had a thoroughly good time for four years and I suppose it killed her, you know; but, of course, it was worth it, she always said so.’
“The inevitable conclusion had jumped to my mind.
“‘You found Miss Ursula Beane’s hoard?’ I suggested.
“James Catchpole, passing his hand over the full grey beard which had so changed his face, replied simply:
“‘We never lost it—we had it all the time.’
“‘You mean you?’ I asked dubiously, and he nodded and replied:
“‘Exactly!’
“‘That you—?’ I suggested, and this time he nodded and said:
“‘Precisely!’
“‘Louisa persuaded her to realize her capital,’ he continued with childish calm. ‘She was a proper miser and she rather fretted not having the actual stuff in her hands. It wasn’t difficult to make her get it—she liked a real hoard, a thing you can put under the hearthstone or in the mattress, you know. We thought we should get hold of it easier that way when she came to die. You never knew with anyone like that what she might do in the way of a will, she was keen on lost cats and Christians. We thought she would enjoy herself playing with it, and then we’d get it if we were patient enough.’
“He blinked up at me and added, with the faintest of ironic smiles—We’d been patient for forty years, don’t you suppose we spent some part of that time planning what we would do with the money? We were both engaged, to start with, but her young man and my young woman couldn’t wait all those years…We read a good deal, we made lists of things we wanted, and places we wanted to go to…We had quite a little library of guide-books, you may have noticed them on the bookshelf—one of them was a guide to Venice. Louisa, writing her piffling articles, and I at my piffling job, to and fro—well, you don’t suppose we didn’t have our ideas?’
“‘I see,’ I said doubtfully, ‘and then, when there was that little misfortune about the arsenic, I suppose you didn’t care to mention the hoard?’
“‘It wouldn’t have been altogether wise, sir, would it?’ smiled James Catchpole simply. It would have thrown a lot of suspicion on us, and we’d been very careful. There wasn’t any proof, not a shred. We had to wait until the case had blown over a bit, and then we—well, we did the best we could with the time that was left us. We lived at the rate of ten thousand a year. We had the best of everything…Of course it was the pace—don’t you call it?—that killed. We were neither of us young, and we knew we couldn’t stand it for long, so we enjoyed ourselves thoroughly, believe me, sir, thoroughly.’
“He paused and added reflectively:
“‘But it’s a good thing we made a move when we did, we shouldn’t have been able to get about at seventy; she—she might have gone on to a hundred and ten.’
“‘Do you mean that you—?’ I suggested quietly.
“‘It was the easiest thing in the world,’ he smiled, ‘to drop a couple of those dog powders into her milk…’
“I’d always been intensely interested in murderers. I tried to question James Catchpole as to his motives, his sensations, his possible remorse; he appeared to have had none of any of these…
“‘You didn’t regret it afterwards, you haven’t felt the Furies behind you, or anything of that sort?’
“He replied, as far as his feeble strength would permit:
“‘I have enjoyed myself thoroughly. I wish we hadn’t waited so long.’
“I was puzzled. They had always seemed such very nice people.
“‘I am dying now,’ said James Catchpole, ‘and it’s about time, for I’ve spent all the money. The doctor said my next heart attack would be fatal, and I’ve done my best to bring one on. I couldn’t go back to lack of money.’
“‘Who are you going to leave all this to?’ I asked with professional interest. I glanced round the handsome room.
“He smiled at me with what I thought was compassion.
“‘I haven’t been so silly as all that,’ he replied. ‘Everything that I possess wouldn’t pay half of my debts. I have had full value, I can assure you. After all, I had a right to it, hadn’t I? I’d waited long enough.’
“‘What about the planchette and the demonstrations?’ I asked. ‘I suppose all that was a fake to throw us off the scent?’
“‘Not at all,’ he declared, in what seemed to be hurt surprise, ‘that was perfectly genuine. We made up our minds to get in touch with Aunt Ursula Beane, to find out what she thought about it all.’
“‘And what did she think?’ I asked, startled.
“‘She said we were a couple of fools not to have done it sooner.’
“‘Come, come, Mr. Catchpole,’ I cried, something shocked, ‘this is unseemly jesting.’
“‘No jesting at all,’ he assured me. ‘Aren’t I dying myself? I shall be in the old girl’s company in a few minutes, I daresay. You heard her yourself, sir, dancing on the table that evening. She said she’d been a perfect fool herself, and now that she’d “got over” she realized it. She said if we didn’t have a good time, or someone didn’t have a good time with that damn money, she’d never forgive us. You see, sir, at first we began to have that miserly feeling too and didn’t want to spend it. We thought we’d go on hoarding it, living just the same and knowing it was there. She used to scribble out on the planchette saying what idiots we were. That’s why she used all that strong language. “You’ve got it—now use it!” That was what she always said. “I’ll go with you and share in your good time”—and so she has, sir, believe me. We’ve often seen her sitting at the table with us, nodding over the champagne; she’d have been fond of champagne if she’d allowed herself…We’ve seen her dancing in some of those jazz-halls, we’ve seen her in boxes listening to opera, we’ve seen her sitting in the Rolls-Royce revelling in the cushions and the speed…Remorse? Why, I tell you we’ve given the old girl the good time she ought to have had years ago.’
“‘Come, come, James Catchpole,’ I said, ‘you’re delirious. I’d better fetch the doctor.’
“He smiled at me with compassion and some contempt.
“‘You’re a clever lawyer,’ he said, ‘but there are a lot of things you don’t understand.’
“Even as he spoke he seemed to fall into a peaceful sleep and I thought it was my responsibility to fetch a doctor. Of course I believed hardly anything he said—I thought it was quite likely that he hadn’t poisoned Aunt Ursula Beane, but that he had invented the story. At the same time there was the hard concrete evidence of the palace, the servants, the furniture—he had got money from somewhere.
“‘Good raw material, eh? Think what you could make of it if you wrote it up!’
“I went downstairs, telephoned on my own responsibility to the address of one of the English doctors. It was Christmas Eve and I could not find him at home. I was quite uncertain what to do. I stood hesitant at the foot of the wide magnificent staircase, when I observed a dreadful old woman creeping up the stairs with a look of intense enjoyment on her face—Mrs. Ursula Beane—not a doubt of it—Aunt Ursula Beane! I saw her so clearly that I could have counted the stitches in the darns at the elbows of her black sleeves. I ran up after her, but of course she was there before I was. When I came up to the bedside James Catchpole was dead, with an extremely self-satisfied smug smile on his face.
“There’s my Christmas Eve ghost! An hallucination, of course, but you can give it all the usual explanation. There’s the story, you can put it together as you will. There’s plenty of stuff in it—good raw material, eh, take it how you will?”
We all agreed with Linley.
Kecksies and Other Twilight Tales, Marjorie Bowen
Mrs Daffodil’s Aide-memoire: While one sympathises with the Catchpoles in their long wait for the terrible and malicious Aunt Ursula’s hoard, Mrs Daffodil has particular animus for Miss Louisa Catchpole. The image of “a little cut of an invalid in a basket-chair gazing at a robin” and those “chirpings about the recurring miracle of spring” are particularly damning. One wonders that some literary critic did not slip a couple of dog powders into her milk.
Mrs Daffodil invites you to join her on the curiously named “Face-book,” where you will find a feast of fashion hints, fads and fancies, and historical anecdotes
You may read about a sentimental succubus, a vengeful seamstress’s ghost, Victorian mourning gone horribly wrong, and, of course, Mrs Daffodil’s efficient tidying up after a distasteful decapitation in A Spot of Bother: Four Macabre Tales.
“It is extremely annoying,” said Vernon, looking at his watch. “It is always disagreeable to a host to have a dinner delayed by one of the guests’ tardiness, but in this instance it is particularly so.”
“Why?” I asked.
“Because,” he replied, ” the number of guests is exactly fourteen, and if Sedley does not come we shall be obliged to sit at table with that most ill-omened of numbers — thirteen.”
“But you surely do not believe in that old woman’s superstition, do you?” cried Sinclair.
His remark jarred upon me. I am myself not of a superstitious way of thinking, but it does not follow from this that I have the right to jeer at the superstitions of others. I would not knowingly wound the feelings of an African by making light of his fetich. But Sinclair is not of that turn of mind. A wit, a scoffer, a brilliant talker — I have noticed that these qualities may be frequently found associated with an utter disregard for the feelings of others.
Vernon frowned. “Whether I believe in it or not,” said he, “is not of so much importance as whether any of my guests do. I would not be willing that any man should sit at my table as one of thirteen if he thought it an ill omen. It would spoil his dinner, if it would do nothing worse. But I have no hesitation in saying that I am affected by what you are pleased to call an old woman’s superstition —I am, in fact, so powerfully affected by it that I would not sit at table with thirteen for any consideration.”
“Would nothing induce you to do so?” asked Sinclair, with what I considered ill-timed banter.
“Nothing,” said Vernon, firmly ; and growing somewhat heated at the tone and smile of Sinclair, he added: “I feel so strongly on this matter that I would rather the devil himself should fill a seat at the table than to sit down to it with thirteen.”
“Aha!” cried Sinclair, “the devil is invited, but will his plutonic majesty come?”
While the tones of his voice were still vibrating, the bell rung. A moment after the servant announced: “Mr. Sedley.”
“Ah,” said Vernon, much relieved, “here he is at last. How are you, Sedley? You are doubly welcome, for just before you came we were speculating as to whether your absence would not make it necessary for us to sit down with thirteen at table.”
“I was detained,” said Sedley, briefly, “I ask your pardon.”
There was something odd about his tone. I noticed it, and I saw that Vernon did so too. But he replied:
“Don’t mention it, old fellow. It’s an accident which may happen to all of us.”
But as I grasped Sedley’s hand I met Vernon’s eye. I don’t know whether it was that or Sedley’s hand which startled me. But if Vernon’s look was peculiar, Sedley’s hand-grasp was even more so. It was clammy, snake-like — ugh! I can remember it still.
We repaired to the table, and it was my lot to sit opposite to Sedley. Beside me sat Sinclair. But although he seemed in unusual spirits, and was more brilliant even than was his wont, the conversation flagged. There seemed to be some spell upon us, for all the guests were good fellows, and, as a rule, at dinner-parties where there are no ladies the merriment is apt to be unchecked.
Yet so it was. As for myself, whenever I attempted any sally, I would catch the eye of Sedley, and it invariably exercised an unpleasant effect upon me. I could not divine the cause. Ordinarily, Sedley was as jolly a fellow as you would find in a day’s ride, but to-night — well, I couldn’t understand it. I gave it up, and devoted myself to my dinner.
As if to complete the ill-fortune of the evening, the conversation persistently rolled on thirteen. The various superstitions connected with that number were discussed, and they were many. It seemed, from the amount of curious lore brought forth by this discussion, that the evil properties of the number are by no means confined to the table.
“It is said of the Turks,” remarked Sinclair, as he sipped a glass of sherry, “it is said of the Turks that they consider the number thirteen so unlucky that they have almost expunged it from their vocabulary. They substitute for it the word siyadeh, which is a sort of an invocation, like that used by the Italians against the evil eye.”
“So it seems, then,” remarked Vernon, “that the prejudice against thirteen is not confined to the number of guests?”
“By no means. Yet that superstition is a wide-spread one. As every one knows, its origin is generally attributed to the Last Supper, at which there were thirteen — Christ and the twelve apostles — and from which Judas, with the Saviour’s accusing words still ringing in his ears, went forth to deliver up his master to the death. But the superstition is in reality much older. In the ancient Norse mythology, when the gods sat down to feast with Loki in the Walhalla, Baldur was the thirteenth at the board, and Baldur had to die. The same fallacy holds, I believe, in the vulgar superstition of to-day; those who believe that it is unlucky to sit with thirteen at table, also believe that the last man to seat himself will die before the year is out.”
Sedley lifted his head and fixed his eye on Sinclair.
Really, I had never noticed what extremely unpleasant eyes Sedley had. They were cavernous, piercing, green eyes, and there was a sinister gleam about them that night which actually made me uncomfortable. But apparently not so Sinclair.
“The vulgar superstition, you say?” began Sedley. It was the first time he had spoken, and involuntarily a hush came over the table. “The vulgar superstition, you say? Do you not believe in it, then?”
“Believe in it? No!” sneered Sinclair. “It is an old wives’ tale. It is fit only for the consideration of fools, children, and old women.”
“Ah,” replied Sedley, dryly. He lifted a glass of wine as he spoke — I remember that it was a green glass, and held Chateau Yquem — and as he did so, the light fell through the green glass and the amber wine, and stained his face a hideous yellowish green. He smiled sardonically as he spoke, and what with his gruesome eyes and the strange tinge of his face, he looked positively demoniac. I can see him now— I can conjure him up out of the mists of my memory as if it were but yesterday.
“I consider the whole belief puerile beyond description,” went on Sinclair, who was becoming somewhat heated with wine. “True, there may be something in the belief that one out of every thirteen assembled at table will die before the year is out, for it is extremely probable that out of every group of thirteen one will die before a period of such length passes. But that is merely the result of fixed laws. It has nothing to do with thirteen. It has nothing to do with the table. I might say with as much reason that I would not sit down at table with twelve people, for the reason that the laws of statistics tell me that one of us will surely die before eleven months expire.”
“You think, then, that it is pure chance?” asked Sedley, fixing his sunken eyes on Sinclair’s face.
“Entirely so. It is true that the number thirteen has come to have various evil associations connected with it, as I have already said. But then this is merely owing to vulgar traditions. The Romans, for example, looked on thirteen as an unlucky number. This may have had its effect on the common people of our day, even after the lapse of ages. The Italians of to-day, who may be looked upon as descendants in right line of the Romans, have the same belief. They push it to such an extent that they will never use this number in making up their bollete for the lotteries which impoverish them. The thirteenth card, too, used by them in playing the game called tarocchi, bears a figure which their fervid imaginations have succeeded in likening to that of Death.”
“To Death? Indeed?” interrupted Sedley. There was nothing in his words to irritate Sinclair, yet he seemed to grow angry.
“Yes, I said Death, sir,” he retorted, warmly. “I mean the figure conventionally accepted as that of Death.”
“Ah, yes — you interest me — pray go on,” replied Sedley, this time with a semi-sneer.
Sinclair felt himself being forced into the position of one who was exhibiting his knowledge through pedantry, but he was so nettled that he continued:
“As I was saying, the belief is a wide-spread one. The Russians possess it as well as the Italians. I remember reading somewhere that at a dinner once at Count Orloff’s, an English nobleman who was present noticed that Orloff would not sit at the table, but paced the room constantly. He asked the host the reason, and Orloff said: ‘Do you not see that there are twelve at table? Were I to sit down Nerishkin would instantly leave the room. And to tell the truth,’ he added, with a frank laugh, ‘I am not anxious to defy the fates myself.'”
“Orloff was a man of the world,” remarked I, sententiously.
“I grant you,” said Sinclair, turning suddenly upon me, “but a superstitious one. There are many such. Tom Moore relates how, when he was once dining with Catalini, some guest failed to make his appearance, and a poverty-stricken French countess, companion to some great lady, was immediately sent up-stairs. When the tardy guest appeared, however, she was at once sent for again to make up fourteen.
Now, all this seems to me the height of folly, and unworthy the belief of sensible men. It is fitted only for the common people — particularly that part of the superstition which declares that the thirteenth man shall die.”
“By the way,” said Vernon, looking around the table with an attempt at pleasantry, “who was the thirteenth man to sit to-night?”
“Ay,” added Sedley, in a tone which deprived the remark of all pleasantry, “who was the thirteenth man?”
We all looked around the table, and, as if by one accord, fixed our eyes on Sinclair.
“You were the thirteenth man, I believe, Sinclair,” said I.
“Yes, yes, it was Sinclair,” came from every hand.
Really, we were looking at him with a solemnity which was as absurd as it was amusing. Sinclair felt it, and endeavored to remove the uneasy feeling which lay upon us by some witticism, but the jest fell flat. Its effect was not added to, either, by Sedley, who looked at him fixedly for some moments, and then said, pointedly:
“So you were the thirteenth man to sit?”
“Yes; and what of it?” retorted Sinclair, rudely. He was losing command of himself. “What does it matter to you?”
“To me—not at all. To you—perhaps much,” was the strange reply of Sedley.
After this remark there was nothing to be said. The gayety — if there were any — was hopelessly gone, and after a gloomy cup of coffee and a funereal cigar, the party rose.
But instead of repairing to the smoking-room with the rest of us, Sedley declared that he must go.
“Why are you in such a hurry? ” asked Vernon, hospitably.
“I have something to attend to which can not wait,” he replied. ” I beg you to excuse me. You know I would not leave the gathering were it not compulsory. But I must leave you. I am waited for.” And as he pressed Vernon’s hand, I saw, by the peculiar expression of the host’s face, that he had noticed the same odd feeling in Sedley’s hand that had struck me.
Sedley turned to Sinclair.
“Good-night, sir,” he said. ” I hope you may come to have more toleration for the superstitions of others. Good-night. We shall meet again.” And as he took Sinclair’s hand in his, I saw that the same strange feeling which had struck Vernon and myself was pervading him.
“Confound the fellow!” cried Sinclair, when the door was closed behind the gloomy guest. “He’s a nice one to have at a convivial gathering. He reminds me of those cheerful Trappists, one of whose customs is to have a friar at every
meal, whose duty it is to say at intervals: ‘Brothers, we must all die.’ Good-bye and good riddance. May the devil go with him!”
The words clung to me —”May the devil go with him!”
The devil? A strange farewell, truly, to a departing guest.
***
Six months had passed since the evening of the disagreeable dinner I have described. Family affairs had called me from the city the very day after it took place, and they had been of such a nature as to keep me away a much longer time than I had anticipated. I had heard nothing, or next to nothing, from home since my departure. One of the very first things that teaches a man how little his friends
care for him, is their utter indifference to him the moment his back is turned. And he will find, as a rule, that those who are the most kindly and considerate in the matter of corresponding are generally the busiest men. Your true idler never finds time to write.
Well, as I said, I had been away for a long time, and knew nothing of what had been taking place since my departure. One of the first men I happened to meet on my return was Vernon, and I besought him to tell me the news.
“News?” said he, “news? I know of nothing. It seems to me that you are the one to tell the news — you who come from the outside world. We here have been leading our every-day humdrum existence, with nothing to chronicle and nothing to tell.”
“Nothing to tell!” I exclaimed. “That is always the cry of him who stays at home. He does not realize that everything is of interest to the wanderer — everything — scandal, births, marriages, and deaths.”
“Deaths — ay,” said he, thoughtfully. “You speak of deaths. Of course, you know that Sinclair is dead?”
“Sinclair dead?” cried I. “You amaze me. Why, he was a young and vigorous man, and the last time I saw him he was in the most robust of health. Of what did he die?”
“The doctors -called it pneumonia,” replied Vernon, with a short cough.
“Pneumonia — well, well. They say it is the bane of American civilization ; that our heated rooms, carelessness in exposure, and ways of living encourage it. Yet true it is that our grandfathers scarcely knew of it. So Sinclair is dead. Poor fellow! Why, it seems but yesterday I saw him in the heyday of manhood. Let me see — when was it that I saw Sinclair last? Why, it was at that dinner you gave, the day before I went away.”
“Yes,” assented Vernon, “it was an unfortunate dinner. I shall never forget it. Of course you know that Sedley is dead?”
“Sedley, too?” I cried, more shocked than I cared to show. “No, I knew nothing of it. What was the matter with him? When did he die?”
“Why he died the day after you left the city — the day after the dinner, you know. Or the night before,” added Vernon gloomily. “I’m sure I don’t know. There was some talk concerning it. It was very extraordinary.”
“But tell me about it,” I said, “I am entirely in the dark. I know of nothing that has taken place since my departure.”
“Well,” said Vernon, uneasily, “I’m sure I don’t like to talk of it, for it’s a very strange affair. If a man discusses it seriously he feels cursed silly, and if he doesn’t discuss it seriously he feels cursed queer. You remember the dinner, of course?”
“I remember it very well.”
“Well, you remember the strange manner of Sedley, his late arrival, his altered demeanor, and his clammy hands. Damme, if I can’t feel the corpse-like clutch of his hand on mine yet.” And Vernon inspected his hand uneasily, as if he expected to see marks upon it.
“Yes — go on.”
” You know, too, that he and Jack Sinclair had some wordy sparring, in which Jack didn’t come off first best as he generally did. I don’t know as Sedley said it in so many words, but he certainly left the impression on most of our minds that Jack was going to die before the year was out.
“I remember.”
“The party broke up in short order after his departure, and all went home feeling rather blue. You can perhaps imagine our feelings when we heard next day that Sedley was dead.”
“Sedley dead ? But how — why”
“Well, I suppose it was apoplexy — that’s what the doctors called it. He was a bachelor, you know, and lived alone, with the exception of his servant. The man never stayed up for him when his master went out, but got things in readiness for his going to bed, and then went to bed himself. The morning after the dinner Sedley was found lying on the floor, dressed as if for dinner, and stone dead. He had been dead for hours — the corpse was cold.”
I looked at Vernon curiously. “You say dressed as if for dinner. You mean dressed as he had been at dinner.”
Vernon rubbed his nose hesitantly. “Well, I don’t know,” he said, reflectively, “I suppose so. At all events he was in his dinner-dress. And he was dead.”
I looked at him keenly. “You haven’t told me all, Vernon,” I said.
“That’s all there is to tell,” said he. “Unless it be for an absurd notion that poor Jack Sinclair got in his head.”
“And what was that?”
“Well, of course Jack was sick, and sick men are not responsible for the hallucinations which afflict them. But the notion Jack got was this. You see he remembered some foolish speech that I had made before the dinner in regard to being willing to have the devil himself make up the fourteen rather than sit at table with thirteen.”
“Yes, I remember it.”
“Most of those who were there remember it,” said Vernon, meditatively. ” I wish their memories were not so good. Well, Jack took it into his head — but it’s too absurd an idea to even think of seriously.”
“Let me hear it, none the less.”
“Before Jack died he said to me: ‘Vernon, old boy, I’m afraid your wish came true.’”
“’What wish?’ said I.
“’You wished that the devil might come to your table rather than thirteen should sit there. Vernon, the devil came?’
“’Nonsense, Jack,’ said I, ‘you’re out of your head; it was Sedley who came.’
“’No,’ said he, ‘it may have been Sedley’s body, but it wasn’t Sedley’s soul. Vernon, I tell you that Sedley died that night before and not after dinner, and the fourteenth guest who sat there was the devil. I was the thirteenth, Vernon. And that’s what’s killing me.’ ‘Pooh!’ said I, thinking to humor him, ‘you’re not going to die. Besides that nonsense about the thirteenth man don’t apply to you anyway, for there were fourteen of us.’ ‘Fourteen guests — yes,’ said he, with a sickly smile, “but only thirteen men. Vernon, it was the devil I was disputing with, and he’s got me.’ I saw it was useless to attempt to cure him of his delusion, and so I left him. And that was the last time I saw Jack Sinclair alive.”
“But do you believe, Vernon,” I asked him, “do you believe it was the devil?”
“Was it the devil?” he replied, testily. ” How the devil should I know?”
Aye, truly — how the devil should he?
The Argonaut 6 January 1883
Mrs Daffodil’s Aide-memoire: There was some thought that the Thirteen-at-Table Curse could be prevented by dividing guests among two tables, but the superstition persisted–and persists–even unto modern times.
In Paris, at least, one could hire an extra guest.
In the Rue de la Chaussee d’Antin, in Paris, there is a man who furnishes professional diners-out at a fixed tariff rate. It is to him that superstitious hosts apply at the last moment when they require a fourteenth guest. Lippincott’s Monthly Magazine 1893 : pp. 355-62
In London, of course, there was an entire class of young gentlemen of the type found at The Drones Club, ready to appear at the shortest notice in faultless evening costume to avert the numerical peril. Amateurs, of course, but talented amateurs.
Mrs Daffodil invites you to join her on the curiously named “Face-book,” where you will find a feast of fashion hints, fads and fancies, and historical anecdote
You may read about a sentimental succubus, a vengeful seamstress’s ghost, Victorian mourning gone horribly wrong, and, of course, Mrs Daffodil’s efficient tidying up after a distasteful decapitation in A Spot of Bother: Four Macabre Tales.
The following example of an apparition, seen at the same time by several persons, comes to me from the eldest surviving member of one branch of an old yeoman family of Buckinghamshire, who himself witnessed what he here relates:
‘Some forty years ago my father resided at a small farm-house, the back part of which faced a large unenclosed common (since inclosed), and stood close to four cross-roads, two of which lead to what thereabouts is called “Uphills,” the Chiltern Ridge from Tring to Wycombe and Stokenchurch. The spot is very lonely even now, but was much more so then; for, at that time, there was not a single human habitation within a quarter of a mile of my father’s abode. Our house had always been called “The Gyb Farm,”—why, we did not exactly know—but because, as we afterwards found out, there had been often erected, near the site of it, a gibbet for the punishment of malefactors, and many a person who had taken his own life (let alone the murderers, highwaymen, and sheep-stealers), had been buried at the side of the road there; but the name of the farm, as a law-parchment states, seems to have been altered about the year 1788, when a much less disagreeable name was then adopted for it.
‘In the year, and about the time, that King William the IV. died (i.e. in 1837), my father and mother, two of my sisters, a younger brother and myself were all at home. One night, when we had all been in bed for some time, quite in the smaller hours, we were each suddenly startled and awakened by the most frightful shrill and horrid shrieks and noises just outside on the roadway that ever man heard. Partly human and partly as if made by infuriated hogs, violently quarrelling, the roar and the screeching simply appalled us. I never heard the like of it in my life. It went through and through me.
‘For a little while we all endured it: but in about five minutes we gathered half-dressed at the top of the staircase—father, mother, my brother and I—and went to a long front window overlooking the road, in order to learn the cause. The night was rather dark, and as our tinder-box would not light, we were looking out, without any candle or lamp, towards the spot from which this horrible and hellish row came, when all of a sudden a white face—a face most awful in its pallid aspect and miserable imploring look—was pressed from outside against the glass of the window and stared at us wildly. We all saw it, and I could mark that even my father was deeply affrighted. The indescribable and unearthly noises still continued, and even increased in their discordance and frightful yelling for at least four or five minutes. Then by that time a candle had been procured.
‘My father at once opened the lattice: and there by the light of the sky, such as it was, we saw a collection of most hideous black animals, some of them like large swine, others horrid and indescribable in their appearance, grubbing up the ground and half buried in it, scattering the earth upwards where the graves were, fighting, screaming and roaring in a way that no mere words can properly tell or set forth. Some of them, judging by their motion, seemed to have no bones in them.
‘We were all very much terrified. My mother implored the. Almighty to protect us, and I confess that, overwhelmed with fear, I prayed most heartily to God for His assistance. In a minute or two after this, with shrieks increased in intensity, the frightful creatures (whatever they were) rushed screaming down one of the roads.
‘In the morning there was not a sign nor sound to be seen. The ground had not been in the least degree touched, scratched up nor disturbed. But the “Ghosts of the Gibbet,” as we afterwards discovered, had been seen by others than us.’
[Author’s note: I append the following attestation: ‘The account which was given to Dr. Lee of the “Gyb Ghosts,” when it was written out fairly, was read over to me. I made several additions to it (to make it all the clearer to people who know nothing about it), and these additions were inserted in Dr. Lee’s copy. The story is true, and may be put into a book.
‘David Eustace.
[Wednesday, January 3, 1877.
‘The ghost account is true, as now read to me. I had it from my uncle.
‘Joseph Eustace.
‘February 10, 1877’]
More Glimpses of the World Unseen, Frederick George Lee, 1878, pp. 108-112
Mrs Daffodil’s Aide-memoire: Mrs Daffodil is indebted to that grim and grewsome (sic) person over at Haunted Ohio for this tale of hoggish hauntings, so suitable for Hallowe’en horrors. She appends the author’s commentary:
“While swine figure heavily in Celtic mythology, they are relatively rare and bear a bad name in ghost-lore, perhaps due to the Biblical Gadarene incident. One could see M.R. James penning something horrifying about gibbets and porcine shrieks (with a hint of an imploring face at the window) after reading this story.
Mrs Daffodil invites you to join her on the curiously named “Face-book,” where you will find a feast of fashion hints, fads and fancies, and historical anecdote
You may read about a sentimental succubus, a vengeful seamstress’s ghost, Victorian mourning gone horribly wrong, and, of course, Mrs Daffodil’s efficient tidying up after a distasteful decapitation in A Spot of Bother: Four Macabre Tales.
I am no longer a young girl. The age of illusions is over with me, and that which I state now, I state with a calm conviction in its truth which no amount of incredulity can shake. It is many years ago since I was a school-girl. It chanced that I formed a friendship with a girl of my own age, but not of my own temperament. Our physiques differed as widely as did our fates. She had been christened Emmeline, but to me, and to others of her familiars, she was always Milly Deane. A handsome brunette, with a wealth of colour and vitality about her that made of her large-pupilled grey eyes two dancing stars, and of her rounded firm cheeks two ever-blooming roses. A fine upright girl, whose attitudes never required correction at the tongue of the stiffest of governesses, and whose back never was condemned by the ignominy of a board. In the days of which I write, if Milly Deane was a fair embodiment of night, I was a fairer one of morning ; for I had waves of feathery ringlets of bright gold, when she had pounds of bonny brown ones ; and pale pink roses in my cheeks in place of her crimson blooms. The daughters of the royal tribe of wanderers–those dusky flowers who break into bloom all over the land simultaneously whenever the sun shines genially–had told our fortunes over and over again. I, Annette Davant, was to love, and be loved by, a dark gentleman, whose lot was cast in India, whither I was to accompany him, and live a life of Oriental splendour, amongst elephants, and punkahs, and Cashmere shawls. Milly, on the contrary, was to marry young young and happily a gentleman who rolled in wealth in the city, and to have a large family, and a long life, and everything else that the heart of woman can desire. We accepted these prophecies with assumed incredulity, and real belief. We left school the same quarter, and came out at the same county ball. Our homes were not very far apart. Milly Deane’ s home was in the high street of a flourishing country town; a tall, square, considerable mansion of red brick, with white stone copings, which her father had bought the freehold of on his attaining the position of first solicitor in the neighbourhood. My home was more exclusively situated. It was an old, rambling, picturesque Grange, in the environs of one of the prettiest villages of Norfolk. A house with an oaken parlour, and a cedar room in it, with a grand old grey-balustraded terrace in front of it, and with our coat-of-arms carved massively on a shield over the entrance door. It was in this house that I came home to live just before Milly Deane and I made our debut at the county ball. Ours was a very small family. It consisted only of my mother and myself. Our household was composed of a number of old, stolidly-unimaginative servants, who had lived with us for years, and to whom our interests and our nerves were of the dearest consequence. They were tenacious, too, about the regulation of the house. Idle rumour asserted it to be haunted by a discreditable ancestress, but none of those then resident in the house had either seen anything or heard anything when I left school with Milly Deane. In the order of things–at least in what appeared to be the order of things to young girls’ minds–my favourite schoolfellow and I deemed it incumbent upon ourselves to spend a large portion of our time together. It was easy enough to ride and drive over to see one another constantly; but that did not satisfy us. Friendship demanded that we should stay at each others’ houses–that our morning aspirations and evening conclusions should be breathed in each others’ ears–and the demands of friendship were attended to. We did these things, and I don’t know that we were ever the worse for doing them, in spite of the current scepticism which mocks at all that it does not understand.
The county ball, at which Milly Deane and I were to make our first appearance as grown-up and eligible young ladies, came off in the Christmas week of 1850. It had been the source of joy and woe to us both for at least a fortnight previously– that is to say, we were charmed at the idea of going–but, as became young women to whom it was still left to make the first impression, we stood very much upon the order of our going, and were severe, even in our slumbers, with audacious dressmakers, who presumed to hold adverse opinions to ours on the important subject of when it was needful for our costumes to come home. For several days before the great event Milly had been staying at the Grange with me, sharing my room, as well as my costumes, cares, and creating a feeling of dismay in the minds of one or two of our old servants by her obstinate persistence in stating that the house was haunted. It was about a week before the ball that she confided her conviction to me, first quite calmly. I had run up hurriedly into my room one afternoon, when darkness was just creeping over things, meaning to dress quickly for the dinner, that my dear mother never liked to have kept waiting. I burst into the room, with my hat and habit on, my hair blowing about somewhat loosely, and my whip in my hand, just as I had come in from riding since two o’clock. Candles were burning on my dressing table, and, by the fire, Milly stood ready dressed in a soft amber silk, which became her dark glowing beauty well. She was speaking and laughing as I came into the room; and, to my surprise–for I made sufficient noise–she did not look up at my entrance. The words I caught were, “Will call me the yellow crocus still, for I wore this dress the last night he saw me.” I looked round the room in an instant. There was no one but ourselves in it. She must have been speaking to herself–yet that was never a habit of hers. In that instant my face had time to pale, and my flesh had time to creep. “Milly,” I exclaimed, and she looked straight at me without the slightest start or hesitation. As her gaze fell upon me, though, she gave vent to a surprised ejaculation, “Annette, how have you managed to metamorphose yourself in this minute?” she asked quickly, and I said–“In this minute, indeed! I am very much as I have been ever since I started for my ride, I believe.” Milly Deane came and put her hand on my shoulder. and looked at me with bewildered eyes. ” You came in some time ago, Annette–half an hour ago, at least.” she said earnestly. “I didn’t. I wish I had; I shall be late for dinner, as it is.” I answered, beginning to hurry off my riding gear. “But you did.” she repeated emphatically. “How silly of you to try to mystify me! why you should have taken the trouble to put on your habit again, puzzles me.” “I have never had it off, Milly,” I said, rather crossly; “it is you who are trying to mystify me, talking to yourself aloud, and arraying yourself in amber silk, as if some one was coming.” “I was not talking to myself, I was talking to you,” she said, indignantly; “and you told me yourself to put on this dress, when you said Captain Danvers was coming.” “I have never spoken to you since luncheon,” I said, “and as to Captain Danvers, I have never even heard of him.” Her face blanched, as I spoke, with a sort of horror that quickly reflected itself in mine. “You never told me to put on this dress because he was coming?” she said. interrogatively. “No, I didn’t,” I said, shaking my head. “Do go and ask Mrs. Davant if you didn’t come with that message to me, half an hour ago. Stay! I’ll come too. I dare not be alone now.” “I shall not face mamma until dinner is ready,” I said, going on with my dressing. “Half an hour ago I was two miles away from home, in the middle of the common, on Cock Robin.” “Then the house is haunted,” Milly said; “and I have seen and spoken to a spirit. And it was like you,” she added stammeringly; and then she sat down, and seemed to be trying to collect herself. I had a very natural elucidation to offer, both to her and to myself, of this seeming mystery. “You probably sat down by the fire when you came up to dress?” I asked her. She nodded assent. “There is the clue to your mental maze.” I said, rather scornfully. “The heat overcame you, and you slept and dreamt a dream that has bothered you.” “It may have been a dream; but if it was, I am not awake now,” she said, slowly; “it was so vivid–so horribly vivid. I will just tell you how it all happened or how it seemed to happen,” she said. “I was sitting by the fire in my dressing-gown, when you came quickly into the room, dressed in a blue silk, with a quantity of Christmas roses in your hair and on your bosom. You didn’t look at me, but you said, ‘Make haste, and dress yourself in your amber silk, Milly; mamma wishes it.’ And when I asked, ‘Why?’ you said, ‘Oh! because Captain Danvers is coming to dinner.’ Then you went again, and I dressed: and that is all.” “A dream!” I said laughing. “Now, I am ready: mamma will think you crazy when she sees you such a swell. Who is Captain Danvers?” “An army officer,” Milly said, with a young country girl’s pride in knowing a military man. “I saw him several times while I was up in London with my aunt.” “You never mentioned him to me,” I said. “I know that,” she said, blushing a little. “I made myself a goose about him, so aunt said,” she continued, laughing, “and so I have held my tongue about him since; but I was very glad indeed when you told me just now that he was coming here to dine.” “When you dreamt it,” I insisted; and then we went in to dinner, and told this joke, as we both began to consider it, to mamma.
By the time the ball came off, we had nearly forgotten Milly’s vision, as she would insist on calling it. It does not in the least matter my mentioning now, at this distance of time, that Milly and I were the rival belles of the evening. We were young, we were fresh, we were pretty–above all, we were new. Being both under the wing of the same chaperone, we met at long intervals during the progress of the ball, and in the midst of my own triumphs I found time to notice that Milly was frequently on the arm of a handsome, distinguished looking man, a stranger, who was in the uniform of an infantry regiment. “That is Captain Danvers, Annette,” she had time to whisper to me once in the evening; and from the tone of that whisper I judged that she fancied she had met with her fate. I soon knew Captain Danvers very well indeed; for shortly after that ball, he became Milly Deane’s declared lover. I have called him distinguished looking, and so he was to our girlish eyes. Perhaps if we looked at him with the matured vision of to-day, we might substitute the word unhealthy for distinguished, and be considerably nearer the mark. But in those days he was, if not a god of beauty, a very fair object of admiration to us. He was very tall and very slight, and his hair and eyes were both black and shining, and his face was of almost a ghastly pallor. Unquestionably he was a very striking looking man; and we stricken ones, in those early days, pronounced him an Apollo. He talked in a way that was quite new to us both, too. We trembled, but admired, when he avowed his beliefs, which were few, and his non-beliefs, which were many. His shallow scepticism, and his mystical metaphysical allusions, seemed to be very brilliant things to us in those early hours of our luckless intercourse with him. Yet all the time I felt him to be a dangerous man and wondered how Milly’s infatuation would terminate for herself.
They were married in about four months from the ball at which they had renewed their acquaintance. Milly went off to India almost immediately with her husband, and so we parted, my pretty friend and I. And soon a romance of my own swept her romance from my mind and memory, although for herself I had a warm affection still. I settled down into the happy wife of a prosperous man, and the proud mother of fair good children. Milly and I corresponded with tolerable regularity. Of her husband she never spoke after the first six months or so of her marriage. That she was a disappointed and unhappy woman I could not fail to perceive.
At the end of five years Mrs. Danvers came home alone on a sort of sick leave which had been granted her by her husband. We were living in London at the time, and it seemed to me only natural that my solitary friend should have made our house her home. The very morning after her arrival in town I went to the hotel at which she had given me her address, and solicited her to do so. But she refused decidedly at once, saying that she was better alone for many reasons. I questioned her closely, with the loving curiosity my affection for her entitled me to display, as to how she was wont to pass her time, and whether her husband and herself were sympathetic in their pursuits or not. “Very sympathetic!” she said once, rather harshly. “We both like to please ourselves.” “Have I been superseded, Milly?” I persisted. “Have you any female friend in India who seems nearer and dearer to you than I do?” “I haven’t a female friend besides yourself in the world,” she said, quietly; “not one I assure you, Annette; not one that I would go a yard out of my way to confide a joy or a sorrow to.” “You would confide both to me if we were thrown much together again,” I said, determined not to be rebuffed. “Not trivial ones.” “Great ones, then?” I said. She moved uneasily off the sofa on which she had been reclining, and stood with her back to me, gazing out of the window. “Great ones, perhaps,” she said slowly, after a long pause.
“Annette,” and she turned round suddenly upon me, “shall I promise you that in the greatest trouble of my life I will come to you? I will so promise if you wish it.”
“You may not be able to come to me,” I began protesting. I was going on to say, “but I hope you will always write to me if–,” but she interrupted me. “I may not be able to come to you in the flesh,” she said emphatically ; and I answered “That is exactly what I meant; but you will write?” She nodded her beautiful head and said,–“I promise that, in my greatest trouble, I will come to you, Annette; and you, on your part, promise that you will not shrink from me.” An interruption occurred just then, and we never renewed the subject. “Annette,” she said to me one day, when we were sitting alone, talking over schoolgirl days, “have you a blue dress trimmed about the body and sleeves with Christmas roses?” “No,” I said, laughing; “haven’t you forgotten my ghostly visitation to you yet?” “No, I haven’t forgotten that ghostly visitation, and I never shall forget it.”
Milly Danvers stayed in England about eight months ; then she re-embarked for India, “which I shall probably never leave again,” she said sadly. “Does the climate try you so very much?” I asked anxiously. “Cruelly! cruelly!” she said warmly; “I can’t live there long.” “Does Captain Danvers know this?” I asked, indignantly. “Yes, dear champion of mine;” she said, affectionately. “Why else should he wish me back?” she said, curling her lip a little; “of course he knows it. Captain Danvers would not miss me–” “Oh, yes, he would!” I interrupted, hastily; her tone was so desperately despairing, that I could not bear it. “Oh, yes, he would! why else should he wish you to go back to him?” “Because no questions are asked, either about gradual decay, or sudden death there,” she said; and then she peremptorily decreed that nothing more should be said about it. We parted very soon after this, and when I heard from her that she had arrived in their cantonment in the Madras Presidency safely, the gloomy impression upon my mind by our last interview faded away.
Months passed away, and Christmas-tide was upon us. We had arranged a juvenile party on the occasion of our eldest child’s seventh birthday, and. in decking out my little men and women, and arranging my rooms, I overlooked that usually important matter–my own toilette. A couple of days before our juvenile ball, I laughingly told my husband of my dilemma. “I haven’t a ball dress fresh enough to wear in honour of our little Milly,” I said to him, “and really I have no time to go to my dressmaker.” “I will go and order you one; leave it to me, Annette,” he replied; and I agreed to do so, only stipulating that he should not make me too fine, and that he should avoid pink. The night of little Milly’s ball arrived in due season; and, fatigued with my exertions, I went up to my dressing-room, determined upon resting until it was time for me to dress. My robe had not come home yet, but I could rely on Madame Varcoe’s honour–she had said that it should be home by half-past eight at the latest, and I knew that she would keep her word. Feeling thus easy, I fell asleep, and slept a dreamless sleep of some hour and a half. Then I awoke, and found my dress laid out ready for me to put on, and my maid waiting to do my hair. “It’s one of the prettiest dresses Madame Varcoe has ever made for you,” my maid said, as I cast a glance towards the bed, “a most delicate rich blue, trimmed with the most loveliest Christmas roses.” Strange as it may appear–at least, strange as it does appear to me now–I gave no thought at the time to the coincidence between my actual dress and the dress of Millv Deane’s dream. My head was full of other things, and memory was effectually put to flight by the entrance of my three little girls, vociferously declaring “that I should be late, and that it seemed as if people were never coming.” But the little guests came all in good time, and enjoyed themselves almost as much as I did. I say almost as much as I did advisedly, for that must be the happiest ball for a woman which she organises for the first time for her eldest child. At any rate, I can imagine no higher Terpsichorean happiness than this. Yet the day has been (not so very long ago either) when I enjoyed a ball as gaily as the gayest.
It was over at last, and when I had seen my pleased and sleepy children safely into their respective beds, I went slowly to my own room, and sat down by the fire to wait for my husband. I had told my maid that I would dispense with her services, and so I sat alone, and pleased myself with recalling the little ebullitions of childish pleasure which I had witnessed that night. My husband was down in his study still, looking through the evening papers, the late editions of which had been neglected by him in his endeavours to contribute to the little people’s entertainment. It must have been about two o’clock in the morning when I roused myself from my cheerful reverie, and stood up to commence my preparations for retiring for the night. The chair I had been occupying was a large massive carved oak one, with a very high back. As I stood up, I became conscious, without seeing anything, that some one was leaning on this back, and, thinking that it must be my husband, I said quietly, “You have come at last, dear?” “At last,” a very soft voice whispered–breathed rather; and then I turned round startled, and saw nothing on the spot from whence the voice had proceeded. A nameless horror, a dreadful fear possessed me. I could not cry out; even in my agony of fear I revolted against doing that. When I could move–and for a few moments I was quite unable to do so–my impulse was to get nearer to the gas, which was low, and turn on a brighter light. I had two lamps in my room, one on either side of my cheval glass; and as I reached up to turn on a higher light, I caught sight of myself. I was in just such a dress as Milly had described me as wearing when she saw me, or fancied that she saw me, or dreamt that she saw me. Sick and horrified, and chilled with a more than mortal dread, I staggered back to my chair, and buried my face in my hands. Something swept softly up to me from a darker corner of the room, swept softly up and stood beside my chair. I felt the air grew heavier, as occupied air does grow. I heard low breathings; some one was bending over me nearer and nearer. Then the breathings formed themselves into words, into a word rather, and I heard my own name murmured distinctly,
“Annette, Annette,” and I knew that it was murmured in Milly Danvers’ voice. I shuddered, and tried to look up. I took my hands down from before my face, and strove to lift my eyes and strove in vain. I could not do it. I had a dread of being so awfully frightened that I might never recover it. That Milly Danvers was standing close to me I was well assured. But I was also well assured that it was not Milly Danvers in the flesh. Then I remembered the words she had spoken to me. “I will promise to come to you in the greatest trouble of my life,” she had said ; and I felt, as her words flashed back upon me, that my friend must be in fearful trouble now. Again the impalpable presence spoke, “Annette, remember the hour! note it!” Shiveringly, shudderingly I raised my eyes at last, and there, gilding away into the shade by the side of the bed, I saw a slight frail form. Instantaneously I turned to my clock. The hour hand stood at three, the minute hand at five minutes past twelve. I grasped the bell, “all my soul within me sinking,” and rang such a peal as quickly brought my husband to my side. I wrote to Milly the following day, and I got no answer. I wrote again, and my second letter shared the fate of my first one. Then I gave up the attempt to elucidate whatever of mystery there was in the affair, and tried to forget it–and could not. Just twelve months after this I was spending the Christmas week, together with my husband, at the house of one of his married sisters in the country. We arrived just in time to dress for dinner, and in the brief interval between my going up to my room for that purpose, and being joined by my husband, my sister-in-law came to speak to me for a minute. “We have a goodly party dining here to-day, Annette,” she said. “Captain Danvers expressed the greatest pleasure at meeting you again.” “Captain Danvers! is he here?” ” He is, with his wife,” she said, shutting the door, and running off; and I was left alone, repeating to myself, “His wife! Then Milly is not dead!” and then we dressed, and went down to dinner. I recognised Captain Danvers the instant I got into the drawing-room. He was considerably altered; still I knew him at a glance. I looked round the room. Milly was not there. Impulsively I went up to him and asked, as I took his offered hand, “Where is your wife?” “She will be here in a few moments,” he answered, smiling his old, brilliantly flashing smile and the wild throbbing at my heart ceased. She was alive, and she was here! That was sufficient for me. I curbed my impatience, and stood still, watching the door. Two or three ladies, strangers to me, entered the room, and, a moment after, my brother-in-law asked a gentleman to take me down to dinner. We all went down. Captain Danvers was on the opposite side of the table, at some little distance from me. I looked round the table, and Milly was not there. The dinner that day seemed to be an endless affair to me. I was most impatient to ask our hostess where Mrs. Danvers was. I went to her the moment we got into the drawing-room, ” Where is Mrs. Danvers?” I said; “she is my dearest old friend, and I’m longing to see her.” “You might have renewed your acquaintance at the table, then, surely,” she said, pointing out a fair, pretty young woman whom I had observed sitting very near to me at dinner. “That Mrs. Danvers! impossible!” “But the truth, notwithstanding,” she said, laughing; “she is a bride, and a beauty, and altogether rather an acquisition to my Christmas party, I consider.” I was almost stunned at the revelation of Milly’s death; and when Captain Danvers, later in the evening, came sauntering up to me suavely, saying, “Now, at last, I can renew my very pleasant acquaintance with you,” I cut him short at once by saying, “Captain Danvers, when did Milly die?” “Last Christmas Eve,” he said. ” At five minutes past three?” I asked eagerly, and he said—“Yes.” And as he said it the two ghostly episodes which connected the three (Milly, Captain Danvers, and myself) together, stood out like bodily presences before my eyes.
My story is finished. Call it a ghost story, a fable, a fancy—what you will. I can only declare that the spiritual visitations actually occurred. Milly’s fate was never cleared up. She died, we learnt afterwards, after a long, tedious illness which defied the medical skill that was called in, nearly at the last, by her philosophically calm husband, Captain Danvers.
The Bradford [West Yorkshire England] Observer 18 November 1869: p. 6
Mrs Daffodil’s Aide-memoire: How very solicitous of Captain Danvers to recall his ill and unhappy wife to that place where no questions are asked, either about gradual decay, or sudden death–and where physicians called to a death-bed, are commendably discreet about the belated summons. One wonders whether the Captain (who had surely attained the rank of Colonel) retained the services of the same medical gentleman when he tired of his beauty of a bride.
Touching though it is to see the two friends reunited by the late Milly’s apparition, it would be far more satisfying to see the first Mrs Danvers haunt the Captain so that he would be found dead in his bed with an expression of stark, staring horror on his ghastly, pallid face and a scrap of amber silk clutched between his fingers.
Mrs Daffodil invites you to join her on the curiously named “Face-book,” where you will find a feast of fashion hints, fads and fancies, and historical anecdote
You may read about a sentimental succubus, a vengeful seamstress’s ghost, Victorian mourning gone horribly wrong, and, of course, Mrs Daffodil’s efficient tidying up after a distasteful decapitation in A Spot of Bother: Four Macabre Tales.
Ten years ago, while visiting friends in Thistledown, Pa., I was told the following story, and will here relate it, word for word, as it was given, as far as memory will permit:
“Thistledown has just had a sensation,” said my hostess, Mrs. Doree, “a veritable ghost story. Shall I tell you about it?”
“Certainly, but I warn you not to impose too much upon my credulity, for I am not very superstitious.”
“Oh, I know you are a sad skeptic in such matters. However, this is a true story, an actual occurrence. Did you notice the occupants of the pew directly in front of us this morning at church?”
“Yes. A gentleman, a sweet little girl with a young woman who looked like a nurserymaid. The man wore a light tweed suit, has tawny hair and mustache and the most cynical face I ever saw.”
“The same. His name is Cornelius Butterfield. He is a native of London, England, and the little girl is his only child. Pansy, he calls her. He came here five years ago, and entered into partnership with McLeod & Co. His wife, report said, was the daughter of an English nobleman. She was a fair, blue-eyed, delicate-looking lady. Her age was about twenty years. She was highly educated, an accomplished musician, and the most romantic, sensitive being I ever knew. Her maid accompanied her to this country, but after a few weeks returned to England.
“The Butterfields moved into a new, uncomfortable-looking house uptown, where the young wife, who had never dressed herself alone or arranged her gold-colored hair without the aid of her maid, was obliged to do her housework and sewing. Of ‘course, this was very distasteful to one who had been tenderly reared in a luxurious London home. The lady could not help being homesick and unhappy. It is said that she made many mistakes in the culinary department—that her husband was harsh and cruelly impatient with his young, inexperienced wife. Poor thing! He even denied her many of the necessaries as well as all of the luxuries of life, I was told. It seems that it was an elopement. Mrs. Butterfield had a highly cultivated voice. She could play on the piano with taste and expression, but her husband refused to get her an instrument. She would plead with him for hours for a piano, with tears in her eyes, and declare that she should be less homesick if she could amuse herself with music when her work was done; but he did not wish to gratify her in this respect. It is said that her family across the ocean sent frequent sums of money to her. If they did, he must have kept the money, for the piano did not come to cheer her.
“It is reported that he used to beat her, but I am not sure that this was true, although I have heard him scold her for boiling the coffee too much or too little, and then reproach her for crying.
“When I found that she could play so finely, I invited her to come here whenever she had time to practice. She was very thankful, I can assure you; and would come in and sing for hours at a time. I must say again, that I still think Alice Butterfield’s touch and voice were both the finest and sweetest I have ever heard. Her selections were new to most of us. Indeed no one in Thistledown could play any of her pieces; for her music was of a higher class than ours, I wish you could have heard her.”
“How did it please her husband to have her practice here?” I asked. “Not very well. He told me that she was crazy to sing in public and he wanted to discourage her. That ‘she had been trained for the opera.’ But, how homesick and distract she was before her baby was born! Her playing only seemed to revive old memories and associations; for her cheeks were usually wet with tears when she rose from my piano;—yet one could not question her.
“I did not see her alive after her little girl was born, although I called frequently. The doctor or her husband was always on guard, and would say: ‘She is raving with fever, you cannot see her to-day;’ or, ‘she is sleeping, and ought not to be disturbed.’ One day when I went to the foot of the chamber stairs to inquire about her, she heard me, and cried out: ‘Let Mrs. Doree come up! I tell you I must and will see her!’ But the doctor came hurrying downstairs, and told me that his ‘patient did not know what she was saying;’ that my ‘presence might excite her too much.’ That, ‘her very life depended on her being kept quiet.’
“I went away fearing, I knew not what. She died that night; and when I again called, she was in her coffin. Her husband was present. ‘He has never left her since the beginning of her sickness,’ the nurse said, ‘not even for his meals. He only wanted me to take care of the baby and bring things upstairs when they were needed,’ she added, ‘He was the real nurse, and the doctor was always in the house. He ordered me to keep her baby out of the sick-room, and people out of the house, as his wife could not be disturbed by visitors. So nobody went into her room except himself and the doctor, but I could hear the poor lady raving and crying all day long for a piano, or money to go home to London, to her mother.’
“Mr. Butterfield and the physician prepared the dead woman for the grave. She was dressed in her beautiful wedding gown, white satin and real lace. A Queen Elizabeth ruche was placed high about her neck, and her breast and throat were covered with white roses, for her corsage was cut low. Her face seemed to rise out of a thick mass of white flowers and lace. They buried her very quickly, I think—the second morning after she died. The funeral was private, only a few being present, except the doctor and clergyman. We wondered why the corpse was so profusely decorated with flowers, as she was not a bride. Her dead face was beautiful. It seemed to glorify that poorly furnished apartment, yet Mr. Butterfield, I remember, did not once raise his head from his hands or take one farewell look at his dead wife. After a short prayer they placed the white casket in a hearse and drove directly to the cemetery.
“Mr. Butterfield’s apparently undue haste in burying his wife, as well as the privacy attending both her sickness and funeral obsequies, caused no little stir in Thistledown. There was talk of unfair play on the part of her husband and the physician, and a coroner’s inquest was spoken of. Then the story leaked out that in her delirium Alice Butterfield had attempted suicide by cutting her throat so badly as subsequently to cause her death. That Dr. Webb had hoped to save his patient until the very last, he said, ‘by keeping her quiet, and not allowing any one to see
or talk to her until the wound had healed. That is why I excluded everybody except her husband and nurse from the room. But she died from her own hand.’
“Mr. Butterfield’s apparent penuriousness ceased soon after his wife’s death. He rented a larger house uptown, furnished it handsomely and purchased a grand Steinway piano. He employed a cook and nurserymaid, then sent for his sister to come and preside over his establishment. She came.
“Miss Butterfield was no longer young, but she talked and dressed like a woman accustomed to good society. She played accompaniments for church music and songs, but lacked Alice’s nice touch for the piano and classical knowledge of instrumental music, as well as her innate delicacy and fine culture. Still, we rather liked her and tried to make the English lady feel at home with us, although her reserved manner repelled our well-meant overtures of friendship.”
About a fortnight after Elizabeth Butterfield’s arrival both she and her brother were startled in the dead of the night by hearing some one playing on the new piano. The style of the nocturnal visitor was not only brilliant, but was unmistakably like that of the late Mrs. Alice Butterfield. Instrumental music of a high order, portions of celebrated operas, nocturnes and classical compositions, rarely heard in an inland town like Thistledown. The sweet notes trembled all through the house, thrillingly clear and wonderfully pure, closing with Mendelssohn’s wedding march.
Brother and sister and maids rushed downstairs, and stared at each other in alarm when they met at the door of the drawing-room.
“‘I thought it was you, Elizabeth,’ said Mr. Butterfield.
“‘And I thought it was you, Cornelius, but wondered how you had learned to play so well since you left England. But how did the player get in? I have the key in my pocket, upstairs.’
“Her brother tried the door and found it locked, as his sister had said. ‘It is very strange,’ he whispered, in an awe-struck manner, then to his sister: ‘Run and get the key. We will solve this mystery at once.’
“When they opened the door they found that the fine-toned instrument was being played by invisible fingers, for the music still continued, although the music stool was unoccupied and they were the only visible occupants of the room. They listened in alarm—looked at each other with terror-stricken faces until the music ceased. Then Mr. Butterfield asked:
“‘Can you play any of those pieces?’
“‘No, Cornelius. I never learned any difficult music; you know I only play simple chords and accompaniments,’ was the answer. They looked into and under the piano, then in every room and closet in the house; examined the windows and outbuildings—but no one was to be found. They took off the lid of the piano to see if a mouse could have set it to playing, or to see if a music box could have been hidden within it; searched everywhere in vain for the performer. The following night it was the same, and so on for several nights in succession. Neighbors were called in, and declared that the parlor was haunted. The servants left the house in fear. Still the grand Steinway awoke the inmates of the house nightly with its dulcet tones. The keys could be seen moving up and down, while marches, quicksteps, bits of operas followed each other in rapid succession— now swelling like martial music, grand and glorious; again dying away to a whisper, then rising like the sound of a storm or furious battle.
“The first intimation we had of their parlor being haunted was when its owner asked Mr. Doree if his piano ever got out of order and played right on, of its own accord, and, when answered in the negative, told us why he had asked the question. He acknowledged that he was greatly puzzled—said he could give no solution to the mystery. He remarked that the keys were certainly manipulated by ‘invisible fingers.’ Then, after a silence of a few minutes: ‘The strangest part of it is that neither my sister nor myself are able to play this class of music, which we recognize as the work of the old masters, and the servants cannot tell one note from another. Our neighbors are unable to whistle a single bar of it, let alone playing it. There is not another instrument of the kind on our street. My sister thought that some wag had hidden a music box inside of the piano, but we have had it taken all apart, had it tuned over anew and searched everywhere, but found nothing. It plays beautifully such music as I have heard my late wife play on her father’s piano.’
“‘Well,’ I said, ‘it is clear that the house is haunted. It would hardly be safe for you if we were living in the witch-burning age.’ He laughed rather nervously, I fancied, and said, ‘Good night, come and hear it for yourselves,’ and we went.
“He told my husband’s partner the same story. All the people in the town declared that his dead wife had come back to punish him for not buying her an instrument, while the more malicious gossips of the town said that ‘there must have been foul play in the manner of Mrs. Butterfield’s death.’ There was talk of lynching the young widower—of disinterring his poor wife’s remains, and every one was for avenging her wrongs, when he suddenly closed his house, sold his effects, including the haunted piano, and sent his sister back to England.”
“Well, does the instrument still entertain its new owners?”
“Oh, no! That is the oddest part of the whole story. The lady who owns it has never been disturbed by any nocturnal music. The ghost has stopped playing. No invisible spirit hands now touch the keys. Both herself and daughters play very unscientifically. If poor Alice did return, she did so to punish her cruel husband and no one else. He is still boarding at the hotel uptown, but it is rumored that he will soon marry Pansy’s nurse. Some people are yet suspicious of his neglect, of possible foul play in his wife’s last sickness, but Dr. Webb is a Christian gentleman, whose veracity has rarely been doubted, and his testimony ought to be believed, I suppose. He affirms that the poor lady was delirious and destroyed her own life; that the husband went to him in great distress of mind and begged him, the doctor, to save the sick woman, if possible. Of course, Mr. Butterfield or any other man would not half-commit a deed of that kind and stand the chance of being exposed by the victim and brought to trial, if not to the gallows,” she added.
“No—that certainly is in his favor. If he alone had heard the music we might have accounted for it on the score of a haunted conscience; but, as others heard it, one does not know what to think of it,” I said. “But who was the musician?”
“Little Pansy is now four years old. She is still under the care of her nurse,” said Mrs. Doree. I subsequently heard the same story from a number of the town’s people, and have given it to the reader as it was told to me, unmodified in any particular.
Modern Ghost Stories, Emma May Buckingham, 1905: pp. 75-82
Mrs Daffodil’s Aide-memoire: Mrs Daffodil is not so sure about the idea that Mr Butterfield or any other man would not half-commit a deed of that kind. Such men generally have short attention spans and would be impatient to have an invalid wife put out of the way quickly. Any risk of being exposed by the victim could be explained away as “delirium.” How easy to wait until the doctor stepped out of the room to wound poor Mrs Butterfield in a convincingly half-hearted way that would still ensure her death. Dr Webb, in keeping visitors away and accepting this exceedingly thin story–pray, Doctor, why was anything sharp allowed within her reach?–proved himself an able accomplice.
Young Mrs Butterfield, who had so little agency in her earthly life, seems to have chosen a delightful method of ghostly revenge: She got to play to her heart’s content, while publicly unnerving her husband. Win, as they say, win.
Depend on it: a man who talks about how the music from a haunted piano sounds like that played by his late wife has something more than marital cruelty on his conscience.
Had he not moved and sold the piano, Mrs Daffodil rather fancies Mr Butterfield would have “cracked” and perhaps even confessed. But then, all his talk of a haunted piano would have laid the ideal ground-work for an insanity defence. We live in a sad world when the ghost of a murder victim cannot even haunt her murderer into the grave.
Mrs Daffodil invites you to join her on the curiously named “Face-book,” where you will find a feast of fashion hints, fads and fancies, and historical anecdote
You may read about a sentimental succubus, a vengeful seamstress’s ghost, Victorian mourning gone horribly wrong, and, of course, Mrs Daffodil’s efficient tidying up after a distasteful decapitation in A Spot of Bother: Four Macabre Tales.
Mrs Daffodil is pleased to present a story of haunted textiles from that vintage-clad person over at Haunted Ohio. This particular tale comes from the first volume in the Haunted Ohio series. “Alexis” is a pseudonym for the witness, a person of the highest respectability who did not wish to be named.
The Haunted Garden-Party Dress
It was August, with the stiflingly humid weather that made Alexis want to crawl to a pool of water and stay in it until first frost. She was on her way to the Historical Society’s costume collection to begin another day of photographing and cleaning antique garments. In the front hall she passed the Egyptian mummy, which had always given her the creeps as a child. She rode up to the attic workrooms in the tiny elevator. Its walls seemed to close in on her like the walls of a coffin.
Alexis tried to shake free of such morbid thoughts, but all her life she had been unusually sensitive to atmosphere and what she called “vibrations” from objects and people. She walked down the hall past what had been the servants’ quarters in the former mansion and unlocked the door of the workroom.
In spite of the heat outside, the air conditioners were doing their job and Alexis began to relax as she put away her purse and got out the materials she needed: fine needles and cotton thread to stitch catalogue numbers on garments, acid-free tissue paper to stuff into sleeves and bodices, the Polaroid camera and extra film.
Alexis had a passion for antique clothes. She loved the beautiful materials, the tiny stitches and exquisite workmanship, the laces, beads, and sequins. In exchange for volunteering to remove rusted pins and staples from the old labeling system and to stuff tissue into sleeves, she’d gotten permission to photograph and study items in the collection.
She sighed as she handled an 1880s champagne velvet evening cloak, slit in the back to accommodate a bustle. Cascading over the shoulders and bodice was an encrustation of corded ivory embroidery and, around the neck and sleeves, a froth of swansdown to keep the wearer from the cold. It transported Alexis to a faraway world, a world of late suppers at Maxim’s, of the Merry Widow Waltz, of top-hatted admirers calling out, “Cheri, where have you been?”
Her favorite dress was a luminous scarlet velvet sprinkled with garnets. The fabric glowed from within, while the garnets winked at the slightest motion. There were two bodices: one cut low, with heavy lace sleeves, for evening wear; the other molded to the body, with those same glittering garnets, like drops of blood on the bosom.
Alexis loved antique textiles, but she also had a problem with “vibing out” whenever she was around a lot of old clothes in one place. There were over 7,000 items in this collection, Alexis realized. She also realized that it was the costume curator’s day off. She would be alone in the attic. She started with a rack of clothes from the 1880s up to the First World War, not by any means the oldest items in the collection. The garments were grouped by type. There was a collection of slipper satin evening skirts with trains—a whole row of pale ivory, sky blue, a vivid gold. There were racks of fine chiffons, looking as though they had been spun by spiders and a section of velvet evening gowns—soft and black as a raven’s wing.
Alexis pulled out a dull green velvet dress that looked like it could have been worn by one of Oscar Wilde’s “aesthetic dress” disciples. She hung it on the wall and took a Polaroid shot. As she put the dress back on the rack, her hand brushed the velvet and she shivered.
Alexis hung another dress on the end of the rack and stepped back to frame the picture. The dress was a garden-party muslin, white with great garlands of heavy, heavenly blue embroidery looping around the bottom of the wide skirt. She squinted through the viewfinder of the camera. The bosom of the dress stirred. Slowly she lowered the camera. Inside the dress, tissue paper crackled as it uncrumpled itself. She smiled and raised the camera once more. Her hands began to shake. If I press the button, she thought, driven by an overpowering certainty, I will see the woman in the dress.
She began to panic in slow motion. She realized that it wasn’t a matter of “wouldn’t it be funny if the woman showed up on the photo?” but an emphatic, “I will see the woman when the photo comes out.”
At that moment, as though a radio had been switched on, came a chaos of voices. Women: shrieking, imploring, summoning, commanding—all demanding to be heard, desperate to make her understand. Some imperious, some furious, some insane with frustration. All struggling like birds against a glass to get through, to make her hear.
Look at me Listen to me Hear what I’m saying Listen
The noise swept over her like a wave. She couldn’t breathe; her heart was bursting. I will die, she thought, calmly as a drowning person, and then I will scream too.
The frothiest pieces seemed the noisiest, Alexis thought incongruously. Like the lawn dress, c. 1918…a lot of the young women in lawn dresses didn’t make it through the influenza epidemic.
Later, in a haze, Alexis remembered hanging all the dresses back on their racks. Remembered putting away the tags and supplies and locking the door. Remembered forcing herself to take a photo of the dress, even though a woman from another time would appear on the film.
But when she returned the next day the door stood open. Cautiously she entered, careful not to brush against the racks of clothes. The dresses were where she had left them: the red velvet dress lying on the table, the white dress with blue embroidery at the end of the rack. She held her breath, listened. Nothing but her own heartbeat in her ears. Quickly she hung the dresses in their places, put away the supplies, picked up bits of lint. Slowly she sorted the photos on the work table. There was none of a white dress.
Alexis picked up her portfolio, placed the photos in it, her muscles tensed as if for flight. In the doorway, she looked back at the racks and racks of gleaming silks and velvets. A jet dangle on a beaded cape winked at her.
She shut the door and locked it, feeling as if time were running out. She quietly pushed on the knob to make sure the door was latched and turned away. Something, a breath of air from under the door, made her turn back, made her stand listening, pressed against the door, to the taffetas whispering among themselves.
Haunted Ohio: Ghostly Tales from the Buckeye State, Chris Woodyard, 1991
Mrs Daffodil’s Aide-memoire: Since the season of ghostly stories approaches, Mrs Daffodil will, on October Fridays, be sharing some tales of the supernatural.
It was several years previous to the great war. I and my son were redecorating part of the inside of a six-roomed villa, on the outskirts of the town of B__. It had been previously tenanted by a widowed lady and her daughter. The daughter died—the lady sold everything, and gave up possession, and went away to America, so I was told, about two or three weeks before we began work. One day we were just starting work after the dinner hour when a knock came to the front door. The door was opened by a tall lady dressed in very deep black; a thick crepe veil covered her face. In a distinct voice—with a sob in it—she said to me, “Excuse me, but may I go up into the room where my dear daughter died?”
“Yes, madam, certainly,” I said. Without another word she turned to the staircase and walked up as any ordinary person would, and, on the landing, turned to the right, entered a bedroom and shut the door. I furtively watched her by going half up the stairs, saw her enter the room, and heard the door shut. We went on with our work—I at the foot of the main staircase in the front part of the little hall, my son about ten or twelve feet away at the back of the hall. We talked of the strangeness of the affair as we thought she was in America. We could hear her walking about the room, and wondered what she could be doing. She had been there three-quarters of an hour when the moving about ceased, and there was perfect quiet. And so another quarter of an hour passed and we began to get uneasy. We were just contemplating whether we should go and see if all was well when, suddenly, there was a thud as if a heavy body had fallen on the floor. We looked at one another for a second or two; my son turned pale, and I said, “She’s fainted—or perhaps it’s a case for the coroner.” We both together hurried up to the room. We listened—no sound. I spoke—no answer. Then I rapped on the door panel—no answer. Cautiously I turned the door knob and peeped in, but saw nothing. Both of us entered—the room was quite empty.
There were two windows—but neither had been opened and both the sashes were fastened. We went into all the other rooms and hunted every corner, but found nothing. It made such an impression on us that we were very glad when the work was finished and we got away. The house became uncanny to us. We often have spoken about it since, but have never heard of the “Lady in Black,” as my son calls her. He can substantiate all I have said; it’s just a simple account of what happened and perfectly true in every detail, as God is my witness. But what I, or we, would like to know is—was it a real woman or a wraith—or what? Also, how did she leave that room? Certainly not by the windows—nor door—nor staircase.
Uncanny Stories Told by “Daily News” Readers, S. Louis Giraud, 1927: p. 55-6
Mrs Daffodil’s Aide-memoire: A strange story. One wonders if, years later, when the villa was demolished, the skeleton of a woman, shrouded in the tatters of a black veil, was found beneath the floorboards.
Mrs Daffodil has also written about the Woman in Black (and her opposite number, the White Lady) as a Royal omen of death.
Mrs Daffodil invites you to join her on the curiously named “Face-book,” where you will find a feast of fashion hints, fads and fancies, and historical anecdote
You may read about a sentimental succubus, a vengeful seamstress’s ghost, Victorian mourning gone horribly wrong, and, of course, Mrs Daffodil’s efficient tidying up after a distasteful decapitation in A Spot of Bother: Four Macabre Tales.
“The ancient and now ruinous castle belonging to the M‘—s, of —, is situated on a rocky promontory jutting out from the sea coast of one of our Western Islands. Near to this memorial of another and ruder age, stands the modem mansion inhabited by the descendants of this once powerful clan. The M‘—s are distinguished for their free-hearted hospitality, and numerous entertainments are given for the amusement of the guests who annually crowd to ___House. Should the night prove fine these always ended in a ramble in the romantic ruins of the adjoining castle. I chanced to be present at one of these balls, and, in accordance with this time-honoured custom, I and my partner in the dance, the second son, a fine young naval officer, led the way to the ancient halls of the M‘—s.
It was now early dawn, and surrounding objects were distinctly visible in the clear morning light. Imagining myself and partner to have been the first to leave the ball-room, I was surprised and horrified to see a girl whom I took to be the gay and adventurous Maria —-, like myself, a guest at ___, looking in at me through what appeared to be an inaccessible window. ‘Do look at that foolish creature, Maria—; she will be killed if she does not take care,’ and I ran towards her, pulling young M‘—with me.
As I came near to her, I saw she was not Maria—, but a young girl dressed entirely in white, with long fair hair falling over her shoulders, and having on her right arm a broad silver bracelet of peculiar design. She looked at me fixedly for a moment and then disappeared. ‘Good gracious!’ I cried, ‘she has fallen over the rocks.’ And I ran to the window and looked out, but no traces of her were visible: indeed no human being could have scaled the steep precipitous crags on that side the castle.
“I looked at my companion in amazement; he was very pale and silent. On our way back to the house we met Maria — just leaving it. She had never been near the ruins.
“‘Who could it have been?’ I said to M‘—. He made reply—‘Don’t mention what you have seen to any of my family. I will tell you who I think it was; but first let me ask you, Did you observe the bracelet on the girl’s arm?’ ‘Yes;’ I particularly noticed it, and I described it to him.
He became yet paler, and said, ‘You have seen the evil genius of our house. Her history is this: One of my ancestors, and the heir of the M‘—s, fell deeply in love with a beautiful young girl of humble birth. They became engaged, and were about to be married, when the girl suddenly disappeared, and was never again heard of. It was supposed she had been murdered by command of his relations, who were furious at the thought of the connection he was about to form. From time immemorial, there had been preserved in our family two silver bracelets, such as you describe, with which our chiefs betrothed their brides. One of these peculiar bands had shortly before disappeared, and it was believed the infatuated youth had bestowed it on the maid whom he had destined for his wife. Ever since we M‘—s have always been warned of approaching death by a fair-haired girl, with this bracelet on her arm.’
“I am very sorry to have to tell you that my poor young partner on that occasion died not long after we had seen the spectre maiden.”
The Psychological Review August 1882 pp. 127-129
Mrs Daffodil’s Aide-memoire: It is a bit unkind to describe the murdered young woman as an “evil genius,” for it was certainly not her ambition to become a token of death for a clan so disdainful of her antecedents.
The wronged woman as death omen is a time-honoured tradition in some of the noblest families in Europe; the Hohenzollerns had their “Lady in White,”while the courts of Bavaria and Sweden were similarly haunted.
It is a curious detail–that banshee’s bracelet–banshees, those harbingers of death, usually found washing the shirts of those about to perish, wailing outside windows, or combing their long, flowing red or grey hair, are not known for jewellery of any sort. Perhaps they would be less vindictive if presented with some pretty trinkets.
Mrs Daffodil invites you to join her on the curiously named “Face-book,” where you will find a feast of fashion hints, fads and fancies, and historical anecdote
You may read about a sentimental succubus, a vengeful seamstress’s ghost, Victorian mourning gone horribly wrong, and, of course, Mrs Daffodil’s efficient tidying up after a distasteful decapitation in A Spot of Bother: Four Macabre Tales.
Never had peaceful Onondaga valley been so disquieted. The people of the town of Cardiff, from one end to the other were talking of the wonder which exceeded even the sensation of the historic Cardiff Giant. This time, instead of a giant it was a ghost, and such a wraith as never had been heard of before. The Headless Horseman was a mere baby compared to it, and Puritanical broom-riding witches were not horrible enough to be mentioned in the same breath. Truly the Cardiff ghost was an apparition most fearsome.
The spirit had first appeared to Abe Crownheart, who kept the Pine Tree as the Cardiff hotel was known. He was driving home one night from Tully, a village at the south end of the valley, when near the bridge, over the brook that runs through Enberry Took’s place, the spectre rushed out and pursued Abe. He reached home with his horse all in a lather of foam, and himself dripping wet in a perspiration of fear. For a few minutes after reaching the bar-room he could only gasp and pant.
“What ailes ye, Abe?” asked Bill Hounson. “Ye act as ef ye’d seen suthin.”
“So–so I have,” panted Abe, looking to see if the door was tightly shut. “I seen somethin’ mortal eyes never beheld since the world began. Jest’s I was passin’ Enberry’s bridge, a spirit, all blue flame, wavin’ its arms of fire, an’ waggin’ its head started down the hill after me. It chased me clean to Dave Tupmans place, the horse goin’ lickity-split al the while.” “Fer th’ love o’ tripe!” exclaimed Bert Bailey. “D’ye s’pose ’twas a real ghost?”
“I don’t care ’bout seem’ any realer,” said Abe.
“Sure ye hadn’t bin adrinkin any hard cider?” asked Bill Hounson.
“Say.” exclaimed Abe, earnestly, “I only wish it was that kind of a ghost I’d seen. This wasn’t nothin’ of that sort. It was as tall as the church steeple, and as big ’round as a hogshead. It was all on fire from head to foot, I tell you, wavin’ its flamin’ arms, and runnin’ with feet and legs all blazin’, and its head wobblin’ from side to side. Then there was the most awful smell, jest like a burnin’ lake of brimstone.
Abe’s terror was so genuine, and his fright so real, that it was communicated to his auditors. Though they hardly believed Abe had seen a ghost, they were sure he had been near something rather hair-raising. So, when the crowd in the tavern broke up a little later there were many anxious looks cast on all sides in the darkness, as the farmers made their way to their homes.
It was only two nights later that Enberry Took reported that he too had seen the ghost. It was even worse than Abe had described it, Enberry said. Closely following this came confirmation from Truem Wright and George Bennett, who told at the hotel one night how they had both been pursued by the flaming spirt, which had run after them quite a distance. Then there was no doubt about the Cardiff ghost. From one end of the village to the other the story went, carrying terror with it. Women were afraid to go out in the yard after dusk, children would not linger on the road from school, and even the farmers hesitated about journeying on the highway after supper. Nothing was talked of save the spirit, and when, three weeks after Abe had first seen it, Dr. Rood, driving home from visiting a patient, was pursued so closely by the spectre that the leather top of his buggy was scorched by the wraith’s burning arms there was intense excitement.
There was no disputing the fact that the ghost burned with real fire, for the leather of the carriage was shriveled by the heat, and the varnish was blistered. Clearly something must be done.
Enos Rasher, chairman of the town selectmen called a public meeting in the hall over Truem Wright’s grist mill. The case of the blazing ghost was gone over from the time of its first appearance, and then Enos stated the object of the gathering, which was to find a means of getting rid of the spectre.
“Who’ll undertake th’ job?” asked Enos. ”There’s no use agoin’ outside, el we kin git th’ work done t’ hum,” he went on. “Me ‘n th’ selectmen’s come t’ th conclusion that we kin offer a reword o’ twenty shillin’ t’ th man who rids Cardiff o’ th’ terrer.”
The chairman waited, but no one came forward to offer himself as a ghost-layer.
“This thing ought to be done scientific,” said Abe Crownheart, rising in his seat. “None of us has had any experience gittin’ rid of ghosts. Mebby it’s easy work, and then agin mebby it’s hard but we ought to have some one look after it what knows how to go about it. I move we hire a regular ghost exterminator, and pay him a decent day’s wages.”
The motion was seconded by several and the selectmen, accompanied by Enos, withdrew to another room for a consultation. At the close of the conference the chairman announced that the reward would be increased to $50.00 and an advertisement was to be inserted in a Syracuse paper, offering that sum to whoever would dispell the ghost.
The meeting broke up and the next day Enos Rasher took the stage for the distant city of Syracuse to have the advertisement inserted. That night the ghost was seen again by Enberry Took, whose house was nearest to where the spirit appeared. Enberry saw it, dimly luminous, floating along the hillside, and he double-locked the doors, burning a lamp all night, even sitting up with his family till morning broke.
From then on Cardiff was in a state of unrest. No one ventured near the spot, and even the Onondaga Indians, at the Castle reservation, near the town, would not pass along the road which the ghost sometimes crossed. Soon communication between Cardiff and Tully, the nearest town of any size began to fall off. The Tully people said they did not care to come to Cardiff, for the ghost might hear about them, and conclude Tully was a better place for his operations than Cardiff, transferring himself accordingly which contingency the Tully people did not care in the least to have occur. In a little while the lack of intercourse was felt, and, when the Tully Councilmen voted their town shut to and quarantined against the Cardiff folks, the inhabitants of the latter place concluded rightly that it was the last straw.
“Why,” announced Truem Wright to a group of indignant Cardiffites at the Pine Tree, “they couldn’t treat us no wuss ef we was a sufferin’ from th’ plague. Suthin’s got to be done about it, that’t all.”
Meanwhile the ghost continued to show itself. Nothing else was talked of in the town. Signs, telling of the reward were posted all over, and, one day at noon, Porter Amidown, the constable, tacked one on the fence opposite the place where the ghost most often made its appearance.
“I calcalated mebby th’ ole sinner might take notice on’t” remarked Porter, “‘n seein’ ‘s how he wan’t welcome ’round here, he might light out.”
Thus far no professional ghost-layers tried their hand at earning the $50 True, now and. then a traveling fortune hunter, a confidence man or a seller of novelties, would offer to tackle the job. One look at the spirit from a safe distance, in the fields on a dark night, was sufficient. Once a peddler, a bold swaggering enough fellow, when telling at the bar of the Pine Tree, how he would lay the ghost, fled at the first sight of the flaming figure. He never returned to claim a choice collection of jewelry he had left behind at the hotel.
In all of its wanderings the ghost had done no harm, save to scorch Dr. Rood’s carriage. It seemed as if the spectre was some unhappy wraith which, unconsumed by the fire that burned it, was doomed to haunt the place. Various explanations were given of the ghost. Some said it was the spirit of the original Cardiff Giant; others that it was the soul of some Onondaga, Indian, who had murdered his sweetheart and was wandering restlessly about the earth to expiate his crime, until the ruler of the Happy Hunting Grounds decreed that he might enter there.
A month had passed, and still the ghost held forth. The people were beginning to despair of being rid of it. One night, about an hour before sunset, when the stage from Syracuse arrived at the Cardiff post office, a stranger alighted. He was tall and thin, of dark complexion with a small black moustache. He inquired for Enos Rasher, chairman of the select men, and when the latter was found digging potatoes in the garden, the stranger introduced himself as Professor Roger Ascott.
“Wall, what kin I do fer ye?” asked Enos.
The professor silently held out a Syracuse paper and pointed to the advertisement of a ghost-hunter wanted.
“Oh,” said Enos rather dubiously, offering his hand. Then he added with more fervor. “Wall, I’m real glad t’ see ye. Are ye a real ghost-hunter?” “It is my sole business,” answered the professor, and he extended a card reading: “Professor Roger Ascott, public and Private Ghost-Layer. Spirits of all kinds dispelled with neatness and dispatch. All kinds of spectres done away with. Haunted houses a specialty. Low rates and prompt service. A trial solicited.”
“I guess you’re th’ feller we’re after,” commented Enos, after he had read the card twice. Then he told the professor all about the Cardiff ghost.
At the close of the tale to which the professor listened gravely and with attention, he said,
“Hum. Can you take me to where the spirit is seen most? I would like to get an idea of the topography of the location by daylight.”
“I’ll tel ye how t’ git thar,” replied Enos, impressively, “but ‘s fer ‘s goin’ thar’s concerned–” He paused, and the professor smiled. From a hill back of his house, however, Enos showed the scientific ghost-hunter the stamping ground of the spirit.
“Have none of you examined the neighborhood?” asked the man of science. “Perhaps the—ah–the phenomenon can easily be accounted for on natural grounds.”
“It may be, it may be,” said Enos, slowly, “but none on us calcalite on goin’ nigh ’nuff t’ see. From all accounts th’ thing’s ’bout ‘s unnatural ‘s any one ever hearn on.”
“Hum,” said the professor. “I may as well tell you that I am not after the $50, for I hunt ghosts as much for my own pleasure as for any other reason. Still I have my expense, so I usually accept a small fee. That is why I speak of low rates on my cards. If I was in the business regularly and for profit, I would have to charge more than $1,000 for getting rid of this ghost for you. Blazing ghosts are the most expensive kind there is. But as I said I am not after money.”
“I’m glad to hear that,” answered Enos, “’cause we went down purty deep in th’ treasury when we offered th’ $50. So I wish ye good luck with this job, ‘n th’ money’ll be paid over prompt.”
After securing explicit directions how to reach the haunts of the spirit the professor left Enos and trudged off in the gathering twilight.
Had any one watched him they would have seen the professor, after reaching the place, moving about and sniffing the air, as a dog does on the scent of game.
“Curious, curious,” he muttered, “um!” I wonder if–and yet how can it be? Still,” he went on, “it is natural, most natural.”
Then he moved about in a circle, still sniffing the air in deep breath. He seemed to be trying to get on the track of something. At last he appeared to have located it, for he uttered a cry of success, and hurried off up the hill.
He returned to the hotel in time for supper and found a curious throng waiting for him. To all questions he replied nothing, telling the people to have patience. Even this little hope seemed to cheer every one up, and thy felt better than they had in many weeks. They had begun to despair that the ghost would ever be laid, and, though they thought they might get used to it in time, still it was likely to be an inconvenience for quite a period.
When it was dark the professor went to his room and came back presently. There was a suspicious bulge to his right hip pocket, but no one said anything about it.
Professor Ascott started off, followed by a crowd of men, all of whom, how ever, remained near Bert Bailey’s house, refusing to go any further. So the investigator proceeded alone.
For an hour the waiting crowd stood silent in the darkness.
“There tis!” exclaimed Enos Rasher, suddenly.
The others looked, and there, sure enough, was the ghost. It towered high in the air, with outstretched arms, a figure of bluish flame, flickering and blazing. A form of terrible fire, visible half a mile away. It appeared to be about twice as large as a man.
“I guess the professor’ll have all he bargained for,” commented Abe Crown heart.
There was a silence for a moment, while the watchers saw the ghost slowly move along toward the road.
Suddenly the stillness was broken by a revolver shot, followed by two more. Then it was observed that the ghost quickly turned and ran up the hill. A sliver of red flame from the revolver followed it, and then came the sound of another shot. The spirit was seen to stop and stagger. It tried to maintain an upright position during a fierce struggle.
“Th’ perfessor’s fightin it!” exclaimed Enos, and the excitement among the watchers was intense. The next instant the ghost fell to the earth.
“By the Great Dutch Cheese, th’ perfeesor’s downed it.” cried Porter. The group of men waited, not knowing what would happen next. The spirit was now only a bluish, burning flickering spot on the side of the hill, seemingly consuming itself with its own fire. The silence which now prevailed strained the nerves of the waiting men almost, to the breaking point. They scarcely breathed. All were wondering what had become of the ghost-hunter.
Then out in the darkness, came the sound of footsteps on the road.
“Thar comes th’ Perfessor.” said Enos.
“’N some un’s ‘ith him.” added Porter. “He must be bringin’ in the ghost.”
In another minute two figures were dimly observed emerging from the blackness, and one was that of Professor Ascott. who had tight hold of another man.
“Gentlemen, the Cardiff ghost,” announced the man of science. Enos, Porter and the others peered at the captive.
“Silas Waydell!” exclaimed half a dozen.
“The same,” answered the owner of the name, “and I must say your ghost-layer here is an expert.”
To the scores of questions for an explanation Professor Ascott returned evasive replies, until he reached the hotel. There he turned the prisoner over to Constable Amidown.
“I do not know on what charge you can hold him, unless it might be getting money under false pretenses,” said the professor.
“How’s that?” asked Enos.
“Well,” the ghost-hunter went on, “he has been digging sulphur on Mr. Enberry Took’s land, and selling it. He confessed to me. Of course he did it under the pretense that he was a ghost, and so he obtained money under false pretenses.
“You see, gentlemen,” proceeded the professor, “as soon as I went to the place and smelled sulphur I knew I must be on the right track.”
“Why, that was the sulphur spring on Enberry’s land ye sniffed,” explained Enos, “it’s bin thar fer year.”
“Exactly,” said the professor, “and where there is sulphur water there must be sulphur. I investigated and found a fine deposit on the hillside, from which a considerable quantity had been taken.
“Then I suspected the truth, that some one, not entitled to it, had made the discovery, and had invented the ghost to keep curious people away. Am I correct?” he asked of the prisoner.
“Right you are, professor,” said Silas. He did not seem worried about his arrest. He was a man of peculiar talents and well known in the locality as a person about whom curious stories had been told, none pointing to his honesty.
“But what was th’ ghost?” asked Enos.
“Simply a big scarecrow of wood, coated with sulphur,” answered the professor. “Your friend here would carry it on a long pole, after setting fire to the sulphur, and so would frighten travelers. He got too near the doctor’s carriage and scorched it. After displaying the ghost he would hurry back, dig out some sulphur and cart it away. As soon as I saw the flaming figure I knew what made it burn, and a few shots from blank cartridges brought Silas to a stop. You probably saw him drop the scarecrow when I had caught him after a chase. So that is the end of the blazing ghost of Cardiff town.”
“Wall, perfessor, you’re a wonder.” commented Enos, and the others agreed with him.
The professor went back home the next day. Silas was sent to jail for a short term, a charge of stealing sulphur being the only one they could prove. But the best part of it all was that the sulphur mine on Enberry Took’s land turned out so well that he not only had enough money to pay off the mortgage, but sufficient to make him comfortable in his old age. So he and others blessed the Cardiff ghost that discovered the sulphur.
The Semi-Weekly Messenger [Wilmington NC] 21 April 1903: p. 7
Mrs Daffodil’s Aide-memoire: A rare example of a happy ending associated with that pungent mineral. More usually some benighted soul is carried off in a stench of sulphuric smoke by the Devil. Or a corpulent nobleman, who has been doing himself too well at the port, is forced by his physician to drink glasses of sulphurous swill at the spa.
That ghost-hunting person over at Haunted Ohio observes that sulphur and its attendant smells are often found at sites where petroleum is drilled and tells of a similar fiery ghost in Pennsylvania.
Mrs Daffodil invites you to join her on the curiously named “Face-book,” where you will find a feast of fashion hints, fads and fancies, and historical anecdote
You may read about a sentimental succubus, a vengeful seamstress’s ghost, Victorian mourning gone horribly wrong, and, of course, Mrs Daffodil’s efficient tidying up after a distasteful decapitation in A Spot of Bother: Four Macabre Tales.
British Association for Victorian Studies Postgraduate Pages, hosted by Carys Hudson (Queen's University Belfast) and Hollie Geary-Jones (University of Chester)
Mrs Daffodil Digresses 