Uncanny Tales

"What do you mean to do?" I went on. "You have a theory, I see. Won't you tell me what it is?"

"I have two," said Phil, rolling up a cigarette as he spoke. "It is either some queer optical illusion, partly the effect of some odd reflection outside – or it is a clever trick."

"A trick!" I exclaimed; "what possible motive could there be for a trick?"

Phil shook his head.

"Ah," he said, "that I cannot at present say."

"And what are you going to do?"

"I shall sit up to-night in the gallery and see for myself."

"Alone?" I exclaimed, with some misgiving. For big, sturdy fellow as he was, I scarcely liked to think of him – of any one– alone with that awful thing.

"I don't suppose you or Dormy would care to keep me company," he replied, "and on the whole I would rather not have you."

"I wouldn't do it," said the child honestly, "not for – for nothing."

"I shall keep Tim with me," said Philip, "I would rather have him than any one."

Tim is Phil's bull-dog, and certainly, I agreed, much better than nobody.

So it was settled.

Dormy and I went to bed unusually early that night, for as the day wore on we both felt exceedingly tired. I pleaded a headache, which was not altogether a fiction, though I repented having complained at all when I found that poor mamma immediately began worrying herself with fears that "after all" I, too, was to fall a victim to the influenza.

"I shall be all right in the morning," I assured her.

I knew no further details of Phil's arrangements. I fell asleep almost at once. I usually do. And it seemed to me that I had slept a whole night when I was awakened by a glimmering light at my door, and heard Philip's voice speaking softly.

"Are you awake, Lel?" he said, as people always say when they awake you in any untimely way. Of course, now I was awake, very much awake indeed.

"What is it?" I exclaimed eagerly, my heart beginning to beat very fast.

"Oh, nothing, nothing at all," said my brother, advancing a little into the room. "I just thought I'd look in on my way to bed to reassure you. I have seen nothing, absolutely nothing."

I do not know if I was relieved or disappointed.

"Was it moonlight?" I asked abruptly.

"No," he replied, "unluckily the moon did not come out at all, though it is nearly at the full. I carried in a small lamp, which made things less eerie. But I should have preferred the moon."

I glanced up at him. Was it the reflection of the candle he held, or did he look paler than usual?

"And," I added suddenly, "did you feel nothing?"

He hesitated.

"It – it was chilly, certainly," he said. "I fancy I must have dosed a little, for I did feel pretty cold once or twice."

"Ah, indeed!" thought I to myself. "And how about Tim?"

Phil smiled, but not very successfully.

"Well," he said, "I must confess Tim did not altogether like it. He started snarling, then he growled, and finished up with whining in a decidedly unhappy way. He's rather upset – poor old chap!"

And then I saw that the dog was beside him – rubbing up close to Philip's legs – a very dejected, reproachful Tim – all the starch taken out of him.

"Good-night, Phil," I said, turning round on my pillow. "I'm glad you are satisfied. To-morrow morning you must tell me which of your theories holds most water. Good-night, and many thanks."

He was going to say more, but my manner for the moment stopped him, and he went off.

Poor old Phil!

We had it out the next morning. He and I alone. He was not satisfied. Far from it. In the bottom of his heart I believe it was a strange yearning for a breath of human companionship, for the sound of a human voice, that had made him look in on me the night before.

For he had felt the cold passing him.

But he was very plucky.

"I'll sit up again to-night, Leila," he said.

"Not to-night," I objected. "This sort of adventure requires one to be at one's best. If you take my advice you will go to bed early and have a good stretch of sleep, so that you will be quite fresh by to-morrow. There will be a moon for some nights still."

"Why do you keep harping on the moon?" said Phil rather crossly, for him.

"Because – I have some idea that it is only in the moonlight that – that anything is to be seen."

"Bosh!" said my brother politely – he was certainly rather discomposed – "we are talking at cross-purposes. You are satisfied – "

"Far from satisfied," I interpolated.

"Well, convinced, whatever you like to call it – that the whole thing is supernatural, whereas I am equally sure it is a trick; a clever trick I allow, though I haven't yet got at the motive of it."

"You need your nerves to be at their best to discover a trick of this kind, if a trick it be," I said quietly.

Philip had left his seat, and walked up and down the room; his way of doing so gave me a feeling that he wanted to walk off some unusual consciousness of irritability. I felt half provoked and half sorry for him.

At that moment – we were alone in the drawing-room – the door opened, and Miss Larpent came in.

"I cannot find Sophy," she said, peering about through her rather short-sighted eyes, which, nevertheless, see a great deal sometimes; "do you know where she is?"

"I saw her setting off somewhere with Nugent," said Philip, stopping his quarter-deck exercise for a moment.

"Ah, then it is hopeless. I suppose I must resign myself to very irregular ways for a little longer," Miss Larpent replied with a smile.

She is not young, and not good looking, but she is gifted with a delightful way of smiling, and she is – well, the dearest and almost the wisest of women.

She looked at Philip as he spoke. She had known us nearly since our babyhood.

"Is there anything the matter?" she said suddenly. "You look fagged, Leila, and Philip seems worried."

I glanced at Philip. He understood me.

"Yes," he replied, "I am irritated, and Leila is – " he hesitated.

"What?" asked Miss Larpent.

"Oh, I don't know – obstinate, I suppose. Sit down, Miss Larpent, and hear our story. Leila, you can tell it."

I did so – first obtaining a promise of secrecy, and making Phil relate his own experience.

Our new confidante listened attentively, her face very grave. When she had heard all, she said quietly, after a moment's silence: —

"It's very strange, very. Philip, if you will wait till to-morrow night, and I quite agree with Leila that you had better do so, I will sit up with you. I have pretty good nerves, and I have always wanted an experience of that kind."

"Then you don't think it is a trick?" I said eagerly. I was like Dormer, divided between my real underlying longing to explain the thing, and get rid of the horror of it, and a half childish wish to prove that I had not exaggerated its ghastliness.

"I will tell you that the day after to-morrow," she said. I could not repress a little shiver as she spoke.

She had good nerves, and she was extremely sensible.

But I almost blamed myself afterwards for having acquiesced in the plan. For the effect on her was very great. They never told me exactly what happened; "You know," said Miss Larpent. I imagine their experience was almost precisely similar to Dormy's and mine, intensified, perhaps, by the feeling of loneliness. For it was not till all the rest of the family was in bed that this second vigil began. It was a bright moonlight night – they had the whole thing complete.

It was impossible to throw off the effect; even in the daytime the four of us who had seen and heard, shrank from the gallery, and made any conceivable excuse for avoiding it.

But Phil, however convinced, behaved consistently. He examined the closed door thoroughly, to detect any possible trickery. He explored the attics, he went up and down the staircase leading to the offices, till the servants must have thought he was going crazy. He found nothing– no vaguest hint even as to why the gallery was chosen by the ghostly shadow for its nightly round.

Strange to say, however, as the moon waned, our horror faded, so that we almost began to hope the thing was at an end, and to trust that in time we should forget about it. And we congratulated ourselves that we had kept our own counsel and not disturbed any of the others – even father, who would, no doubt, have hooted at the idea – by the baleful whisper that our charming castle by the sea was haunted!

And the days passed by, growing into weeks. The second detachment of our guests had left, and a third had just arrived, when one morning as I was waiting at what we called "the sea-door" for some of the others to join me in a walk along the sands, some one touched me on the shoulder. It was Philip.

"Leila," he said, "I am not happy about Dormer. He is looking ill again, and – "

"I thought he seemed so much stronger," I said, surprised and distressed, "quite rosy, and so much merrier."

"So he was till a few days ago," said Philip. "But if you notice him well you'll see that he's getting that white look again. And – I've got it into my head – he is an extraordinarily sensitive child, that it has something to do with the moon. It's getting on to the full."

For the moment I stupidly forgot the association.

"Really, Phil," I said, "you are too absurd! Do you actually – oh," as he was beginning to interrupt me, and my face fell, I feel sure – "you don't mean about the gallery."

"Yes, I do," he said.

"How? Has Dormy told you anything?" and a sort of sick feeling came over me. "I had begun to hope," I went on, "that somehow it had gone; that, perhaps, it only comes once a year at a certain season, or possibly that newcomers see it at the first and not again. Oh, Phil, we can't stay here, however nice it is, if it is really haunted."

"Dormy hasn't said much," Philip replied. "He only told me he had felt the cold once or twice, 'since the moon came again,' he said. But I can see the fear of more is upon him. And this determined me to speak to you. I have to go to London for ten days or so, to see the doctors about my leave, and a few other things. I don't like it for you and Miss Larpent if – if this thing is to return – with no one else in your confidence, especially on Dormy's account. Do you think we must tell father before I go?"

I hesitated. For many reasons I was reluctant to do so. Father would be exaggeratedly sceptical at first, and then, if he were convinced, as I knew he would be, he would go to the other extreme and insist upon leaving Finster, and there would be a regular upset, trying for mother and everybody concerned. And mother liked the place, and was looking so much better!

"After all," I said, "it has not hurt any of us. Miss Larpent got a shake, so did I. But it wasn't as great a shock to us as to you, Phil, to have to believe in a ghost. And we can avoid the gallery while you are away. No, except for Dormy, I would rather keep it to ourselves – after all, we are not going to live here always. Yet it is so nice, it seems such a pity."

It was such an exquisite morning; the air, faintly breathing of the sea, was like elixir; the heights and shadows on the cliffs, thrown out by the darker woods behind, were indeed, as Janet Miles had said, "wonderful".

"Yes," Phil agreed, "it is an awful nuisance. But as for Dormy," he went on, "supposing I get mother to let me take him with me? He'd be as jolly as a sand-boy in London, and my old landlady would look after him like anything if ever I had to be out late. And I'd let my doctor see him – quietly, you know – he might give him a tonic or something."

I heartily approved of the idea. So did mamma when Phil broached it – she, too, had thought her "baby" looking quite pale lately. A London doctor's opinion would be such a satisfaction. So it was settled, and the very next day the two set off. Dormer, in his "old-fashioned," reticent way, in the greatest delight, though only by one remark did the brave little fellow hint at what was, no doubt, the principal cause of his satisfaction.

"The moon will be long past the full when we come back," he said. "And after that there'll only be one other time before we go, won't there, Leila? We've only got this house for three months?"

"Yes," I said, "father only took it for three," though in my heart I knew it was with the option of three more – six in all.

And Miss Larpent and I were left alone, not with the ghost, certainly, but with our fateful knowledge of its unwelcome proximity.

We did not speak of it to each other, but we tacitly avoided the gallery, even, as much as possible, in the daytime. I felt, and so, she has since confessed, did she, that it would be impossible to endure that cold without betraying ourselves.

And I began to breathe more freely, trusting that the dread of the shadow's possible return was really only due to the child's overwrought nerves.

Till – one morning – my fool's paradise was abruptly destroyed.

Father came in late to breakfast – he had been for an early walk, he said, to get rid of a headache. But he did not look altogether as if he had succeeded in doing so.

"Leila," he said, as I was leaving the room after pouring out his coffee – mamma was not yet allowed to get up early – "Leila, don't go. I want to speak to you."

I stopped short, and turned towards the table. There was something very odd about his manner. He is usually hearty and eager, almost impetuous in his way of speaking.

"Leila," he began again, "you are a sensible girl, and your nerves are strong, I fancy. Besides, you have not been ill like the others. Don't speak of what I am going to tell you."

I nodded in assent; I could scarcely have spoken. My heart was beginning to thump. Father would not have commended my nerves had he known it.

"Something odd and inexplicable happened last night," he went on. "Nugent and I were sitting in the gallery. It was a mild night, and the moon magnificent. We thought the gallery would be pleasanter than the smoking-room, now that Phil and his pipes are away. Well – we were sitting quietly. I had lighted my reading-lamp on the little table at one end of the room, and Nugent was half lying in his chair, doing nothing in particular except admiring the night, when all at once he started violently with an exclamation, and, jumping up, came towards me. Leila, his teeth were chattering, and he was blue with cold. I was very much alarmed – you know how ill he was at college. But in a moment or two he recovered.

"'What on earth is the matter?' I said to him. He tried to laugh.

"'I really don't know,' he said; 'I felt as if I had had an electric shock of cold– but I'm all right again now.'

"I went into the dining-room, and made him take a little brandy and water, and sent him off to bed. Then I came back, still feeling rather uneasy about him, and sat down with my book, when, Leila – you will scarcely credit it – I myself felt the same shock exactly. A perfectly hideous thrill of cold. That was how it began. I started up, and then, Leila, by degrees, in some instinctive way, I seemed to realise what had caused it. My dear child, you will think I have gone crazy when I tell you that there was a shadow – a shadow in the moonlight —chasing me, so to say, round the room, and once again it caught me up, and again came that appalling sensation. I would not give in. I dodged it after that, and set myself to watch it, and then – "

I need not quote my father further; suffice to say his experience matched that of the rest of us entirely – no, I think it surpassed them. It was the worst of all.

Poor father! I shuddered for him. I think a shock of that kind is harder upon a man than upon a woman. Our sex is less sceptical, less entrenched in sturdy matters of fact, more imaginative, or whatever you like to call the readiness to believe what we cannot explain. And it was astounding to me to see how my father at once capitulated – never even alluding to a possibility of trickery. Astounding, yet at the same time not without a certain satisfaction in it. It was almost a relief to find others in the same boat with ourselves.

I told him at once all we had to tell, and how painfully exercised we had been as to the advisability of keeping our secret to ourselves. I never saw father so impressed; he was awfully kind, too, and so sorry for us. He made me fetch Miss Larpent, and we held a council of – I don't know what to call it! – not "war," assuredly, for none of us thought of fighting the ghost. How could one fight a shadow?

We decided to do nothing beyond endeavouring to keep the affair from going further. During the next few days father arranged to have some work done in the gallery which would prevent our sitting there, without raising any suspicions on mamma's or Sophy's part.

"And then," said father, "we must see. Possibly this extraordinary influence only makes itself felt periodically."

"I am almost certain it is so," said Miss Larpent.

"And in this case," he continued, "we may manage to evade it. But I do not feel disposed to continue my tenancy here after three months are over. If once the servants get hold of the story, and they are sure to do so sooner or later, it would be unendurable – the worry and annoyance would do your mother far more harm than any good effect the air and change have had upon her."

I was glad to hear this decision. Honestly, I did not feel as if I could stand the strain for long, and it might kill poor little Dormy.

But where should we go? Our own home would be quite uninhabitable till the autumn, for extensive alterations and repairs were going on there. I said this to father.

"Yes," he agreed, "it is not convenient," – and he hesitated. "I cannot make it out," he went on, "Miles would have been sure to know if the house had a bad name in any way. I think I will go over and see him to-day, and tell him all about it – at least I shall inquire about some other house in the neighbourhood – and perhaps I will tell him our reason for leaving this."

He did so – he went over to Raxtrew that very afternoon, and, as I quite anticipated would be the case, he told me on his return that he had taken both our friends into his confidence.

"They are extremely concerned about it," he said, "and very sympathising, though, naturally, inclined to think us a parcel of very weak-minded folk indeed. But I am glad of one thing – the Rectory there, is to be let from the first of July for three months. Miles took me to see it. I think it will do very well – it is quite out of the village, for you really can't call it a town – and a nice little place in its way. Quite modern, and as unghost-like as you could wish, bright and cheery."

"And what will mamma think of our leaving so soon?" I asked.

But as to this father reassured me. He had already spoken of it to her, and somehow she did not seem disappointed. She had got it into her head that Finster did not suit Dormy, and was quite disposed to think that three months of such strong air were enough at a time.

"Then have you decided upon Raxtrew Rectory?" I asked.

"I have the refusal of it," said my father. "But you will be almost amused to hear that Miles begged me not to fix absolutely for a few days. He is coming to us to-morrow, to spend the night."

"You mean to see for himself?"

Father nodded.

"Poor Mr. Miles!" I ejaculated. "You won't sit up with him, I hope, father?"

"I offered to do so, but he won't hear of it," was the reply. "He is bringing one of his keepers with him – a sturdy, trustworthy young fellow, and they two with their revolvers are going to nab the ghost, so he says. We shall see. We must manage to prevent our servants suspecting anything."

This was managed. I need not go into particulars. Suffice to say that the sturdy keeper reached his own home before dawn on the night of the vigil, no endeavours of his master having succeeded in persuading him to stay another moment at Finster, and that Mr. Miles himself looked so ill the next morning when he joined us at the breakfast-table that we, the initiated, could scarcely repress our exclamations, when Sophy, with the curious instinct of touching a sore place which some people have, told him that he looked exactly "as if he had seen a ghost".

His experience had been precisely similar to ours. After that we heard no more from him – about the pity it was to leave a place that suited us so well, etc., etc. On the contrary, before he left, he told my father and myself that he thought us uncommonly plucky for staying out the three months, though at the same time he confessed to feeling completely nonplussed.

"I have lived near Finster St. Mabyn's all my life," he said, "and my people before me, and never, do I honestly assure you, have I heard one breath of the old place being haunted. And in a shut-up neighbourhood like this, such a thing would have leaked out."

We shook our heads, but what could we say?