Australian Hauntings: A Second Anthology of Australian Colonial Supernatural Fiction (27 page)

“It’s
all
the Reverend Thomas’ fault. I’ve never felt like this since I was a small girl out on the moors at night. He shouldn’t have talked about powers of darkness. You can’t see them, but you can feel them, if you think about it. And I never had ’til Sunday night. Oh, it was dreadful going home! And Alexander said it was all havers, but it wasn’t—I
knew
they were there. And I didn’t sleep a wink, and it wasn’t any better in the morning, and it’s got worse ever since, and I couldn’t come over and see you before because I thought you’d laugh. And then when I did come, I saw—” Her voice rose hysterically, then broke in a sob. “It’s
all
the Reverend Thomas’s fault!”

Julia, standing beside her, listened with her fine brows drawn together. She put her hand on Miss MacWhirrter’s fat little shoulder and gave her a kindly shake.

“Now I expect you feel better. There’s quite a lot in confession for some people, you know, Annie. I think myself it’s the weather. No one feels quite normal in heat like this. Also you have been overworking—haven’t you? Without any help in that barracks of a place of Alexander’s?”

Miss MacWhirrter looked up at her with comfort dawning in her eyes.

“Do you really think that’s what it is? Oh, I do hope so. Yes, I suppose I have been doing too much.” She gave a final hiccup into her handkerchief. “Oh, Julia, you are a comfort. And thank you for not laughing at me. I was so afraid you might.”

“Rubbish! I’ll go and make a cup of tea for you, and then you’ll be all right. Will you come with me, or stay here?”

She looked down with kindly eyes on the short conflict revealed in Miss MacWhirrter’s ingenuous round face.

“Oh, I think—I’ll stay here. You’ve made me feel so much better, Julia. Yes, I shall be all right here.”

“Good!”

With a reassuring pat, Julia took up the hall lamp and walked across the parlour to the dining-room, which led to the kitchen. She half-turned at the threshold to smile at Miss MacWhirrter, huddled in her chair opposite, and so she did not see, until she had passed through the doorway, the figure of a man in riding kit, standing with his back to her and leaning on the mantelpiece over the empty fireplace.

Her fingers tightened convulsively on the lamp handle, and she bit back by a colossal effort of will the shriek that rose to her lips.

The second she stood there getting a grip on herself seemed an eternity. The man at the mantelpiece must suddenly have realized she was there; for he spun round on his booted heel and looked full at her, his face illuminated in the warm glow of the lamp. She saw a queer crooked mouth and a great beak of a nose beneath brows that were inordinately thick and dark. It was a frightening face, yet somehow, strangely, a friendly one. Behind it, the clock said twenty-one minutes past seven.

“The shotgun!” Julia thought frantically. “James’s shotgun is in the corner by the sideboard just behind you. Get that, and you may be able to move him quietly, without alarming Annie.”

Keeping her gaze fixed on the eyes that stared unwinkingly at her, she stepped almost imperceptibly backwards, raising the lamp gradually as she did so, to keep the man in the circle of its light. Then in a flash she set down the lamp on the sideboard, seized the gun and levelled it.

The putting down of the lamp had unfortunately shortened its range, but she was able to see, with a sickening thump of the heart, that the man was no longer there. A glance across the room showed her the kitchen door fast, and the shutters across the windows, while no scream had come from Miss MacWhirrter in the parlour.

“He must be under the table,” She told herself desperately. “And I haven’t a hand to lift the lamp!”

She stood there gathering her strength for what seemed another eternity. Then she moved slowly sideways and forwards, covering the room with the gun and the parlour door with her person. There was enough light for her to see that he was not behind any of the chairs, which were the only other furniture in the room, and with her finger still on the trigger, her eyes alert, she pushed the door slowly back on its hinges until it was flush with the wall.

“He can’t he behind there,” she breathed. “Then he must be under the table.” Gritting her teeth, she advanced grimly to bend and prod the miscreant in the ribs with the gun. But all she saw was the oblong shadow cast by the table and the lamplight beyond it.

“No one!” she whispered; then straightened swiftly, fearing that her eyes must have played her false in their search and she was about to be attacked in the rear. Still the room was bare, and a further stoop convinced her that the table sheltered no one.

Slowly she uncocked the gun and dropped it into her right hand for use as a club, if necessary. Then she stepped over to the lamp, took it up and thoroughly searched the room, even peering up the great chimney.

“Well,” she said to herself, as she finished up weakly by the sideboard, “it must have been imagination. I’m as had as Annie MacWhirrter.” Though she was shaking all over and wet with perspiration, this admission made her give a grim little chuckle.

“Julia!” said Miss MacWhirrter’s voice from the parlour. “What are you laughing at?”

“I’m not,” lied Julia promptly. “I’m just getting the cups. The fire’s in, and I won’t be long.”

The clock showed her astonished eyes that only four minutes had passed since she came into the room.

Before she went through into the kitchen, she took from the sideboard James’s brandy decanter and poured into a teacup a stiff peg, which she drank off at a gulp.

“I must keep away from Annie,” she told herself with a shaky little laugh, “or she’ll smell spirits, and the fat will be in the fire.”

IV.

Half an hour later a distant mutter of thunder made Julia rise, on legs that still did not seem quite her own, to look out into the blackness through the window which she had had reluctantly to leave open, for fear of again scaring Miss MacWhirrter, miraculously restored by two cups of strong tea. The darkness was, if anything, thicker, but the heat was not quite so heavy; for now and again puffs of warm air, precursors of the storm, rustled in the pepper trees and stirred the lace curtains. Over in the west, as she looked, there were swift flickers of lightning. Then came another growl of thunder, perceptibly louder than the first.

“Annie,” she said, “unless you want to spend the night here, you’d better be getting home. It will probably be pouring in ten minutes’ time.”

“Oh, dear,” fluttered Miss MacWhirrter, heaving herself to her feet. “I must go, Alexander’s supper will be late as it is.” She peered fearfully past Julia. “But that dreadful drive!”

“I’ll come with you, of course,” interposed Julia swiftly.

“Oh, thank you!” The answer was full of relief and gratitude. “You are brave, Julia. I couldn’t face that drive alone. And Alexander will bring you home.… I do hope we don’t see anything.”

“Rubbish!” said Julia with a briskness she was far from feeling. “Of course we shan’t. Put on your cape. Mine is in the hall.”

As she lifted the cape to Miss MacWhirrter’s shoulders, the faint beat of hooves some distance up the street came to her tense ears on a sudden sough of wind.

“Hark!” she said. “A horse! That must be James. We’ll be at the gate by the time he is, because he always walks the mare the last mile home.”

She gathered her cloak from its peg in the hall, pushed Miss MacWhirrter out of the door and slipped the lantern off its hook. She had to stop, clutching her cloak about her in the rising wind, to help the stout little lady down the steps. Then she realized, in a disquieting flash, that she did not feel the relief she had expected to feel at the sound of James’s horse; rather, she was filled with an inexplicable sense of urgency.

“Oh,
hurry
, Annie!” she snapped, losing patience. “Fall down them if you can’t walk. Only hurry!”

“Well, really, Julia!” Miss MacWhirrter’s injured puffing changed to a shriek of terror; for outside the gate there was a sudden commotion that made Julia release her arm and go flying down the drive between the dark trees that were now bending and roaring before the storm.

She shot out of the gate on to the road, and a brilliant flash of lightning revealed her husband, half-unseated on his rearing bay and beset by three assailants. A short man was leaping, pistol in hand, for the snaffle-ring of the terrified mare; another, a tall fellow, was wrestling with the arm that strove to whip the pistol from its holster; the third was staggering back from a kick James had dealt him with his stirruped foot. Julia halted half a second in sheer horror, the lantern held above her head. Dazzled as she was by the lightning, she felt, rather than saw, the short man trying to train his pistol on James amid the plunges of the mare and near her, the third, recovering his balance, jerk his weapon up. Involuntarily she leapt forward and brought the lantern down with a swinging blow on the fellow’s head. He gave a sharp gasp and fell like a stone, while the pistol exploded harmlessly into the dust and the lantern crashed on to the road in a flare of burning oil. Simultaneously the second gun went off, somewhere near the mare’s head, and there was a yell of anguish, followed by a string of oaths and fresh snortings from the maddened mare.

“James!” shrieked Julia. “Are you alive?”

“He is and a’,” came the unmistakable accents of Mr MacWhirrter. “But by the grace of the Lord alone. Ha, wad ye, ye scoondrel?” and another flash of lightning revealed the decorous little church-warden knocking on the head the tall assailant who had bitten the dust, while the little man, the back of his skull smashed by the bay’s lashing hooves, lay motionless beyond. James, tight-lipped, was dealing with the plunging animal, on whose back he had somehow regained his seat. With a sigh of thankfulness, Julia staggered back against the Bank wall.

The next instant there were lights and voices all round them; for the uproar had penetrated Ruffie Gilligan’s bar, a hundred yards down the street, and out had rushed a score of men, who stood round clutching pistols, lanterns and heavy pewter mugs, while Ruffie himself, a genius with animals, seized the bay’s bridle and quieted her with pats and melancholy soothing noises. Julia heard James’s voice, and then he was by her side, with his arms round her.

“The closest shave I’ve ever had, my dear,” he said, “and it’s thanks to you and Mac and, as he says, the grace of the Lord that I’m not like that fellow there.” He jerked his head towards the still, dusty figure, the face of which a big man was about to cover with a grimy handkerchief.

Julia could not for the life of her say a word, but the tears were running down her cheeks as she kissed her husband, and the men who saw her there in the lantern-light revised their opinion of the Manager’s grim lady.

The big man was stooping excitedly over the body.

“’Old the light, Ben!” they heard him say. “God, if that ain’t Black Randolph! Sir!” he called to James. “Yer mare’s been an’ killed Black Randolph! I’d know ’im anywheres—a little cove with that long scar on ’is chin!”

“Black Randolph!” said James thoughtfully. “Whew! The first and last time he ever bungled a job.” He propelled his wife gently towards the gate. “Shove those two in the lock-up, Ruffie, and get someone to rug the mare and give her a bran mash. I’ll see to her later. I’ll be over soon, boys, to tell you the story, if you want to hear it. Come on up to the house, Mac, and have blessings heaped upon your head.”

They moved up the drive through a night that had become strangely silent, despite the roar of the wind and the thunder overhead and the excited voices in the street behind them. Though she leant on James’s arm, Julia realized it was more for the sheer joy of knowing he was there, and safe, than for support; now she felt perfectly calm and steady, and the air that the wind drove round them was no longer oppressive, but cool with the first heavy raindrops.

On the bottom step, where Julia had left her, sat Miss MacWhirrter, huddled like a ruffled hen in her cape.

“Annie!” exclaimed Julia, stricken with remorse.

“I didn’t even faint!” announced the little lady triumphantly. “I just sat here and shut my eyes and listened in case the children should be frightened. Julia, I knew there was someone in those bushes!”

“I believe,” said Julia, with a return of her old acidity, “that the fact you’ve proved me wrong for once is all that matters to you. Come on in and have some more tea.”

V.

According to his promise, James had visited Ruffie’s crowded bar and recounted his story; the mare was comfortably stabled; the storm was over; the MacWhirrters had just taken their leave. Julia stood arm-in-arm with her husband on the verandah, listening to the rain hissing down steadily on the hot earth.

James gave a little chuckle.

“I believe Annie will gloat all her days,” he said, “because she didn’t faint.”

“Let her,” replied Julia briefly. “You’re safe.”

“Yes, my dear,” was the grave answer. “How Providence worked it all out so neatly amazes me. Somehow Black Randolph must have found out in Mount Clancy about the gold I was to carry back with me, and if those two fellows of Tom’s hadn’t come with me I’d have been neatly disposed of somewhere on the way. Randolph knew they’d be staying at the Vicarage, so laid his little ambush for me out in the street, between there and here, when the chances were I’d be alone. All very nice—but my arrival was set for the exact moment that Mac came for Annie and you were about to bring her home.” He paused, then went on gently: “It really looks, Julia, as though the assault of Tom’s powers of darkness was repulsed at every turn by the armour of light, doesn’t it?”

She could not speak for a moment.

“I’ve been wrong at least twice today, James,” she got out at length, “and I might have known I was wrong, because it’s been a terrible day, full of warnings.”

She could see the sympathy in his blue eyes, as he half turned to her.

“Yes,” she said. “Only I could feel them, not interpret them.” She stopped, grappling with her self-command.

“Well?” he asked.

She too half turned and put her other hand on his rough sleeve.

“James, you won’t laugh at me, I know, but I must tell you this: before I took Annie home, there was a man in the dining-room, and he just disappeared.”

James’s eyebrows went up.

“Julia, he couldn’t have.”

“But he did,” she insisted. “I got the shotgun without taking my eyes off him, and he simply vanished.”

“Didn’t he go into the kitchen?”

“No, the door was shut.”

“Past you, then, into the parlour?”

“Annie was facing the door. And the windows were shut, and I looked in the cupboards and under the table and up the chimney.”

“Queer,” he said meditatively.

Julia was watching him appealingly.

“James, was it my imagination?”

“Perhaps,” he answered absently, his brows puckered as he gazed down the drive. They stood in silence for half a minute.

Suddenly she saw his head go back, and he turned sharply to face her.

“Julia,” he said urgently, “I’ve just had an idea. This man—what did he look like? Can you describe him? His face?”

“Yes,” she replied, “of course I can. My lamp was shining full on him. He had a big curved nose, a queer lop-sided mouth and the thickest black eyebrows I’ve ever seen.”

James nodded very gravely and took both her hands in his.

“I thought as much,” he said. “My dear, this will be another shock for you, but beyond all doubt the man you’ve just described was Pengelly, that very good fellow the Bank Manager of Mount Clancy, who was murdered thirteen years ago outside the Wangawarra Bank.”

She looked at him uncomprehendingly. Then, as the words slowly pierced her consciousness, like missiles whose force is almost spent, she felt herself swaying.

For the first time in her life she fainted.