Gaslit Horror (18 page)

Again the sun was setting, lighting up the scene with golden glory. Suddenly Amyn gripped his companion tightly by the arm. Pointing out over the water, he exclaimed, excitedly:—

“There is precisely what I saw the other evening. The ‘Spirit of the Fjord' the Captain calls her. Can't you see her—yonder in that skiff?”

His friend looked in the direction indicated, but could see nothing.

“That is very strange,” said Amyn, thoughtfully, “I certainly saw her a moment ago, but now she has vanished.”

Three days afterwards, in the evening, it being somewhat cold, the male section of the passengers was in the smoking-room. Presently the Captain joined them. Someone introduced the subject of the legend he had told them a night or two previously. As he answered he glanced quickly round the room.

“By the way,” he asked, “where is our friend Amyn?”

Scarcely were the words spoken than the door opened and the scared face of the man who had been walking with Amyn appeared.

“Will you come with me at once, Doctor?” he asked, directly addressing that gentleman. “Something very serious has happened.”

The Doctor immediately complied with the request. The Captain, signing to the others, remained seated to await his report.

The two men soon reappeared. Their faces wore a grave, awestricken expression. The Doctor addressed the Captain:—

“Sir,” said he, “it is my painful duty to inform you that an hour ago Mr. Amyn died very suddenly.” His words created a profound sensation. “Of course I shall have to make a post-mortem examination, but at present his death is a mystery. Mr. Winterton, will you please explain to the Captain under what circumstances you found Mr. Amyn?”

“Not feeling very well, I did not go down to dinner this evening, thinking that a walk would relieve the headache and depression from which I was suffering. I had taken three or four turns up and down the deck when I noticed that someone was leaning over the stern-rail. Seeing that it was neither one of the crew, nor yet an officer, I was curious to know who was omitting dinner from the day's programme.

“I walked aft. As I approached I recognized poor Amyn. He was standing in an attitude of strained attention, evidently watching something intently. I might say that last evening I was walking with him when, pointing over the water he asked me if I could see a girl in a skiff. Thinking he was again under the impression that he saw the vision, I went up to him and laughingly remarked, ‘Are you receiving another visit from the Spirit of the Fjord, Amyn?”

“He did not answer, nor, indeed, did he appear to have heard me. Going nearer I said, ‘You seem very much absorbed in your dreams, old fellow. Are you not going down to dinner?' ”

“Still he took no notice. I saw that his eyes were staring fixedly out over the water, that his face was pale as though from intense excitement. For a minute or two I looked at him in silence. Then a curious feeling came over me—a feeling of dread I never wish to experience again. I tapped him on the shoulder. My touch disturbed the perfect balance of his body. He fell full length upon the deck. He was quite dead.”

An ejaculation of horror escaped Winterton's listeners. After a moment, he added:—

“For a minute or two I was too overcome to move. I did not wish to make a scene during dinner, or unnecessarily to alarm the other passengers, so obtaining assistance, we carried him down to his cabin and laid him in his bunk. Then I sat by him, dazed and horror-stricken, till I came up here to ask the Doctor to come and see him. I tell you, gentlemen, the shock was very terrible.”

The Captain listened in silence, then beckoning to the Doctor and muttering some words under his breath, he rose and, followed by his brother-officer, left the room.

For some time after he had gone no one spoke. Winterton, who had been sitting next to the Captain, broke the silence.

“Did any of you hear what the Captain said just before he went out?” he asked.

No one had.

“My God, the Spirit of the Fjord again,” repeated Winterton, gravely.

When Arthur Jephson wrote to me to join his Christmas party at Northavon Priory, I was set wondering where I had heard the name of this particular establishment. I felt certain that I had heard the name before, but I could not recollect for the moment whether I had come upon it in a newspaper report of a breach of promise of marriage or in a Blue-Book bearing upon Inland Fisheries: I rather inclined to the belief that it was in a Blue-Book of some sort. I had been devoting myself some years previously to an exhaustive study of this form of literature; for being very young, I had had a notion that a Blue-Book education was essential to any one with parliamentary aspirations. Yes, I had, I repeat, been very young at that time, and I had not found out that a Blue-Book is the
oubliette
of inconvenient facts.

It was not until I had promised Arthur to be with him on Christmas Eve that I recollected where I had read something about Northavon Priory, and in a moment I understood how it was I had acquired the notion that the name had appeared in an official document. I had read a good deal about this Priory in a curious manuscript which I had unearthed at Sir Dennis le Warden's place in Norfolk, known as Marsh Towers. The document, which, with many others, I found stowed away in a wall-cupboard in the great library, purported to be a draft of the evidence taken before one of the Commissions appointed by King Henry VIII to inquire into the abuses alleged to be associated with certain religious houses throughout England. An ancestor of Sir Dennis's had, it appeared, been a member of one of these Commissions, and he had taken a note of the evidence which he had in the course of his duties handed to the King.

The parchments had, I learned, been preserved in an iron coffer with double padlocks, but the keys had been lost at some remote period, and then the coffer had been covered over with lumber in a room in the east tower overlooking the moat, until an outbreak of fire had resulted in an overturning of the rubbish and a discovery of the coffer. A blacksmith had been employed to pick the locks, which he did with a sledge-hammer; but it was generally admitted that his energy had been wasted when the contents of the box were made known. Sir Dennis cared about nothing except the improvement of the breed of horses through the agency of race meetings, so the manuscripts of his painstaking ancestor were bundled into one of the presses in the library, some, however, being reserved by the intelligent housekeeper in the still-room to make jam-pot covers—a purpose for which, as she explained to me at considerable length, they were extremely well adapted.

I had no great difficulty in deciphering those that came under my hand, for I had had considerable experience of the tricks of early English writers; and as I read I became greatly interested in all the original “trustie and well-beelou'd Sir Denice le Warden” had written. The frankness of the evidence which he had collected on certain points took away my breath, although I had been long accustomed to the directness with which some of the fifteenth-century people expressed themselves.

Northavon Priory was among the religious houses whose practices had formed the subject of the inquiry, and it was the summary of Sir Denice's notes regarding the Black Masses alleged to have been celebrated within its walls that proved so absorbing to me. The bald account of the nature of these orgies would of itself have been sufficient, if substantiated, to bring about the dissolution of all the order in England. The Black Mass was a pagan revel, the details of which were unspeakable, though their nature was more than hinted at by the King's Commissioner. Anything so monstrously blasphemous could not be imagined by the mind of man, for with the pagan orgie there was mixed up the most solemn rite of the Mass. It ws celebrated on the night of Christmas Eve, and at the hour of midnight the celebration culminated in an invocation to the devil, written so as to parody an office of the Church, and, according to the accounts of some witnesses, in a human sacrifice. Upon this latter point, however, Sir Denice admitted there was a diversity of opinion.

One of the witnesses examined was a man who had entered the Priory grounds from the river during a fearful tempest, on one Christmas Eve, and had, he said, witnessed the revel through a window to which he had climbed. He declared that at the hour of midnight the candles had been extinguished, but that a moment afterwards an awful red light had floated through the room, followed by the shrieks of a human being at the point of strangulation, and then by horrible yells of laughter. Another man who was examined had been a wood-cutter in the service of the Priory, and he had upon one occasion witnessed the celebration of a Black Mass; but he averred that no life was sacrificed, though he admitted that in the strange red light, which had flashed through the room, he had seen what appeared to be two men struggling on the floor. In the general particulars of the orgie there was, however, no diversity of opinion, and had the old Sir Denice le Warden been anything of a comparative mythologist, he could scarcely fail to have been greatly interested in being brought face to face with so striking an example of the survival of an ancient superstition within the walls of a holy building.

During a rainy week I amused myself among the parchments dealing with Northavon Priory, and although what I read impressed me greatly at the time, yet three years of pretty hard work in various parts of the world had so dulled my memory of any incident so unimportant as the deciphering of a mouldy document that, as I have already stated, it was not until I had posted my letter to Arthur Jephson agreeing to spend a day or two with his party, that I succeeded in recalling something of what I had read regarding Northavon Priory.

I had taken it for granted that the Priory had been demolished when Henry had superintended the dissolution of the religious establishments throughout the country: I did not think it likely that one with such a record as was embodied in the notes would be allowed to remain with a single stone on another. A moment's additional reflection admitted of my perceiving how extremely unlikely it was that, even if Northavon Priory had been spared by the King, it would still be available for visitors during the latter years of the nineteenth century. I had seen many red-brick “abbeys” and “priories” in various parts of the country, not more than ten years old, inhabited mostly by gentlemen who had made fortunes in iron, or perhaps lard, which constitutes, I understand, an excellent foundation for a fortune. There might be, for all I knew, a score of Northavon Priories in England. Arthur Jephson's father had made his money by the judicious advertising of a certain oriental rug manufactured in the Midlands, and I thought it very likely that he had built a mansion for himself which he had called Northavon Priory.

A letter which I received from Arthur set my mind at rest. He explained to me very fully that Northavon Priory was a hotel built within the walls of an ancient religious house. He had spent a delightful month fishing in the river during the summer—I had been fishing in the Amazon at that time—and had sojourned at the hotel, which he had found to be a marvel of comfort in spite of its picturesqueness. This was why, he said, he had thought how jolly it would be to entertain a party of his friends at the place during the Christmas week.

That explanation was quite good enough for me. I had a week or two to myself in England before going to India, and so soon as I recalled what I had read regarding Northavon Priory, I felt glad that my liking for Jephson had induced me to accept his invitation.

It was not until we were travelling together to the station nearest to the Priory that he mentioned to me, quite incidentally, that during the summer he had been fortunate enough to make the acquaintance of a young woman who resided in a spacious mansion within easy distance of the Priory Hotel, and who was, so far as he was capable of judging—and he considered that in such matters his judgment was worth something—the most charming girl in England.

“I see,” I remarked, before his preliminary panegyric had quite come to a legitimate conclusion—“I see all now: you haven't the courage—to be more exact, the impudence—to come down alone to the hotel—she has probably a brother who is a bit of an athlete—but you think that Tom Singleton and I will form a good enough excuse for an act on your part which parents and guardians can construe in one way only.”

“Well, perhaps—Hang it all, man, you needn't attribute to me any motives but those of the purest hospitality,” laughed my companion. “Isn't the prospect of a genuine old English Christmas—the Yule log, and that sort of thing—good enough for you without going any further?”

“It's quite good enough for me,” I replied. “I only regret that it is not good enough for you. You expect to see her every day?”

“Every day? Don't be a fool, Jim. If I see her more than four times in the course of the week—I think I should manage to see her four times—I will consider myself exceptionally lucky.”

“And if you see her less than four times you will reckon yourself uncommonly unlucky?”

“O, I think I have arranged for four times all right: I'll have to trust to luck for the rest.”

“What! You mean to say that the business has gone as far as that?”

“As what?”

“As making arrangements for meeting with her?”

My friend laughed complacently.

“Well, you see, old chap, I couldn't very well give you this treat without letting her know that I should be in the neighbourhood,” said he.

“Oh, indeed. I don't see, however, what the—.”

“Great heavens! You mean to say that you don't see—Oh, you will have your joke.”

“I hope I will have one eventually; I can't say that I perceive much chance of one at present, however. You'll not give us much of your interesting society during the week of our treat, as you call it.”

“I'll give you as much of it as I can spare—more than you'll be likely to relish, perhaps. A week's a long time, Jim.”

“ ‘Time travels at divers paces with divers persons,' my friend. I suppose she's as lovely as any of the others of past years?”

“As lovely! Jim, she's just the—”

“Don't trouble yourself over the description. I have a vivid recollection of the phrases you employed in regard to the others. There was Lily, and Gwen, and Bee, and—yes, by George! there was a fourth; her name was Nelly, or—”

“All flashes in the pan, my friend. I didn't know my own mind in those old days; but now, thank heaven!—Oh, you'll agree with me when you see her. This is the real thing and no mistake.”

He was good enough to give me a genuine lover's description of the young woman, whose name was, he said, Sylvia St. Leger; but it did not differ materially from the descriptions which had come from him in past days, of certainly four other girls for whom he had, he imagined, entertained a devotion strong as death itself. Alas! his devotion had not survived a single year in any case.

When we arrived at the hotel, after a drive of eight miles from the railway station, we found Tom Singleton waiting for us rather impatiently, and in a quarter of an hour we were facing an excellent dinner. We were the only guests at the hotel, for though it was picturesquely situated on the high bank of the river, and was doubtless a delightful place for a sojourn in summer, yet in winter it possessed few attractions to casual visitors.

After dinner I strolled over the house, and found, to my surprise, that the old walls of the Priory were practically intact. The kitchen was also unchanged, but the great refectory was now divided into four rooms. The apartments upstairs had plainly been divided in the same way by brick partitions; but the outer walls, pierced with narrow windows, were those of the original Priory.

In the morning I made further explorations, only outside the building, and came upon the ruins of the old Priory tower; and then I perceived that only a small portion of the original building had been utilised for the hotel. The landlord, who accompanied me, was certainly no antiquarian. He told me that he had been “let in” so far as the hotel was concerned. He had been given to understand that the receipts for the summer months were sufficiently great to compensate for the absence of visitors during the winter; but his experience of one year had not confirmed this statement, made by the people from whom he had bought the place, and he had come to the conclusion that, as he had been taken in in the transaction, it was his duty to try to take in some one else in the same way.

“I only hope that I may succeed, sir,” he said, “but I'm doubtful about it. People are getting more suspicious every day.”

“You weren't suspicious, at any rate,” said I.

“That I weren't—more's the pity, sir,” said he. “But it'll take me all my time to get the place off my hands, I know. Ah, yes; it's hard to get people to take your word for anything nowadays.”

For the next two days Tom Singleton and I were left a good deal together, the fact being that our friend Arthur parted from us after lunch and only returned in time for dinner, declaring upon each occasion that he had just passed the pleasantest day of his life. On Christmas Eve he came to us in high spirits, bearing with him an invitation from a lady who had attained distinction, through being the mother of Miss St. Leger, for us to spend Christmas Day at her house—it had already been pointed out to us by Arthur: it was a fine Georgian country house, named The Grange.

“I've accepted for you both,” said Arthur. “Mrs. St. Leger is a most charming woman, and her daughter—I don't know if I mentioned that she had a daughter—well, if I omitted, I am now in a position to assure you that her daughter—her name is Sylvia—is possibly the most beautiful—But there's no use trying to describe her; you'll see her for yourselves tomorrow, and judge if I've exaggerated in the least when I say that the world does not contain a more exquisite creature.”