In the year 1775, there stood upon the borders of Epping
Forest, at a distance of about twelve miles from London--measuring from the
Standard in Cornhill,' or rather from the spot on or near to which the Standard
used to be in days of yore--a house of public entertainment called the Maypole;
which fact was demonstrated to all such travellers as could neither read nor
write (and at that time a vast number both of travellers and stay-at-homes were
in this condition) by the emblem reared on the roadside over against the house,
which, if not of those goodly proportions that Maypoles were wont to present in
olden times, was a fair young ash, thirty feet in height, and straight as any
arrow that ever English yeoman drew.
The Maypole--by which term from henceforth is meant the house, and not its
sign--the Maypole was an old building, with more gable ends than a lazy man
would care to count on a sunny day; huge zig-zag chimneys, out of which it
seemed as though even smoke could not choose but come in more than naturally
fantastic shapes, imparted to it in its tortuous progress; and vast stables,
gloomy, ruinous, and empty. The place was said to have been built in the days of
King Henry the Eighth; and there was a legend, not only that Queen Elizabeth had
slept there one night while upon a hunting excursion, to wit, in a certain oak-panelled
room with a deep bay window, but that next morning, while standing on a mounting
block before the door with one foot in the stirrup, the virgin monarch had then
and there boxed and cuffed an unlucky page for some neglect of duty. The
matter-of-fact and doubtful folks, of whom there were a few among the Maypole
customers, as unluckily there always are in every little community, were
inclined to look upon this tradition as rather apocryphal; but, whenever the
landlord of that ancient hostelry appealed to the mounting block itself as
evidence, and triumphantly pointed out that there it stood in the same place to
that very day, the doubters never failed to be put down by a large majority, and
all true believers exulted as in a victory.
Whether these, and many other stories of the like nature, were true or
untrue, the Maypole was really an old house, a very old house, perhaps as old as
it claimed to be, and perhaps older, which will sometimes happen with houses of
an uncertain, as with ladies of a certain, age. Its windows were old
diamond-pane lattices, its floors were sunken and uneven, its ceilings blackened
by the hand of time, and heavy with massive beams. Over the doorway was an
ancient porch, quaintly and grotesquely carved; and here on summer evenings the
more favoured customers smoked and drank--ay, and sang many a good song too,
sometimes--reposing on two grim-looking high-backed settles, which, like the
twin dragons of some fairy tale, guarded the entrance to the mansion.
In the chimneys of the disused rooms, swallows had built their nests for many
a long year, and from earliest spring to latest autumn whole colonies of
sparrows chirped and twittered in the eaves. There were more pigeons about the
dreary stable-yard and out-buildings than anybody but the landlord could reckon
up. The wheeling and circling flights of runts, fantails, tumblers, and pouters,
were perhaps not quite consistent with the grave and sober character of the
building, but the monotonous cooing, which never ceased to be raised by some
among them all day long, suited it exactly, and seemed to lull it to rest. With
its overhanging stories, drowsy little panes of glass, and front bulging out and
projecting over the pathway, the old house looked as if it were nodding in its
sleep. Indeed, it needed no very great stretch of fancy to detect in it other
resemblances to humanity. The bricks of which it was built had originally been a
deep dark red, but had grown yellow and discoloured like an old man's skin; the
sturdy timbers had decayed like teeth; and here and there the ivy, like a warm
garment to comfort it in its age, wrapt its green leaves closely round the
time-worn walls.
It was a hale and hearty age though, still: and in the summer or autumn
evenings, when the glow of the setting sun fell upon the oak and chestnut trees
of the adjacent forest, the old house, partaking of its lustre, seemed their fit
companion, and to have many good years of life in him yet.
The evening with which we have to do, was neither a summer nor an autumn one,
but the twilight of a day in March, when the wind howled dismally among the bare
branches of the trees, and rumbling in the wide chimneys and driving the rain
against the windows of the Maypole Inn, gave such of its frequenters as chanced
to be there at the moment an undeniable reason for prolonging their stay, and
caused the landlord to prophesy that the night would certainly clear at eleven
o'clock precisely,--which by a remarkable coincidence was the hour at which he
always closed his house.
The name of him upon whom the spirit of prophecy thus descended was John
Willet, a burly, large-headed man with a fat face, which betokened profound
obstinacy and slowness of apprehension, combined with a very strong reliance
upon his own merits. It was John Willet's ordinary boast in his more placid
moods that if he were slow he was sure; which assertion could, in one sense at
least, be by no means gainsaid, seeing that he was in everything unquestionably
the reverse of fast, and withal one of the most dogged and positive fellows in
existence--always sure that what he thought or said or did was right, and
holding it as a thing quite settled and ordained by the laws of nature and
Providence, that anybody who said or did or thought otherwise must be inevitably
and of necessity wrong.
Mr Willet walked slowly up to the window, flattened his fat nose against the
cold glass, and shading his eyes that his sight might not be affected by the
ruddy glow of the fire, looked abroad. Then he walked slowly back to his old
seat in the chimney-corner, and, composing himself in it with a slight shiver,
such as a man might give way to and so acquire an additional relish for the warm
blaze, said, looking round upon his guests:
'It'll clear at eleven o'clock. No sooner and no later. Not before and not
arterwards.'
'How do you make out that?' said a little man in the opposite corner. 'The
moon is past the full, and she rises at nine.'
John looked sedately and solemnly at his questioner until he had brought his
mind to bear upon the whole of his observation, and then made answer, in a tone
which seemed to imply that the moon was peculiarly his business and nobody
else's:
'Never you mind about the moon. Don't you trouble yourself about her. You let
the moon alone, and I'll let you alone.'
'No offence I hope?' said the little man.
Again John waited leisurely until the observation had thoroughly penetrated
to his brain, and then replying, 'No offence as YET,' applied a light to his
pipe and smoked in placid silence; now and then casting a sidelong look at a man
wrapped in a loose riding- coat with huge cuffs ornamented with tarnished silver
lace and large metal buttons, who sat apart from the regular frequenters of the
house, and wearing a hat flapped over his face, which was still further shaded
by the hand on which his forehead rested, looked unsociable enough.
There was another guest, who sat, booted and spurred, at some distance from
the fire also, and whose thoughts--to judge from his folded arms and knitted
brows, and from the untasted liquor before him--were occupied with other matters
than the topics under discussion or the persons who discussed them. This was a
young man of about eight-and-twenty, rather above the middle height, and though
of somewhat slight figure, gracefully and strongly made. He wore his own dark
hair, and was accoutred in a riding dress, which together with his large boots
(resembling in shape and fashion those worn by our Life Guardsmen at the present
day), showed indisputable traces of the bad condition of the roads. But travel-
stained though he was, he was well and even richly attired, and without being
overdressed looked a gallant gentleman.
Lying upon the table beside him, as he had carelessly thrown them down, were
a heavy riding-whip and a slouched hat, the latter worn no doubt as being best
suited to the inclemency of the weather. There, too, were a pair of pistols in a
holster-case, and a short riding-cloak. Little of his face was visible, except
the long dark lashes which concealed his downcast eyes, but an air of careless
ease and natural gracefulness of demeanour pervaded the figure, and seemed to
comprehend even those slight accessories, which were all handsome, and in good
keeping.
Towards this young gentleman the eyes of Mr Willet wandered but once, and
then as if in mute inquiry whether he had observed his silent neighbour. It was
plain that John and the young gentleman had often met before. Finding that his
look was not returned, or indeed observed by the person to whom it was
addressed, John gradually concentrated the whole power of his eyes into one
focus, and brought it to bear upon the man in the flapped hat, at whom he came
to stare in course of time with an intensity so remarkable, that it affected his
fireside cronies, who all, as with one accord, took their pipes from their lips,
and stared with open mouths at the stranger likewise.
The sturdy landlord had a large pair of dull fish-like eyes, and the little
man who had hazarded the remark about the moon (and who was the parish-clerk and
bell-ringer of Chigwell, a village hard by) had little round black shiny eyes
like beads; moreover this little man wore at the knees of his rusty black
breeches, and on his rusty black coat, and all down his long flapped waistcoat,
little queer buttons like nothing except his eyes; but so like them, that as
they twinkled and glistened in the light of the fire, which shone too in his
bright shoe-buckles, he seemed all eyes from head to foot, and to be gazing with
every one of them at the unknown customer. No wonder that a man should grow
restless under such an inspection as this, to say nothing of the eyes belonging
to short Tom Cobb the general chandler and post-office keeper, and long Phil
Parkes the ranger, both of whom, infected by the example of their companions,
regarded him of the flapped hat no less attentively.
The stranger became restless; perhaps from being exposed to this raking fire
of eyes, perhaps from the nature of his previous meditations--most probably from
the latter cause, for as he changed his position and looked hastily round, he
started to find himself the object of such keen regard, and darted an angry and
suspicious glance at the fireside group. It had the effect of immediately
diverting all eyes to the chimney, except those of John Willet, who finding
himself as it were, caught in the fact, and not being (as has been already
observed) of a very ready nature, remained staring at his guest in a
particularly awkward and disconcerted manner.
'Well?' said the stranger.
Well. There was not much in well. It was not a long speech. 'I thought you
gave an order,' said the landlord, after a pause of two or three minutes for
consideration.
The stranger took off his hat, and disclosed the hard features of a man of
sixty or thereabouts, much weatherbeaten and worn by time, and the naturally
harsh expression of which was not improved by a dark handkerchief which was
bound tightly round his head, and, while it served the purpose of a wig, shaded
his forehead, and almost hid his eyebrows. If it were intended to conceal or
divert attention from a deep gash, now healed into an ugly seam, which when it
was first inflicted must have laid bare his cheekbone, the object was but
indifferently attained, for it could scarcely fail to be noted at a glance. His
complexion was of a cadaverous hue, and he had a grizzly jagged beard of some
three weeks' date. Such was the figure (very meanly and poorly clad) that now
rose from the seat, and stalking across the room sat down in a corner of the
chimney, which the politeness or fears of the little clerk very readily assigned
to him.
'A highwayman!' whispered Tom Cobb to Parkes the ranger.
'Do you suppose highwaymen don't dress handsomer than that?' replied Parkes.
'It's a better business than you think for, Tom, and highwaymen don't need or
use to be shabby, take my word for it.'
Meanwhile the subject of their speculations had done due honour to the house
by calling for some drink, which was promptly supplied by the landlord's son
Joe, a broad-shouldered strapping young fellow of twenty, whom it pleased his
father still to consider a little boy, and to treat accordingly. Stretching out
his hands to warm them by the blazing fire, the man turned his head towards the
company, and after running his eye sharply over them, said in a voice well
suited to his appearance:
'What house is that which stands a mile or so from here?'
'Public-house?' said the landlord, with his usual deliberation.
'Public-house, father!' exclaimed Joe, 'where's the public-house within a
mile or so of the Maypole? He means the great house--the Warren--naturally and
of course. The old red brick house, sir, that stands in its own grounds--?'
'Aye,' said the stranger.
'And that fifteen or twenty years ago stood in a park five times as broad,
which with other and richer property has bit by bit changed hands and dwindled
away--more's the pity!' pursued the young man.
'Maybe,' was the reply. 'But my question related to the owner. What it has
been I don't care to know, and what it is I can see for myself.'
The heir-apparent to the Maypole pressed his finger on his lips, and glancing
at the young gentleman already noticed, who had changed his attitude when the
house was first mentioned, replied in a lower tone:
'The owner's name is Haredale, Mr Geoffrey Haredale, and'--again he glanced
in the same direction as before--'and a worthy gentleman too--hem!'
Paying as little regard to this admonitory cough, as to the significant
gesture that had preceded it, the stranger pursued his questioning.
'I turned out of my way coming here, and took the footpath that crosses the
grounds. Who was the young lady that I saw entering a carriage? His daughter?'
'Why, how should I know, honest man?' replied Joe, contriving in the course
of some arrangements about the hearth, to advance close to his questioner and
pluck him by the sleeve, 'I didn't see the young lady, you know. Whew! There's
the wind again--AND rain-- well it IS a night!'
Rough weather indeed!' observed the strange man.
'You're used to it?' said Joe, catching at anything which seemed to promise a
diversion of the subject.
'Pretty well,' returned the other. 'About the young lady--has Mr Haredale a
daughter?'
'No, no,' said the young fellow fretfully, 'he's a single gentleman--he's--be
quiet, can't you, man? Don't you see this talk is not relished yonder?'
Regardless of this whispered remonstrance, and affecting not to hear it, his
tormentor provokingly continued:
'Single men have had daughters before now. Perhaps she may be his daughter,
though he is not married.'
'What do you mean?' said Joe, adding in an undertone as he approached him
again, 'You'll come in for it presently, I know you will!'
'I mean no harm'--returned the traveller boldly, 'and have said none that I
know of. I ask a few questions--as any stranger may, and not unnaturally--about
the inmates of a remarkable house in a neighbourhood which is new to me, and you
are as aghast and disturbed as if I were talking treason against King George.
Perhaps you can tell me why, sir, for (as I say) I am a stranger, and this is
Greek to me?'
The latter observation was addressed to the obvious cause of Joe Willet's
discomposure, who had risen and was adjusting his riding- cloak preparatory to
sallying abroad. Briefly replying that he could give him no information, the
young man beckoned to Joe, and handing him a piece of money in payment of his
reckoning, hurried out attended by young Willet himself, who taking up a candle
followed to light him to the house-door.
While Joe was absent on this errand, the elder Willet and his three
companions continued to smoke with profound gravity, and in a deep silence, each
having his eyes fixed on a huge copper boiler that was suspended over the fire.
After some time John Willet slowly shook his head, and thereupon his friends
slowly shook theirs; but no man withdrew his eyes from the boiler, or altered
the solemn expression of his countenance in the slightest degree.
At length Joe returned--very talkative and conciliatory, as though with a
strong presentiment that he was going to be found fault with.
'Such a thing as love is!' he said, drawing a chair near the fire, and
looking round for sympathy. 'He has set off to walk to London,--all the way to
London. His nag gone lame in riding out here this blessed afternoon, and
comfortably littered down in our stable at this minute; and he giving up a good
hot supper and our best bed, because Miss Haredale has gone to a masquerade up
in town, and he has set his heart upon seeing her! I don't think I could
persuade myself to do that, beautiful as she is,--but then I'm not in love (at
least I don't think I am) and that's the whole difference.'
'He is in love then?' said the stranger.
'Rather,' replied Joe. 'He'll never be more in love, and may very easily be
less.'
'Silence, sir!' cried his father.
'What a chap you are, Joe!' said Long Parkes.
'Such a inconsiderate lad!' murmured Tom Cobb.
'Putting himself forward and wringing the very nose off his own father's
face!' exclaimed the parish-clerk, metaphorically.
'What HAVE I done?' reasoned poor Joe.
'Silence, sir!' returned his father, 'what do you mean by talking, when you
see people that are more than two or three times your age, sitting still and
silent and not dreaming of saying a word?'
'Why that's the proper time for me to talk, isn't it?' said Joe rebelliously.
'The proper time, sir!' retorted his father, 'the proper time's no time.'
'Ah to be sure!' muttered Parkes, nodding gravely to the other two who nodded
likewise, observing under their breaths that that was the point.
'The proper time's no time, sir,' repeated John Willet; 'when I was your age
I never talked, I never wanted to talk. I listened and improved myself that's
what I did.'
'And you'd find your father rather a tough customer in argeyment, Joe, if
anybody was to try and tackle him,' said Parkes.
'For the matter o' that, Phil!' observed Mr Willet, blowing a long, thin,
spiral cloud of smoke out of the corner of his mouth, and staring at it
abstractedly as it floated away; 'For the matter o' that, Phil, argeyment is a
gift of Natur. If Natur has gifted a man with powers of argeyment, a man has a
right to make the best of 'em, and has not a right to stand on false delicacy,
and deny that he is so gifted; for that is a turning of his back on Natur, a
flouting of her, a slighting of her precious caskets, and a proving of one's
self to be a swine that isn't worth her scattering pearls before.'
The landlord pausing here for a very long time, Mr Parkes naturally concluded
that he had brought his discourse to an end; and therefore, turning to the young
man with some austerity, exclaimed:
'You hear what your father says, Joe? You wouldn't much like to tackle him in
argeyment, I'm thinking, sir.'
'IF,' said John Willet, turning his eyes from the ceiling to the face of his
interrupter, and uttering the monosyllable in capitals, to apprise him that he
had put in his oar, as the vulgar say, with unbecoming and irreverent haste;
'IF, sir, Natur has fixed upon me the gift of argeyment, why should I not own to
it, and rather glory in the same? Yes, sir, I AM a tough customer that way. You
are right, sir. My toughness has been proved, sir, in this room many and many a
time, as I think you know; and if you don't know,' added John, putting his pipe
in his mouth again, 'so much the better, for I an't proud and am not going to
tell you.'
A general murmur from his three cronies, and a general shaking of heads at
the copper boiler, assured John Willet that they had had good experience of his
powers and needed no further evidence to assure them of his superiority. John
smoked with a little more dignity and surveyed them in silence.
'It's all very fine talking,' muttered Joe, who had been fidgeting in his
chair with divers uneasy gestures. 'But if you mean to tell me that I'm never to
open my lips--'
'Silence, sir!' roared his father. 'No, you never are. When your opinion's
wanted, you give it. When you're spoke to, you speak. When your opinion's not
wanted and you're not spoke to, don't you give an opinion and don't you speak.
The world's undergone a nice alteration since my time, certainly. My belief is
that there an't any boys left--that there isn't such a thing as a boy--that
there's nothing now between a male baby and a man--and that all the boys went
out with his blessed Majesty King George the Second.'
'That's a very true observation, always excepting the young princes,' said
the parish-clerk, who, as the representative of church and state in that
company, held himself bound to the nicest loyalty. 'If it's godly and righteous
for boys, being of the ages of boys, to behave themselves like boys, then the
young princes must be boys and cannot be otherwise.'
'Did you ever hear tell of mermaids, sir?' said Mr Willet.
'Certainly I have,' replied the clerk.
'Very good,' said Mr Willet. 'According to the constitution of mermaids, so
much of a mermaid as is not a woman must be a fish. According to the
constitution of young princes, so much of a young prince (if anything) as is not
actually an angel, must be godly and righteous. Therefore if it's becoming and
godly and righteous in the young princes (as it is at their ages) that they
should be boys, they are and must be boys, and cannot by possibility be anything
else.'
This elucidation of a knotty point being received with such marks of approval
as to put John Willet into a good humour, he contented himself with repeating to
his son his command of silence, and addressing the stranger, said:
'If you had asked your questions of a grown-up person--of me or any of these
gentlemen--you'd have had some satisfaction, and wouldn't have wasted breath.
Miss Haredale is Mr Geoffrey Haredale's niece.'
'Is her father alive?' said the man, carelessly.
'No,' rejoined the landlord, 'he is not alive, and he is not dead--'
'Not dead!' cried the other.
'Not dead in a common sort of way,' said the landlord.
The cronies nodded to each other, and Mr Parkes remarked in an undertone,
shaking his head meanwhile as who should say, 'let no man contradict me, for I
won't believe him,' that John Willet was in amazing force to-night, and fit to
tackle a Chief Justice.
The stranger suffered a short pause to elapse, and then asked abruptly, 'What
do you mean?'
'More than you think for, friend,' returned John Willet. 'Perhaps there's
more meaning in them words than you suspect.'
'Perhaps there is,' said the strange man, gruffly; 'but what the devil do you
speak in such mysteries for? You tell me, first, that a man is not alive, nor
yet dead--then, that he's not dead in a common sort of way--then, that you mean
a great deal more than I think for. To tell you the truth, you may do that
easily; for so far as I can make out, you mean nothing. What DO you mean, I ask
again?'
'That,' returned the landlord, a little brought down from his dignity by the
stranger's surliness, 'is a Maypole story, and has been any time these
four-and-twenty years. That story is Solomon Daisy's story. It belongs to the
house; and nobody but Solomon Daisy has ever told it under this roof, or ever
shall--that's more.'
The man glanced at the parish-clerk, whose air of consciousness and
importance plainly betokened him to be the person referred to, and, observing
that he had taken his pipe from his lips, after a very long whiff to keep it
alight, and was evidently about to tell his story without further solicitation,
gathered his large coat about him, and shrinking further back was almost lost in
the gloom of the spacious chimney-corner, except when the flame, struggling from
under a great faggot, whose weight almost crushed it for the time, shot upward
with a strong and sudden glare, and illumining his figure for a moment, seemed
afterwards to cast it into deeper obscurity than before.
By this flickering light, which made the old room, with its heavy timbers and
panelled walls, look as if it were built of polished ebony--the wind roaring and
howling without, now rattling the latch and creaking the hinges of the stout
oaken door, and now driving at the casement as though it would beat it in--by
this light, and under circumstances so auspicious, Solomon Daisy began his tale:
'It was Mr Reuben Haredale, Mr Geoffrey's elder brother--'
Here he came to a dead stop, and made so long a pause that even John Willet
grew impatient and asked why he did not proceed.
'Cobb,' said Solomon Daisy, dropping his voice and appealing to the
post-office keeper; 'what day of the month is this?'
'The nineteenth.'
'Of March,' said the clerk, bending forward, 'the nineteenth of March; that's
very strange.'
In a low voice they all acquiesced, and Solomon went on:
'It was Mr Reuben Haredale, Mr Geoffrey's elder brother, that twenty-two
years ago was the owner of the Warren, which, as Joe has said--not that you
remember it, Joe, for a boy like you can't do that, but because you have often
heard me say so--was then a much larger and better place, and a much more
valuable property than it is now. His lady was lately dead, and he was left with
one child--the Miss Haredale you have been inquiring about--who was then
scarcely a year old.'
Although the speaker addressed himself to the man who had shown so much
curiosity about this same family, and made a pause here as if expecting some
exclamation of surprise or encouragement, the latter made no remark, nor gave
any indication that he heard or was interested in what was said. Solomon
therefore turned to his old companions, whose noses were brightly illuminated by
the deep red glow from the bowls of their pipes; assured, by long experience, of
their attention, and resolved to show his sense of such indecent behaviour.
'Mr Haredale,' said Solomon, turning his back upon the strange man, 'left
this place when his lady died, feeling it lonely like, and went up to London,
where he stopped some months; but finding that place as lonely as this--as I
suppose and have always heard say--he suddenly came back again with his little
girl to the Warren, bringing with him besides, that day, only two women
servants, and his steward, and a gardener.'
Mr Daisy stopped to take a whiff at his pipe, which was going out, and then
proceeded--at first in a snuffling tone, occasioned by keen enjoyment of the
tobacco and strong pulling at the pipe, and afterwards with increasing
distinctness:
'--Bringing with him two women servants, and his steward, and a gardener. The
rest stopped behind up in London, and were to follow next day. It happened that
that night, an old gentleman who lived at Chigwell Row, and had long been
poorly, deceased, and an order came to me at half after twelve o'clock at night
to go and toll the passing-bell.'
There was a movement in the little group of listeners, sufficiently
indicative of the strong repugnance any one of them would have felt to have
turned out at such a time upon such an errand. The clerk felt and understood it,
and pursued his theme accordingly.
'It WAS a dreary thing, especially as the grave-digger was laid up in his
bed, from long working in a damp soil and sitting down to take his dinner on
cold tombstones, and I was consequently under obligation to go alone, for it was
too late to hope to get any other companion. However, I wasn't unprepared for
it; as the old gentleman had often made it a request that the bell should be
tolled as soon as possible after the breath was out of his body, and he had been
expected to go for some days. I put as good a face upon it as I could, and
muffling myself up (for it was mortal cold), started out with a lighted lantern
in one hand and the key of the church in the other.'
At this point of the narrative, the dress of the strange man rustled as if he
had turned himself to hear more distinctly. Slightly pointing over his shoulder,
Solomon elevated his eyebrows and nodded a silent inquiry to Joe whether this
was the case. Joe shaded his eyes with his hand and peered into the corner, but
could make out nothing, and so shook his head.
'It was just such a night as this; blowing a hurricane, raining heavily, and
very dark--I often think now, darker than I ever saw it before or since; that
may be my fancy, but the houses were all close shut and the folks in doors, and
perhaps there is only one other man who knows how dark it really was. I got into
the church, chained the door back so that it should keep ajar--for, to tell the
truth, I didn't like to be shut in there alone--and putting my lantern on the
stone seat in the little corner where the bell-rope is, sat down beside it to
trim the candle.
'I sat down to trim the candle, and when I had done so I could not persuade
myself to get up again, and go about my work. I don't know how it was, but I
thought of all the ghost stories I had ever heard, even those that I had heard
when I was a boy at school, and had forgotten long ago; and they didn't come
into my mind one after another, but all crowding at once, like. I recollected
one story there was in the village, how that on a certain night in the year (it
might be that very night for anything I knew), all the dead people came out of
the ground and sat at the heads of their own graves till morning. This made me
think how many people I had known, were buried between the church-door and the
churchyard gate, and what a dreadful thing it would be to have to pass among
them and know them again, so earthy and unlike themselves. I had known all the
niches and arches in the church from a child; still, I couldn't persuade myself
that those were their natural shadows which I saw on the pavement, but felt sure
there were some ugly figures hiding among 'em and peeping out. Thinking on in
this way, I began to think of the old gentleman who was just dead, and I could
have sworn, as I looked up the dark chancel, that I saw him in his usual place,
wrapping his shroud about him and shivering as if he felt it cold. All this time
I sat listening and listening, and hardly dared to breathe. At length I started
up and took the bell-rope in my hands. At that minute there rang--not that bell,
for I had hardly touched the rope--but another!
'I heard the ringing of another bell, and a deep bell too, plainly. It was
only for an instant, and even then the wind carried the sound away, but I heard
it. I listened for a long time, but it rang no more. I had heard of corpse
candles, and at last I persuaded myself that this must be a corpse bell tolling
of itself at midnight for the dead. I tolled my bell--how, or how long, I don't
know--and ran home to bed as fast as I could touch the ground.
'I was up early next morning after a restless night, and told the story to my
neighbours. Some were serious and some made light of it; I don't think anybody
believed it real. But, that morning, Mr Reuben Haredale was found murdered in
his bedchamber; and in his hand was a piece of the cord attached to an
alarm-bell outside the roof, which hung in his room and had been cut asunder, no
doubt by the murderer, when he seized it.
'That was the bell I heard.
'A bureau was found opened, and a cash-box, which Mr Haredale had brought
down that day, and was supposed to contain a large sum of money, was gone. The
steward and gardener were both missing and both suspected for a long time, but
they were never found, though hunted far and wide. And far enough they might
have looked for poor Mr Rudge the steward, whose body--scarcely to be recognised
by his clothes and the watch and ring he wore--was found, months afterwards, at
the bottom of a piece of water in the grounds, with a deep gash in the breast
where he had been stabbed with a knife. He was only partly dressed; and people
all agreed that he had been sitting up reading in his own room, where there were
many traces of blood, and was suddenly fallen upon and killed before his master.
Everybody now knew that the gardener must be the murderer, and though he has
never been heard of from that day to this, he will be, mark my words. The crime
was committed this day two-and-twenty years--on the nineteenth of March, one
thousand seven hundred and fifty-three. On the nineteenth of March in some
year--no matter when--I know it, I am sure of it, for we have always, in some
strange way or other, been brought back to the subject on that day ever
since--on the nineteenth of March in some year, sooner or later, that man will
be discovered.'
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