The Bishop of Hell and Other Stories, page 19
I did not see her face, as she disappeared before I could gain on her, but she held to her side one hand and between the long fingers I saw the haft of a surgeon’s knife.
I knew then that she was dead. And I knew that Rob Patterson had killed her.
Although it was well known that my family were all ghost-seers, to speak in this case was to be laughed at and reprimanded.
I had no single shred of evidence against Dr. Patterson. But I resolved that I would use what powers I possessed to make him disclose his crime. And this is how it befell.
In those days in Glasgow it was compulsory to attend some place of worship on the Sabbath, the observation of the holy day being enforced with peculiar strictness and no one being allowed to show themselves in any public place during the hours of the church services, and to this end inspectors and overseers were employed to patrol the streets on a Sabbath and take down the names of those who might be found loitering there.
But few were the defaulters, Glasgow on a Sunday being as bare as the Arabian desert.
Rob Patterson and I both attended the church in Rutherglen Road, towards the Green and the river.
And the Sunday after I had seen the phantom of Ann Leete, I changed my usual place and seated myself behind this young man.
My intention was to work on his spirit so as to cause him to make public confession of his crime. And I crouched there, behind him, with a concentration of hate and fury forcing my will on his during the whole of the long service. I noticed he was pale and that he glanced several times behind him, but he did not change his place or open his lips, but presently his head fell forward on his arms as if he was praying, and I took him to be in a kind of swoon brought on by the resistance of his spirit against mine. I did not for this cease to pursue him; I was, indeed, as if in an exaltation and I thought my soul had his soul by the throat, somewhere above our heads, and was shouting out: ‘Confess! confess!’
One o’clock struck and he rose with the rest of the congregation, but in a dazed kind of fashion; it was almost side by side that we issued from the church door.
As the stream of people came into the street they were stopped by a little procession that came down the road.
All immediately recognised two of the inspectors employed to search the Sunday streets for defaulters from church attendance, followed by several citizens who appeared to have left their homes in haste and confusion.
These people carried between them a rude bundle which some compassionate hand had covered with a white linen cloth; below this fell a swathe of dark-green silk and the end of a Roman scarf.
I stepped up to the rough bier.
‘You have found Ann Leete,’ I said.
‘It is a dead woman,’ one answered me. ‘We know not her name.’
I did not need to raise the cloth; the congregation was gathering round us, and amongst them was Rob Patterson.
‘Tell me, who was her promised husband, how you found her,’ I said.
And one of the inspectors answered:
‘Near here, on the Green, where the wall bounds the grass, we saw, just now, the young surgeon Rob Patterson lying on the sward, and put his name in our books, besides approaching him to enquire the reason of his absence from church. But he, without excuse for his offence, rose from the ground, exclaiming, “I am a miserable man! Look in the water!”
‘With that he crossed a stile that leads to the river and disappeared, and we, going down to the water, found the dead woman, deep tangled between the willows and the weeds——’
‘And,’ added the other inspector gravely, ‘tangled in her clothes is a surgeon’s knife.’
‘Which,’ said the former speaker, ‘perhaps Dr. Patterson can explain, since I perceive he is amongst this congregation—he must have found some quick way round to have got here before us.’
Upon this all eyes turned on the surgeon, but more with amaze than reproach.
And he, with a confident air, said: ‘It is known to all these good people that I have been in the church the whole of the morning, especially to Eneas Bretton, who sat behind me and, I dare swear, never took his eyes from me during the whole of the service.’
‘Aye, your body was there,’ I said.
With that he laughed angrily and, mingling with the crowd, passed on his way.
You may believe there was a great stir. The theory put abroad was that Ann Leete had been kept a prisoner in a solitary ruined hut that was up the river, and then, through fury or fear, slain by her jailor and cast into the river.
To me all this is black; I only know that she was murdered by Rob Patterson.
He was arrested and tried on the circuit. He there proved beyond all cavil that he had been in the church from the beginning of the service to the end of it; his alibi was perfect. But the two inspectors never wavered in their tale of seeing him on the Green, of his self-accusation in his exclamation; he was very well known to them and they showed his name written in their books.
He was acquitted by the tribunal of man, but a higher power condemned him. Shortly after he died by his own hand, which God armed and directed.
This mystery, as it was called, was never solved to the public satisfaction, but I know that I sent Rob Patterson’s soul out of his body, to betray his guilt and to procure my darling Christian burial.
This is the tale Eneas Bretton, that ancient man, told me on the old terrace as he sat opposite the picture of Ann Leete.
‘You must think what you will,’ he concluded; ‘they will tell you that the shock unsettled my wits or even that I was always crazed. As they would tell you that I dream when I say that I see Ann Leete now and babble when I talk of my happiness with her for fifty years.’
He smiled faintly; a deeper glory than that of the autumn sunshine seemed to rest on him.
‘Explain it yourself, sir. What was it those inspectors saw on the Green?’
He slightly raised himself in his chair and peered over my shoulder.
‘And what is this,’ he asked triumphantly, in the voice of a young man, ‘coming towards us now?’
I rose, I looked over my shoulder.
Through the gloom I saw a dark-green silk gown, a woman’s form, a pale hand beckoning.
My impulse was to fly from the spot, but a happy sigh from my companion reproved my cowardice. I looked at the ancient man, whose whole figure appeared lapped in warm light, and as the apparition of the woman moved into this glow, which seemed too glorious for the fading sunshine, I heard his last breath flow from his body, with a glad cry. I had not answered his questions; I never can.
Kecksies
Two young esquires were riding from Canterbury; jolly and drunk, they shouted and trolled, and rolled in their saddles as they followed the winding road across the downs.
A dim sky was overhead and shut in the wide expanse of open country that one side stretched to the sea and the other to the Kentish Weald.
The primroses grew in thick posies in the ditches, the hedges were full of fresh hawthorn green, the new grey leaves of eglantine and honeysuckle, the long boughs of ash with the hard black buds, the wand-like shoots of sallow willow hung with catkins and the smaller red tassels of the nut and birch. Little the two young men heeded of any of these things, for they were in their own country that was thrice familiar; but Nick Bateup blinked across to the distant purple hills and cursed the gathering rain.
‘Ten miles more of the open,’ he muttered, ‘and a great storm blackening upon us.’
Young Crediton, who was more full of wine, laughed drowsily. ‘We’ll lie at a cottage on the way, Nick—think you I’ve never a tenant who’ll let me share board and bed?’ He maundered into singing:
‘There’s a light in the old mill
Where the witch weaves her charms,
But dark is the chamber
Where you sleep in my arms.
Now come you by magic, by trick, or by spell
I have you and hold you,
And love you right well!’
The clouds overtook them like an advancing army; the wayside green looked vivid under the purplish threat of the heavens and the birds were all still and silent.
‘Split me if I’ll be soaked,’ muttered young Bateup. ‘Knock up one of these boors of thine, Ned—but damn me if I see as much as hut or barn.’
‘We come to Banells farm soon—or have we passed it?’ answered the other confusedly. ‘What’s the pother? A bold bird as thou art and scared of a drop of rain?’
‘My lungs are not as lusty as thine,’ replied Bateup, who was indeed of a delicate build and more carefully dressed in greatcoat and muffler.
‘But thy throat is as wide!’ laughed Crediton. ‘And God help you, you are shawled like an old woman—and as drunk as a Spanish parrot.
‘Tra la la, my sweeting,
Tra la la, my May,
If now I miss the meeting
I’ll come some other day.’
His companion took no notice of this nonsense, but with as much keenness as his muddled faculties would allow, was looking out for some shelter, for he retained sufficient perception to enable him to mark the violence of the approaching storm and the loneliness of the vast stretch of country where the only human habitations appeared to be some few poor cottages far distant in the fields.
Ned lost his good humour and as the first drops of stinging cold rain began to fall, he cursed freely, using the terms common to the pot-houses where he had intoxicated himself on the way from Canterbury.
Urging their tired horses, they came on to the top of the little hill they ascended; immediately before them was the silver ashen skeleton of a blasted oak, polished like worn bone, standing over a small pool of stagnant water (for there had been little rain and much east wind), where a few shivering ewes crouched together from the oncoming storm.
Just beyond this, rising out of the bare field, was a humble cottage of black timber and white plaster and a deep thatched roof. For the rest the crest of the hill was covered by a hazel copse and then dipped lonely again to the clouded lower levels that now began to slope into the marsh.
‘This will shelter us, Nick,’ cried Crediton.
‘ ’Tis a foul place and the boors have a foul reputation,’ objected the lord of the manor. ‘There are those who swear to seeing the devil’s own fizz leer from Goody Boyle’s windows—but anything to please thee and thy weak chest.’
They staggered from their horses, knocked open the rotting gate, and leading the beasts across the hard dry grazing field, knocked with their whips at the tiny door of the cottage.
The grey sheep under the grey tree looked at them and bleated faintly; the rain began to fall like straight yet broken darts out of the sombre clouds.
The door was opened by a woman very neatly dressed, with large scrubbed hands, who looked at them with fear and displeasure; for if her reputation was bad, theirs was no better. The lord of the manor was a known roisterer and wild liver who spent his idleness in rakish expeditions with Sir Nicholas Bateup from Bodiam, who was easily squandering a fine property. Neither were believed to be free of bloodshed, and as for honour they were as stripped of that as the blasted tree by the lonely pool was stripped of leaves.
Besides they were both now, as usual, drunk.
‘We want shelter, Goody Boyle,’ cried Crediton, pushing his way in as he threw her his reins. ‘Get the horses into the barn.’
The woman could not deny the man, who could make her homeless in a second; she shouted hoarsely an inarticulate name and a loutish boy came and took the horses, while the two young men stumbled into the cottage, which they filled and dwarfed with their splendour.
Edward Crediton had been a fine young man, and though he was marred with insolence and excess, he still made a magnificent appearance, with his full, blunt features, his warm colouring, the fair hair rolled and curled, and all his bravery of blue broad-cloth, buckskin breeches, foreign lace, topboots, French sword, and gold rings and watch-chains.
Sir Nicholas Bateup was darker and more effeminate, having a cast of weakness in his constitution that betrayed itself in his face; but his dress was splendid to the point of foppishness and his manners even more arrogant and imposing.
Of the two he had the more evil repute; he was unwed and, therefore, there was no check upon his mischief; whereas Crediton had a young wife, whom he loved after his fashion and who checked some of his doings and softened others, and stayed very faithful to him and adored him still after five years of a wretched marriage, as is the manner of some women.
The rain came down with slashing severity; the little cottage panes were blotted with water.
Goody Boyle put logs on the fire and urged them with the bellows. It was a gaunt white room with nothing in it but a few wooden stools, a table, and an eel-catcher’s prong.
On the table were two large, fair, wax candles.
‘What are these for, Goody?’ asked Crediton.
‘For the dead, sir.’
‘You’ve dead in the house?’ cried Sir Nicholas, who was leaning by the fireplace and warming his hands. ‘What do you want with dead men in the house, you trollop?’
‘It is no dead of mine, my lord,’ answered the woman with evil civility, ‘but one who took shelter here and died.’
‘A curse, witch!’ roared Crediton. ‘You hear that, Nick? Came here—died. And now you’ll put spells on us, you ugly slut——’
‘No spells of mine,’ answered the woman quietly, rubbing her large clean hands together. ‘He had been long ailing and died here of an ague.’
‘And who sent the ague?’ asked Crediton with drunken gravity. ‘And who sent him here?’
‘Perhaps the same hand that sent us,’ laughed Sir Nicholas. ‘Where is your corpse, Goody?’
‘In the next room—I have but two.’
‘And two too many—you need but a bundle of faggots and a tuft of tow to light it—an arrant witch, a confest witch,’ muttered Crediton; he staggered up from the stool. ‘Where is your corpse? I’ve a mind to see if he looks as if he died a natural death.’
‘Will you not ask first who it is?’ asked the woman, unlatching the inner door.
‘Why should I care?’
‘Who is it?’ asked Sir Nicholas, who had the clearer wits, drunk or sober.
‘Robert Horne,’ said Goody Boyle.
Ned Crediton looked at her with the eyes of a sober
man.
‘Robert Horne,’ said Sir Nicholas. ‘So he is dead at last—your wife will be glad of that, Ned.’
Crediton gave a sullen laugh. ‘I’d broken him—she wasn’t afraid any longer of a lost wretch cast out to die of ague on the marsh.’
But Sir Nicholas had heard differently; he had been told, even by Ned himself, how Anne Crediton shivered before the terror of Robert Horne’s pursuit, and would wake up in the dark crying out for fear of him like a lost child; for he had wooed her before her marriage and persisted in loving her afterwards with mad boldness and insolent confidence, so that justice had been set on him and he had been banished to the marsh, a ruined man.
‘Well, sirs,’ said Goody Boyle in her thin voice, that had the pinched accents of other parts, ‘my lady can sleep of nights now—Robert Horne will never disturb her again.’
‘Do you think he ever troubled us?’ asked Crediton with a coarse oath. ‘I flung him out like an adder that had writhed across the threshold——’
‘A wonder he did not put a murrain on thee, Ned. He had fearful ways and a deep knowledge of unholy things.’
‘A warlock—God help us!’ added the woman.
‘The devil’s proved an ill master then,’ laughed Crediton. ‘He could not help Robert Horne into Anne’s favour—nor prevent him lying in a cold bed in the flower of his age.’
‘The devil,’ smiled Sir Nicholas, ‘was over-busy, Ned, helping you to the lady’s favour and a warm bed. You were the dearer disciple.’
‘Oh, good lords, will you talk less wildly with a lost man’s corpse in the house and his soul riding the storm without?’ begged Goody Boyle; and she latched again the inner door.
Murk filled the cottage now; waves of shadow flowed over the landscape; without the rain blotted the window and drowned the valley; in the bitter field the melancholy ewes huddled beneath the blasted oak beside the bare pool, the stagnant surface of which was now broken by the quick rain drops; a low thunder grumbled from the horizon and all the young greenery looked livid in the ghastly light of heaven.
‘I’ll see him,’ said Ned Crediton swaggering. ‘I’ll look at this gay gallant in his last smock—so that I can swear to Anne he has taken his amorous smile to the earthworms—surely.’
‘Look as you like,’ answered Sir Nicholas, ‘glut your eyes with looking——’
‘But you’ll remember, sirs, that he was a queer man and died queerly, and there was no parson or priest to take the edge off his going or challenge the fiends who stood at his head and feet.’
‘Saw you the fiends?’ asked Ned curiously.
‘Question not what I saw,’ muttered the woman. ‘You’ll have your own familiars, Esquire Crediton.’
She unlatched the inner door again and Ned passed in, bowing low on the threshold.
‘Good day, Robert Horne,’ he jeered. ‘We parted in anger; but my debts are paid now and I greet you well.’
The dead man lay on a pallet bed with a coarse white sheet over him that showed his shape but roughly; the window was by his head and looked blankly on to the rain-bitten fields and dismal sky; the light was cold and colourless on the white sheet and the miserable room.
Sir Nicholas lounged in the doorway; he feared no death but his own, and that he set so far away it was but a dim dread.
‘Look and see if it is Robert Horne,’ he urged, ‘or if the beldame lies.’
