The Expiation
Run to earth, and captured like a rabbit at the end of its burrow, the murderer was brought to Albany, and shipped to Melbourne by the liner "Ballaarat." As a relief from the general lack of events of interest that marked his return progress, it may be noted that the train on which he traveled from Freemantle to Albany, was stormed at York by an indignant populace, who voiced the sentiment universally pervading all the Colonies against his atrocities by a determined effort to visit a rude, if original, form of justice upon him by tearing him to pieces between two bullock-teams, and were dissuaded with difficulty from this intention by a display of revolvers by his guards. His feelings were outraged also on the steamer, where he expressed himself as much distressed by the light and profane conversation of certain unregenerate marines who were on their way to the Australian station, and strongly rebuked them therefor:—thus illustrating anew the strange contradiction in his nature which was before shown in his reproach of Miss Rounsfell's fondness for dancing. In fact, all who at various times came in contact with him—including and ending with his guardians in the Melbourne jail—remarked upon his scrupulousness of language and nicety of conduct.
I have gone thus at some length into a description of this monster and his crimes for two reasons:—in the first place because it seemed essential to show the causes of the repulsion and horror which his very name inspired, and thus to place the reader in a position to appreciate the effect upon the popular mind of later incidents which I am about to record; and, in the second place, because the close study which I was able to give alike to the man and his deeds convinced me that his case was one possessing far more interest for the psychologist than even the criminologist.
The ingenious Sir William S. Gilbert, in the song of the sentimental police sergeant in "The Pirates of Penzance," wherein it is recited that
"When the enterprizing burglar isn't burgling,
When the cutthroat isn't occupied with crime,
He loves to hear the little brook a-gurgling,
And listens to the merry village chime"—
voiced a truth which has been marked in the cases of many malefactors. It has been observed of Deeming that, in the intervals of swindling, lying and homicide by which his career is chiefly remembered, he bristled like a copybook with virtuous and noble sentiments—nor is his sincerity to be doubted in their utterance. It is unquestionable that he was a man of singular address and subtlety—not only among men skilled in business affairs and experienced in reading character. He was a clever mechanic, and able to adapt himself quickly and efficiently to any occupation:—as is shown by the fact that although there is nothing in his history to indicate that he had had any previous experience in mine-management, he more than fulfilled all the requirements laid upon him at Southern Cross, increased the output of gold by ingenious inventions, and was esteemed by the company as the most capable manager it had ever had. He had a marked, if imperfectly developed, fondness for music and literature, and although his conversation included many grammatical solecisms, it was effective and often eloquent. His taste in dress, although rather flamboyant in the matter of jewelry, of which he always wore a profusion, was noticeably correct—the frock-coat, light trousers and perfectly-fitting patent-leather shoes which he wore at his trial were evidently from the hands of the best London outfitters, and would have graced (as they doubtless had done) the fashionable afternoon parade which is a feature of Melbourne's Collins Street.
The anomaly that is suggested by these established facts regarding him is of minor interest, however, in comparison with more striking contradictions that were remarked after his capture. It was my fortune to have a place near him at the inquest which resulted in his commitment for trial, as well as at the trial itself that duly followed. Popular feeling against him was so intense and violent that the authorities did not dare to land him at the steamboat pier, but smuggled him aboard a tug when the "Ballaarat" entered the harbor, and brought him ashore at the suburb of St. Kilda, whence he was hurried in a closed cab to the Melbourne jail. Brought into the court where the inquest was held, his appearance was so brutal and revolting that a murmur of horror and disgust arose at his entrance which the judge and officers with difficulty quelled.
There was in his deeply-lined and saturnine face no indication of an understanding of his position. His lips were drawn in a sardonic sneer, and his eyes—steely, evil and magnetic—glistened like those of the basilisk as he looked boldly and with a sort of savage bravado at the faces about him. He disdained to pay any attention to the proceedings, and was seemingly deaf to the testimony that was advanced against him by more than thirty witnesses. Yet he evinced a lively, if contemptuous, interest in minor details, and audibly expressed his views regarding them. When the canary that had played so singular a part in his Australian experiences was produced, still in its ornate gilded cage, he cried out: "Hullo! here comes the menagerie! Why don't the band play?" Of a reporter taking notes at a table near him he remarked that "he wrote like a hen," commented upon the weak utterance of a certain witness that "he had no more voice than a consumptive shrimp," and interjected ribald criticisms on the words of the judge that were fairly shocking under the circumstances.
When, at the termination of the proceedings, the judge ordered his commitment for trial, and stated that a rescript would be issued against him for the wilful murder of his wife, Emily Williams, he shouted, in a shrill, cackling, strident sort of voice: "And when you have got it, you can put it in your pipe and smoke it!"—looking about with a demoniac grin as if expecting applause for an effective bit of repartee. As the constables seized him and dragged him to the door, his eyes fell upon a comely young woman standing on the edge of the crowd, who regarded him with horrified amazement. Breaking away from the officers, he danced up to her, chucked her under the chin, and with his leering face close to hers ejaculated: "O, you ducky, ducky!" and disappeared amid the cries of the scandalized lookers-on.
I do not know what the emotions of other attendants on the trial may have been, but I remember my own mental attitude as one of distaste that my duties as a correspondent required my presence. To see one weak human being contending for his life against the organized and tremendous forces of the Law is always a pitiful and moving spectacle; in this case, with recollections of the repulsive incidents of the inquest in mind, one nerved oneself for some scene of desperation and horror. The dock, surrounded by a spiked railing and already guarded by a posse of white-helmeted constables, stood in the centre of the courtroom, its platform, elevated some three feet from the floor, being furnished with a trap-door that communicated with the cells below by a spiral iron staircase, which the prisoner must ascend. The audience watched this trap-door in somewhat that state of hesitating eagerness with which a child awaits the spring of a jack-in-the-box, not knowing what grotesque or terrifying thing may appear:—and when it lifted, and the murderer stepped to his place beneath the thousand-eyed gaze that was fastened upon him, a murmur in which amazement was the dominant note ran through the room.
My own first feeling was that my eyesight was playing me a trick; my second, that by some change of program of which I had not been informed, the trial of Deeming had been postponed. In this frock-coated, well-groomed and gentlemanly person in the dock there was no trace whatever of the ruffian who had been the central figure of the inquest. In age he seemed to have dropped some twenty years; his manner was perfect, showing no trace either of apprehension or bravado:—in short, the impression he conveyed (as I described it in my correspondence at the time) was of a young clergyman of advanced views presenting himself to trial for heresy, rather than of one of the most brutal murderers of his generation. This impression prevailed during the four days his trial lasted; only once or twice could one detect in his eye the former flash of implacableness and ferocity. It was not as if he made an effort to keep himself in control, but rather as if he were a man with two strongly opposed and antagonistic sides to his nature, of which one or the other might manifest itself without any conscious exercise of will.
It was also evident to anyone who could observe him dispassionately that the details of the murder, as they were brought out in the testimony, were all as news to him:—and when, in the address he made to the jury before it retired to consider its verdict, he admitted knowledge of the subsidiary facts brought out (as to his acquaintance with Miss Rounsfell, for example), but swore he was as innocent as he was incapable of the murder of his wife, I, for one, believed him sincere, although I could perceive in the faces about me that I was alone in that opinion. A suggestion that this man might illustrate the phenomenon of "dual personality" and should be subjected to hypnotic suggestion at the hands of qualified experts, rather than have swift condemnation measured out to him, would doubtless have been received with derision by the hard-headed audience that was the real jury in the case; but I felt at the time, and feel now even more strongly, that if Frederick Bailey Deeming had been tried in a country where psychological aberrations have been the subject of study, he would have been committed, not to the hangman, but to a lifelong restraint wherein science might have gained from his extraordinary personality much valuable knowledge.
The man whose life was choked out of him on the gallows three weeks later was the man of the inquest, not the man of the trial—and in this fact is some occasion for satisfaction. He was more subdued, as though he appreciated—as any other animal might do—what the sinister preparations for his ending meant:—but when, as he hung beneath the open trap, the death-cap was lifted from his face, there were plainly to be seen the hard and brutal lines about his mouth, and the wolfish sneer upon his lips, which one could not but feel, with something like a shudder, had distinguished his features in the commission of the atrocities for which at last he had paid such insufficient price as society could exact.
The scaffold of the Melbourne jail is a permanent structure with several traps; and across and above it runs a heavy beam, its ends fixed in the solid masonry of the walls, and the greater part of its length scarred and grooved by the chafing of the ropes which, from time to time, have given despatch to the souls of several hundred murderers. As I looked up at this fearsome tally-stick, I turned to the oldest warder of the jail, a man of nearly seventy years, who had been present at my interview with Deeming a few days before, and who now stood beside me.
"I want to ask you a question," I said, "unless your official position may prevent your answering it."
"What is it, sir?" he inquired.
"You have been for many years a warder here, and must have seen many men under sentence of death."
"Yes," he replied. "I was first here in the bushranging days, and have been here ever since. I fancy I have seen two hundred men depart this life by the route of that gallows."
"Then," said I, "you should be a good judge of the character and mental state of a man who is awaiting a death of that sort. Here is my question:—What is your opinion of Deeming?"
"Mad, sir," replied the warder. "Mad as a March hare."
This verdict might be qualified, but I believe it to be essentially just.
THE HOUSE ON THE HILL
In beginning this chapter I find myself facing a dilemma—one not so puzzling as that which gave Hamlet pause, and evoked his famous soliloquy, and yet like it, too, in that it forces me to hesitate before the mystery of the Unseen. Thus far my story has the support of incontrovertible facts and permanent and referable legal and criminal records; I must now cut loose from these, and trust my weight upon the assertion that the last half of my narrative, which I now launch upon, is in every detail and particular as true as the first. In the stress of the responsibility thus assumed it might seem natural to marshall about me such facts and persons as I might invoke as corroborative witnesses. Of these there are not a few:—but although there is (sometimes) "wisdom in a multitude of counsellors," conviction in the actuality of truth in narrations of so-called "supernatural" phenomena is as likely as otherwise to be befogged in exact proportion to the size of their "cloud of witnesses." Therefore I have, after reflection, decided to "take the stand" myself and unsupported, and to throw myself upon the mercy of the court—my readers—in so doing.
Thus, then, I shall not reveal the exact location of The House on the Hill, nor the name of the owner, from whom, for a year, I rented it. It is doubtful that he be now living, for he was a man of advanced age when he left his house in my hands, and departed with his two unmarried daughters (themselves of mature years) for a twelve-months' tour in Europe. On his return I handed him the keys without any reference to the strange occurrences that had come to me from my bargaining with him:—nor do I know to this day whether he had similar experiences after my departure, or even whether they may have enlivened him and his family prior to my tenancy. His evident anxiety to lease the house for a time (I took it furnished, and at a rental absurdly low—in fact, just one-half his original demand) may have had no special significance, although I often fancied afterwards that I had found a reason for it:—but on consideration I decided not to refer to certain features of the house that he had failed to enumerate as among its attractions, and to restore him without remark to their renewal—if he knew of them—or to discover them for himself—if he did not.
It is probable that few of my readers have spent a year in a "haunted house"—I use this expression, although it defines nothing, for want of a better:—but those who cherish such an experience will understand why, on the one hand, I did not wish to alarm an elderly gentleman and his amiable daughters, or "give a bad name," as the saying is, to his property; and why, on the other, I did not care to run the risk of living in his recollection, and in the minds of his neighbors to whom he might relate my story, as a person of feeble intellect, if not a lunatic outright. But I would give a good deal to know what he knew about that house.
A circumstance that I took no note of at the time, but which afterwards seemed to have a possible significance, occurred at the house one evening when I had called to complete negotiations by signing the lease and going through other formalities precedent to taking possession. The owner had told me that one of his reasons for desiring a change of scene for a time was that his wife had died three months before after a lingering illness that had completely worn out his daughters as well as himself:—and when the business of his final evening was completed, the younger woman uttered this strange remark:—"Well, it will be a relief not to see mother about all the time!"—and was immediately checked by her sister. I had before noted her as a nervous-mannered, somewhat anæmic-looking person, and her observation touched my mind too lightly to leave any impression upon it.
There was nothing at all peculiar in the appearance of the house. It stood upon a breezy hill-top in the outskirts of one of Melbourne's most attractive suburbs; the train from town landed me, every evening, at the village station, and a ten-minute walk up a rather steep road brought me comfortably to home and dinner. The house was a delightful one when you got to it. It occupied a corner lot, and had extensive grounds around it; there was a large orchard at the rear, filled with grape-vines, and pear, lemon, and fig trees—although none of them did much in the matter of bearing. There were two trees in the front yard that gave profusely of pomegranates (a decorative fruit, but one whose edible qualities always seemed to me greatly overrated); there were spacious flower beds on both sides of the building, and the nearest neighbors were at least two hundred yards away. On the other side of the street which ran in front of the house was a large, unimproved lot which gave a touch of the country by the presence in it of several ancient gum trees, in which the "laughing jackasses" cackled and vociferated both morning and evening:—and when my wife and I, and the gentleman of Scottish ancestry and of advanced middle-age, whom, as our best of friends, we had induced to share the enterprise with us, looked about upon these things on the first afternoon of our occupancy, we pronounced them all "very good."
The house was not a large one, comprising six living-rooms and a kitchen, besides a bath and a commodious storeroom and pantry. It was of the bungalow pattern, a type which is a favorite one in Australia, where the high average temperature of the year makes coolness and airiness prime essentials in a dwelling. It had no cellar, but was raised above the ground upon brickwork, thus forming a dry air-chamber below, and above its single story was a low, unfinished attic, which afforded another air-space, and stretched without partitions from front to back of the house. There was no floor to this attic, and on the only occasion when I explored it, I had to crawl from beam to beam, the pointed roof being so low that I could barely stand upright even under its ridgepole. The only means of access to this part of the house was a ladder, which could be brought into the bathroom, and from which could be raised a light trap-door in the ceiling. A veranda ran along the front of the house, and a wide hall extended, without turn or obstruction, from front to back. On one side of this hall—beginning from the veranda—were the parlor, dining-room, bedroom, and pantry; on the other, my wife's bedroom, the bathroom, our friend's room, a "spare-room," and the kitchen:—while a few yards behind the house stood a one-story structure, fitted up as a laundry. The "spare-room" here mentioned I furnished as a smoking-room; and further equipped it by building a bench across the space before the single window, whereat I employed myself now and then in preparing the skins of birds of which I was making a collection, and which I either shot myself in frequent excursions into the country, or which were sent to me by agents, both whites and "blackfellows," whom I employed in various parts of the Colonies.
One, and perhaps the most peculiar, feature of the bungalow remains to be described. This was a small apartment, about five feet square, between the bathroom and our friend's room (but without any means of direct communication with either), and entered only by a narrow door which swung outward into the hall. It was unlighted, and was provided with air by a ventilator at the end of a shaft which was carried through the ceiling into the attic and ended in the roof. Its floor was of thickly-laid concrete, and in its centre, and occupying nearly the whole ground space, was a sunken portion about two feet deep, and equipped with wooden racks upon which boxes of butter, pans of milk, and various receptacles containing similar perishable articles of food were accommodated. This chamber was of real use in a country where—at the time at least—ice was scarce and expensive, and where summer temperatures of a hundred and ten degrees in the shade might be expected; since, being placed in a part of the house which was wholly removed from the direct rays of the sun, the air in it was always cool and dry. I am particular in describing this room because of a strange incident that later occurred in it.
The house was well, almost luxuriously, furnished. The parlor contained a fine piano, and several pictures of merit adorned the walls; heat (seldom necessary in that mild climate except on rainy days in autumn and winter) was furnished to this and other rooms by open fireplaces, and vases and other bric-a-brac stood upon the mantels; the bed and table linen was all of excellent quality, there was a sufficiency of crockery and glass and silverware and culinary utensils:—and as we sat down to our inauguratory dinner, and contrasted our condition with the three years' previous experience of travel and steamer and hotel life in all parts of Australia, New Zealand, Tasmania and the Fiji Islands, we congratulated each other that we had found a "home" indeed.
We set about forthwith to improve our temporary property. On one side of the house, and separated from it by a fence that inclosed the lawn and flower gardens, was a grassy "paddock" that might formerly have pastured a horse or a cow. As we had no use for either of these animals, we turned this space into a poultry yard, and populated it with chickens, ducks and geese—which thrived amazingly, and in due time furnished us all the eggs and poultry required for our table. Our friend (by nature and early training an ardent horticulturist, but whose energies in that science had for many years enjoyed no opportunity for exercise in the soil of the Melbourne Stock Exchange, of which he was a member) joyously took the flower gardens under his control, and achieved miracles therein. It was delightful, as I sat in the shady veranda on the hot Saturday afternoons, with a steamer chair to loll in, and a pipe and cooling drink at hand, to contemplate his enthusiasm as he delved and sweated to prepare new ground for the gorgeous blooms which he coaxed from the willing soil—at the same time extolling my own sagacity in asking him to share the place with us; to which he would respond in appropriate language. Our household was so small that we were not exposed to the annoyances of the "servant-girl" problem:—our friend and I lunched in town, and a capable woman who lived nearby assisted my wife in cooking and serving our dinners, and attended to the duties of house-cleaning—returning to her own home when her work was accomplished, and leaving us to ourselves in the evenings. We were near enough to town to run in for theatres and concerts whenever we were so minded, and on Sundays did some modest entertaining:—in short, we settled into a phase of existence as nearly Arcadian as is often possible under modern conditions of civilization, and although it seemed likely to be commonplace and uneventful, we were in mood to find it all the more desirable and pleasant on that account. That the most startling experiences of our lives were soon to come upon us never entered our heads, and for some six weeks we lived in serenity and happiness amid surroundings that day by day grew more attractive.
ON THE WINGS OF THE STORM
My interview with the murderer, as described in the first chapter, took place upon a Thursday. The next day was one of the general holidays that are so profusely celebrated in Australia:—I do not remember the occasion, but it is safe to assume that some important horse race was to be run at Flemington—the Epsom of the Antipodes. At all events, I took advantage of the opportunity to go into the country with my gun on a collecting trip, and returned at night with a fine assortment of cockatoos, parrots and other brilliantly plumaged or curious birds which make the Colonies a paradise for the ornithologist.
The day following—Saturday—opened with a heavy rain, and a strong wind off the sea. I had no particular business to call me to town, and, anyhow, all activities and occupations would cease at noon in deference to the usual weekly half-holiday. Moreover, I had several hours' work before me in removing and preserving the skins of the birds I had shot; so I suppressed the faint voice of duty that suggested that I might find something of importance awaiting me in Melbourne, and after breakfast sat down to the congenial labor of my taxidermist's bench. Our friend departed for the Stock Exchange, and my wife and I were left alone in the house.
I had no more than made the preliminary incision in the breast of a purple lorrikeet when the doorbell rang. Answering the summons I found in the veranda a black-haired, sallow-faced individual, his garments sodden with rain, who offered for my purchase and perusal "The History and Last Confession of Frederick Bailey Deeming," for "the small price of sixpence." More in commiseration for the wretched and bedraggled appearance of the vendor than from any other motive (for I was already acquainted with the "History," and gave no credence to any announcement that a "Confession" had been made) I bought the pamphlet and returned to my room. Finding, as I had suspected, that this piece of literature contained no new facts whatever, and was totally lacking in anything even the most remotely suggesting confession, I threw it into the fire that blazed on the hearth and took up my interrupted work.[6]
The incident of the water-soaked vendor and his pamphlet had had the effect, however, of turning my reflections into a very unpleasant channel. In spite of all efforts to apply myself to the task in hand, the thought of the despairing man in the condemned cell, my visit to him two days before, and my anticipated presence at his execution within forty-eight hours, pressed upon my spirit with a weight which I found it impossible to lift. An incident which had occurred on the previous day had also added a certain element of pathos to the situation.
During my absence a letter had come to my wife through the morning mail, which, to her astonishment and disquiet, proved to have been written by the murderer. It ran as follows:
"H. M. Gaol
"Melbourne
"18-5-92
"Dear Madam:
"I beg to tender you my sincere thanks for your extreme kindness on my behalf, in trying to get Miss Rounsefell to come and see me. I assure you that if she had come I could have died happy, as it is I shall die most unhappy. I am very sorry indeed that you did not find her as kind and as Christian like as yourself. Again thanking you,
"I beg to remain
"Most respectfully yours
"B. Swanston.
"you may show Miss Rounsefell this if you wish. B. S."
This remarkable document, from a man at the moment standing on the brink of eternity, greatly disturbed (as I have said) its recipient; but she did not hesitate. As the letter intimates, she had already, in pursuance of a promise she was almost compelled to make through the earnest plea of the murderer when she saw him in the condemned cell, seen Miss Rounsfell (this is the correct spelling of the name, not that used by the writer of the above letter) with the lack of success that the letter suggests. Now, however, she determined to see the girl again:—and showing her the letter, she urged her to see the man—or at the least write to him—and grant her pardon to a dying creature who seemed to have no hope of pardon elsewhere, either here or hereafter. The interview was a touching one:—Miss Rounsfell was deeply affected, and (greatly to her credit, I think) consented to undertake in person the charitable mission that she had been asked to perform. But her brother so strenuously opposed the idea—even to the minor extent of writing—that she was compelled to abandon it; and Deeming went to his death without the consolation that he had so simply and eloquently craved.
Thus in many ways I had been brought into this tragical affair much more intimately than I liked, and I could not keep my mind away from it. The day itself added to the gloom that fell upon me. The storm had steadily increased in violence since early morning; rain fell in torrents, and the wind roared and whined alternately about the house; the heavy clouds that passed close overhead cast upon the earth a series of shifting shadows as their substance thickened or thinned under the rending force of the gale—if the Powers of Darkness ever walk abroad by day, they could hardly find an occasion more eerie and fitting than this. Yet no such suggestion occurred to me:—I could hear the rattle of dishes in the kitchen and the voice of my wife in song as she attended to her household duties; I lighted my pipe as another means of affording the companionship that I somehow craved, and for an hour or so applied myself assiduously to the task in hand.
I was seated facing the window, my back to the open door that led into the hall. Suddenly, and without the slightest warning, I heard behind me a long and dismal groan. "A-a-ah!"—thus it came; a woman's voice, apparently, and with an indescribable but certain accent in it of mental or physical pain. It is no exaggeration to say that this awful and ghastly sound froze me where I sat; I could feel my hair move upon my scalp, and a chill, as though I had been dashed with ice-water, ran up and down my spine. For a moment an inexpressible horror possessed me—then I felt my blood, which seemed on the instant to have stopped in its course, flow again in my veins, and with a mighty effort I arose and faced the open door. There was nothing there—nor in the dim hall, into which I shortly ventured:—I removed my slippers and silently explored every room; still nothing to be seen, and the only sound the splash of rain, and of the wind that sobbed and muttered around the house. I crept to the kitchen and peeped in cautiously:—my wife was quietly engaged in her work, and I was glad to think that she had heard nothing. Indeed, her undisturbed demeanor encouraged the opinion I had begun to form, that some peculiar effect of the wind in the open fireplace or the chimney of my room was responsible for the sound I had heard.
Yet I was by no means satisfied with this explanation:—the cry was too human, the distress it evidenced too poignant, to be thus counterfeited, and as I returned to my bench, it was with full expectation that I should hear it again. I was not disappointed. In a few moments it came, more distinct and lugubrious than before, and seemingly within the very room itself; and as I whirled about to confront I knew not what, the groan was repeated, coming from the empty air before me and dying away in an unutterably sad and plaintive sigh.
I made another swift and noiseless survey of the house, but it was as resultless as before, and regained my room much shaken, I will confess, but still unwilling to admit that the sounds could not be referred to natural causes. But I found no solution that convinced me. I might have attributed their first occurrence to hallucination, but the second hearing weakened that hypothesis—the groan and the following sigh were inimitably those of an old woman, who was either at the point of death or overwhelmed with distress of mind and body. This resemblance was absolute, and I sat for some time revolving the strange thing in my mind. I thought of relating my experience to my wife, but feared to alarm her, and finally went back to my birds.
Almost immediately there came for the third time that ghastly wail and sigh—so close to my ear that, had any living person uttered them, his face must almost have touched my own. I am not ashamed to say that the effect upon me was so unmanning and terrible that I uttered a cry of horror and fell backward with the chair I sat in, and lay sprawling on the floor. At the same instant I heard my wife scream from the kitchen; and as I gathered myself up and ran to her, I saw her standing with her back against the wall, staring with horrified eyes, and with a look of repulsion and fear upon her face, at something invisible to me, on the other side of the room. I rushed to her and grasped her hands:—they were cold as ice, and her fixed and rigid gaze into what to me was emptiness, frightened me beyond measure.
"In heaven's name," I cried, "what is it?"
"It is Deeming's mother," she answered, in a whisper I could hardly hear.
"Deeming's mother!"—I echoed her words:—"How do you know it is Deeming's mother?"
"I saw her with him in his cell at the jail," she replied.
"Then what he said was true, that his mother comes back to trouble him?"
"Yes, it was true; and now she comes to me! Go away!" she cried, addressing something I could not see. "I cannot help you; why do you torment me! Ah!"—with a sigh of relief—"she has gone!" and she sank exhausted into a chair.
We had a long and memorable talk after that, which I will briefly summarize. My wife had not heard the groans that had been audible to me until their second repetition; then the sound that had seemed beside my ear came at the same instant close to hers, and her cry that joined with mine had been wrung from her by the sight of the apparition which on the instant presented itself to her. This was not the first time, however, that it had appeared:—it had closely followed upon the receipt of Deeming's letter the day before, and its cries of distress and appeals for help had been so agonizing that it was as much on that account as because of the plea of the murderer himself that she had decided to see Miss Rounsfell again.
The apparition did not reappear that day, and there was no recurrence of the wailing lamentations—but we were soon to have further experience of them for all that.
The storm spent itself during the late afternoon, and was succeeded by a beautiful evening. The wind was still high, and the sky filled with broken masses of clouds, through which the full moon waded heavily:—and as my wife and I descended the hill, soon after dinner, to the railway station on our way to keep an engagement to call upon the Consul-General of the United States at his residence at St. Kilda, we agreed that the night was just such a one as might inspire Doré in some one of his fantastic compositions. After the day's gruesome events we had hesitated about leaving our friend alone during our absence; but we finally united upon the opinion which my wife advanced, that as she seemed to be the sole object of the apparition's visit, he was not likely to be molested. So we left him (albeit with some misgiving) comfortably seated before the dining-room fire in a large easy-chair, and with his pipe and a new novel for company, and took our departure.
It was after midnight when we returned. The gale had blown itself out, and the moon looked down upon a world that seemed resting in sleep after the turmoil of the day. My wife went at once to her room to lay aside her outer garments and I repaired, with much curiosity and a little apprehension stirring me, to the dining-room.
I found our friend as we had left him, book in hand and with his smoked-out pipe lying on a table beside him. He was not alone, however—our two dogs—a wire-haired Scotch terrier and a fox-terrier—which I had as usual chained up for the night in their kennels at the back of the house, were dozing together on the hearth-rug.
"Hullo!" I exclaimed; "what are those dogs doing here? You know they are never allowed to come into the house."
"Well," our friend replied. "I felt lonely, and so I brought them in to keep me company."
"That's an odd idea," I rejoined. "I thought your book and pipe would be society enough. Besides, there is plenty of 'Scotch' and soda on the sideboard."
"I tried that, too," he confessed. "But, do you know? this has been the most infernally unpleasant evening I ever spent in my life. The wind has been making the most uncanny noises—I would swear there were people moving all over the house if I did not know I was the only person in it. I have been all over the place a dozen times, but could find nothing. At last I couldn't stand it; so I unchained and brought in the dogs. Somehow they didn't seem to have much use for the place—I had to drag them in by their collars."
"They knew they had no right to be here," I commented. "The matter with you is, you've been smoking too much, and got your nerves on edge. Come and help me put up the dogs before my wife sees them, or you'll 'get what for,' as your English expression is."
This office performed, we returned to the dining-room, where I suggested a "Scotch-and-soda" before retiring for the night, and together at the sideboard we prepared each a modest potion. As we touched glasses to a good sleep and happy awakening, there sounded from the air behind us that weird and terrible cry! My friend's face turned ashen on the instant and his glass fell from his hand and lay shattered on the hardwood floor.
"My God!" he cried; "did you hear that?"
I was startled, of course, but the morning's experience, reinforced by anticipation of some such happening, had steeled my nerves.
"Did I hear what?" I asked. "Look here, old man, you are certainly in a queer way to-night. What should I hear?—everything is as quiet as death."
"Do you mean to tell me," he demanded, looking at me incredulously and with alarm still in his face, "that you did not hear that awful groan?"—but meanwhile I had filled another tumbler for him, which he hastily emptied, although the glass rattled against his teeth as he drank.
"Come, come!" I said; "go to bed, and you will be all right in the morning;"—but the words had but left my lips when, right between us as it seemed, there swelled again upon the air that utterance of anguish, followed by the dying cadence of a sigh.
"There!—there!—there!" stammered my companion:—"did you hear it then?"
"Yes, I did," I replied; "and the first time as well. Is that what has disturbed you to-night?"
"No, not exactly that—nothing so awful; but all sorts of strange noises; I can't describe them. I say—what kind of a house is this? I have always believed the stories of haunted houses were bally nonsense; but in heaven's name what does all this mean?"
I was unable to enlighten him:—and although I called my wife from her room and described to him our morning's experience with the voices, I thought it best to keep the feature of the apparition a secret. In fact, he never did learn of it, or of many other things that did not come directly to his personal apprehension. What he did see and hear, in the months that followed, was bad enough, God knows!—and I am convinced that one of the reasons (and that not the least considerable) which prevented him from leaving us on any one of a dozen different occasions, and ourselves from abandoning the house outright, was the consideration (on his part) that it would be unseemly for one of his nation to confess himself inferior in pluck to an American, and (on ours) that we should be untrue to all our country's traditions if we permitted a Britisher to see us in retreat.
This reason may seem extreme, and even fantastical; but it has its weight in explaining why—at the outset, at least—we held our ground. In the long discussion which followed, that night, it was evident that each party was urgent that the other should suggest abandonment of the premises. Neither, however, would broach the subject, and we separated for bed at last with the implied understanding that we were to remain.
A GHOSTLY CO-TENANCY
Such was the first manifestation of a Possession which held the house for more than nine months. That we endured it is to me now sufficient cause for wonder, and the reasons why we did so (reasons which presented themselves by degrees) may require some explanation. It must be said that with the exception of a few visitations which I shall duly describe, there were no occasions so terrifying as those which happened on the day of the storm. Moreover, as my wife and I had made acquaintance in former years with many inexplicable things and had never seen any serious results come from them, our attitude toward these new phenomena was one compact more of curiosity than anything else. The experience could hardly be called agreeable, but it was strange and unusual, and we wanted to find out what it all meant. We never did find out, by the way, but the anticipation (which was constant) that we should, kept us interested.
The amiable reader may be disposed to credit us with unusual courage, but we never looked at the matter in that light. Besides the influence of national pride which I have mentioned as supporting both our friend and ourselves, there was also the consideration that we had covenanted for the house for a year, and had paid the first six-months' rent in advance—and Yankee and Scottish thrift alike moved us to desire our money's worth; and although we might hope to annul our bargain if we could plead that the dwelling was infested with rats, we had doubts as to our standing in court in case we should set up a defense that it was overrun with ghosts. Moreover, we liked our quarters so well that we could not make up our minds to leave them merely because an unseen co-tenantry insisted on sharing them with us; therefore we remained, and in time even managed to extract some entertainment from the quips and cranks that were more or less constantly going on.
A saving feature of the situation was the fact that the manifestations were not continuous, and rarely occurred—until near the end of our term—at night. This, I think, must be set down as an unusual circumstance, but it was one that brought us considerable relief. It need not be pointed out, for example, how much less terrifying it is to hear muffled footsteps and the rustle of women's garments up and down the hall by daylight than in darkness, and to see, under the same conditions, chairs and light tables shifted about in apparent accordance with some invisible person's notion of their proper arrangement. It is somewhat disquieting, to be sure, when walking through the hall, to hear the bell above one's head break out in rattling clangor, and, looking through the wide-open front door, to perceive that no visible visitor was at the other end of the wire:—and in spite of many former experiences, we could not restrain ourselves from jumping in our seats when, at dinner, all the doors in the house would slam in rapid succession with a violence that set the dishes dancing on the board. And the singular thing about this performance was that although the sound was unmistakably that of banging doors, the doors themselves seemed to have no part in it. More than once we arranged them in anticipation of this manifestation, leaving some closed, some wide open, and some ajar at various angles which we carefully noted. Presently would come the expected thunderous reverberations—and running from the dining-room we would find every door precisely as we had left it.
Occasionally, what seemed like a rushing wind would sweep through the hall between the wire-screened doors at either end of the house, although a glance out of the window showed that the leaves of the trees in the yard were pendent and lifeless in an utter calm:—and this circumstance reminds me of a curious thing that was several times repeated.
We rarely used the parlor, which, as I have said, was on the right of the hall as one entered the house, with windows giving upon the veranda. To the decorations of this room which had been left by our landlord, we had made some considerable additions—photographs of New Zealand scenery, curios and wall hangings from Fiji, and other such matters. Now and then would break out in that room a racket as though a dozen devils were dancing the tarantelle, accompanied by a sound as of a maëlstrom of wind whirling in it. We never had courage to enter while the disturbance was in progress—in fact we had no time to do so, as it always ended within a few minutes; but when we opened the door after the noise had subsided, we invariably found the same condition of affairs—every article in the room that belonged to us piled in a heap on the floor, and all the possessions of the absent family standing or hanging undisturbed in their usual places. We were disposed to regard this demonstration as a gentle hint that our continuation in the house was not desired, and that the "spooks," as we came familiarly to call them, had in furtherance of this idea gathered together such of our belongings as they could reach in order to facilitate our packing up for departure. But we paid no heed to the implied suggestion, restored the room to its former condition, and in a short time this particular form of annoyance was discontinued.
These were minor occurrences, and I am not relating them with any reference to the order in which they came. As they seem to belong to the general run of phenomena that have been frequently noticed in accounts of "haunted houses"—so called—I will not dwell upon them; merely observing that the effort to produce them was entirely misplaced if its purpose was to frighten us, and in any case unworthy of any intelligent source. I more than once announced this opinion in a loud tone of voice when the rustlings and footfalls, and their often accompanying groans and sighs became too persistent, or wearisome in their lack of variety—and it was curious to see how effective this remonstrance always was. A dead silence would immediately ensue, and for hours, and sometimes even for days, the house would be as orderly and commonplace as possible.
It is my recollection that the mother of Deeming (if, indeed, she it were) made no further appearance after her son's execution. She seems to have expressed herself in one supreme and futile appeal for help, and then to have gone to her place. Several others followed her, whom I could hear from time to time as they moved about, and whom my wife, whose clearness of sight in these matters I never shared, described as an old woman, another much younger, and a girl-child some four or five years of age. They never attempted any communication with us; in fact, they seemed quite unaware of our presence; and were evidently not concerned in any of the bizarre and seemingly meaningless manifestations that were continually going on. We fancied that the shade of the elder woman was that of the former mistress of the house, whose death, as I have already noted, had occurred therein some three months before we took possession:—but as she ignored us entirely, we respected her seeming disinclination to a mutual introduction, and left her to go to and fro in the way she preferred. This way was not altogether a pleasant one. She wore a black gown, my wife said, with a neckerchief of some white material—the rustle of her gown, which I could plainly hear, indicated that it was of silk; she seemed unhappy (we thought it might be that she did not understand the absence of her husband and daughters) and was forever sighing softly and wringing her hands. The younger woman (the two never seemed to be conscious of each others' existence—if that is the right word) was in a state of evident discomfort also, although she was always silent, and appeared to be constantly in search of something she could not find.
Altogether we found these shadowy guests of ours a rather cheerless company; but as we had had no voice in inviting them, and feared that their departure (if they should accept any intimation from us that it was desired) might make room for others even more objectionable, we were fain to adapt ourselves to the situation that was forced upon us. The child-ghost, however, was of quite different disposition. She had something with her that seemed to take the place of a doll, and would sit with it by the hour in a corner of the room where we all were, at times crooning to it in a queer, faraway, but still quite audible voice. It was a "creepy" thing to hear, but strangely sweet and musical, for all that. On rarer occasions she would sing to herself a song, but one in which no words could be distinguished; in all her utterances, indeed, there was never anything that sounded like speech. She was not quite sure of herself in this song. Now and then she would strike a wrong note; then silence for a moment, and she would begin the song again. As she reached the note at which she had before stumbled, she would pause, then take the note correctly, give a pleased little laugh, and go on successfully to the end.
This extraordinary performance was repeated on many occasions. One bright Sunday afternoon I was sitting in talk with my wife in her room, when this weird chant started up in the farthest corner. I listened through the whole of the usual rendition—the beginning, the false note, the return for a new trial, the note rightly struck, the satisfied laugh, and so on to the conclusion. Then the thing began all over again.
I said, rather impatiently: "Don't sing that again! Can't you see that we want to talk?"
"Oh, you shouldn't have said that!" remonstrated my wife. "She has gone away"—and in fact the song had stopped, and it was many days before we heard it again.
I have not particularly mentioned our friend in this recital of minor happenings, although he had his share in most of them, and carried himself throughout in a plucky and admirable manner. We were very fond of him, as he evidently was of us to endure adventures with us which he must have found uncongenial, to say the least—he being a man of quiet tastes, and one not prone to go out of his way in search for excitement. An incident that happened one night, however, came very near to ending his residence with us.
At about eight o'clock of an evening in June (the time of year when the days are at their shortest in that latitude), he and I were smoking and chatting in my "den," my wife being in her own room at the front of the house. All at once the two dogs who were chained in the back yard broke out in a terrific chorus of barking. They were ordinarily very quiet animals, and whenever they gave tongue (which was only when some tradesman or other person came upon the premises by the back gate) it was merely by a yelp or two to inform us that they were attending to their duty as guardians. On this occasion, however, one might have thought there were a dozen dogs behind the house instead of two:—they seemed fairly frantic, and there was a strange note in their voices such as I had never heard before.
"What on earth is the matter with those dogs?" I exclaimed. "One might think they were being murdered."
"They are certainly tremendously excited about something," my companion rejoined:—"let's go out and see what the trouble is"—and he was out of the room, and unlocking the back door, before I could leave my easy-chair to accompany him. As I reached the hall I was just in time to see the large pane of groundglass with which the upper half of the outside door was fitted, fly inward—shattered into a thousand pieces by a jagged fragment of rock as large as my fist, which whizzed by my friend's head with such force that it went by me also, and brought up against the front door at the other end of the hall. My companion, who had escaped death or a serious injury by the smallest possible margin, fell back against the wall with his hands over his face, which had been cut in several places by the flying glass; but he quickly recovered himself, and when I had hastened back to my room and provided myself with a revolver, we rushed together into the open air. Nothing was to be seen, nor could we hear a sound. We went into the street, which was lighted by scattered gas lamps, and listened for retreating footsteps, but the street was vacant as far as we could see in both directions, and the silence of the night was like that of the grave. We dragged the dogs out of the kennels to which they had retreated, and turned them loose in the hope that their peculiar intelligence would enable them to guide us to some lurking miscreant in the shrubbery about the yard or amid the trees and vines in the obscurity of the orchard:—but they were trembling as if in abject fear, we could get no help from them, and when released they bolted into their kennels again and hid themselves in the straw at the farthest corners. It was evident that they had seen something that terrified them greatly, but what it was we could only surmise. The Scotch terrier was a gentle creature, and his evident alarm did not so much surprise me. The fox-terrier, on the other hand, was full of "bounce" and confidence, and nothing in canine or human shape had any terrors for him. When it came to devils, that might be another matter—an idea that passed through my mind at the time, but did not then find lodgment. It was strengthened in view of another incident which occurred later, and which I shall describe in a subsequent chapter.