The Mammoth Book of Ghost Stories by Women Part 28

I had just finished my breakfast when I was told Miss Clewer's maid wished to speak to me on the telephone. I knew Rebecca Park well. She worshipped her mistress, whom she had attended since childhood, and I was sure that, with the instinct of the simple and devoted, she recognized me as a real friend. Her voice was sharp with anxiety.

"Please come quick, sir. I can't wake my mistress this morning, and her sleep don't seem natural."

Ten minutes later I entered the familiar bedroom. Margaret lay in something between a swoon and a sleep. She breathed unevenly and I noticed that her hands were tightly clenched.

No man who loves a woman can see her asleep for the first time without emotion. Something clutched at my heart as I looked at Margaret's unconscious face. I cannot remember whether I had ever actually pictured her asleep. If so I could never have surmised that which I saw. How could closed eyes and lack of colour effect so great though subtle a change in a familiar face? What was it in the expression of those lovely features that was so utterly alien so disquietingly alien to the Margaret I loved?

Struck by the coldness of her wrist when I felt her pulse, I told Rebecca to fetch a hot-water bottle, and as we turned back the bedclothes to apply it we both received a shock. Margaret's feet were not only cold, but damp and stained with earth: little lumps of clay soil stuck between the toes. It had been a very wet night.

"She has been walking in her sleep," I whispered to Rebecca. "On no account tell her when she wakes, and please wash all traces from her feet. Quick, before she wakes."

As I bathed her blue-veined temples. Margaret gave a long, shuddering sigh, and very piteously breathed out, "No! No! No!" her voice rising as she pleaded.

As she recovered consciousness and the long lashes lifted, her own expression swam into her eyes like some lovely flower rising to the surface through muddied waters. Her first words were curious, and at the time I wondered whether Rebecca noticed.

"Is it Me?" she said, gazing upwards. Not, as I might have expected for my presence must have puzzled her- "Is it you?" but "Is it Me?"

I explained my presence, telling her as unconcernedly as possible that I had been sent for because she had fainted.

Her brow contracted and fear looked out of her eyes. As soon as Rebecca had left the room she spoke in the quick level voice that I a.s.sociated with her rare confidences.

"It happened again last night."

"What happened?"

"I was pushed out of myself . . . no reflection, nothing. You know I told you before how desperately hard whatever was left of me had to struggle not to faint? Well, this time I fainted. The awful dizziness overcame me. I had to let go." She gave a queer little laugh. "Yes, this time I really slipped my moorings and evidently my faint as you call it has lasted an unconscionable time. Not that I know when it was I went off. 'Went off' is the correct expression, isn't it?"

Impressing on Rebecca the necessity for absolute quiet, I started on my professional rounds, but not for one moment in all that busy day did the thought of Margaret leave my mind. An undefined but deep anxiety settled in my heart.

I have already admitted that I loved her. To hope for a return of my love had never entered my head. It did not occur to me that I could lay any claim to so transcendent a being. As soon would I have made a declaration to the moon. Fool that I was! How often I have asked myself whether avowed love might have helped where friendship failed.

At about half-past twelve that night I suddenly awoke, thoughts of Margaret thrumming in my brain. Suppose she were to walk in her sleep again? Might she not injure herself or wake up and be terrified? How could I have risked such a thing happening again without even warning her? Of course I should have arranged for someone to sleep in her room.

I was in my clothes almost before I knew I had decided to go to the Manor House. If I found her walking, I could lead her home in her sleep.

A full moon flooded the house with a strange green beauty. Glancing up at Margaret's window, I was surprised to see it shut on so warm a night. I decided to patrol the courtyard and watch the door in case she should emerge. I trod as softly as possible. Save for the distant bark of the inevitable dog, my vigil seemed unshared. The night was full of an indescribable menace. A low wind crept through the trees and the leaves whispered momentously. Claimed by the moon, the house looked wan and remote, palely repudiating any human allegiance it might seem to concede by daylight.

I was startled by the loud hoot of an owl, a sound I can never hear without a strange stirring as of some forgotten but intense memory. "You can't think how lovely it looks at night with a great white owl sweeping about." I remembered Margaret's words, and obeyed an impulse to enter the churchyard. A white owl almost brushed my cheek as he pa.s.sed on his blundering flight.

Beneath the trans.m.u.ting moon the crowded tombstones looked more sharply outlined, far less merged into the green quiet of the long gra.s.s. In the day time the atmosphere breathed a sense of acquiescence, as though the oft-repeated text "Thy will be done" had been instilled into the very air, but now the peace of buried centuries seemed disturbed; the consecrated ground to quiver with insubmission. Even the yew trees seemed to bristle. Starkly black, they stood like mutinous sentinels.

As I turned my eyes to the eastern side of the churchyard, I heard myself gasp. In the uttermost corner something white glimmered on the ground. I knew at once what it was. Ten strides brought me to where Margaret, in her long nightgown, lay outstretched across a flat tombstone. Her arms, the hands tightly clenched, were flung out in front; her slim, protesting body writhed. It looked as though she were struggling to rise, but had no power; almost as though some force were drawing her down. I heard a low, piteous moaning, and kneeled to examine her pale, twisted face. The eyes were closed. Her tormented body rolled over to one side, leaving the inscription on the grey lichened stone exposed. As I knelt I involuntarily read the brief words: Here lyes the bodye of Elspeth Clewer.

G.o.d grante that she lye stille.

I recalled my first visit to the churchyard. So it was upon the grave of Elspeth Clewer, the uncommended ancestress who had so aroused my curiosity, that Margaret lay.

"No! No! No!" was wrung from her lips, and she writhed as though in anguish.

I raised her gently. Strength was required. It was like lifting a body from a quicksand. Fearful of waking her, I slowly led her home and to her room.

Sheen, the Golden Retriever, greeted me sleepily, but with his usual exquisite courtesy, and when I had laid her on the bed, he gently licked his mistress's white hand.

I watched by her side for some time until her sleep seemed tranquil and normal. Then, in misplaced confidence, I left her alone, except for the dog who lay stretched out his golden length across the bed.

Anxious to see her the next morning, I went round as early as possible, intending to explain my uninvited visit by a wish to alter a prescription. But Rebecca met me in the pa.s.sage, her honest brow besieged with worry.

"You're a glad sight for sore eyes, Doctor. I was just going to send for you. Miss Margaret's just like she was yesterday deep drowned in that sleep that don't seem natural. I can't abide to see her like that."

"I think it only means she's very over-tired," I said, anxious to soothe.

"That's as maybe," she answered, unconvinced. "Though what she's done to get so tired, I don't know. And, Doctor, there's something most dreadful's gone and happened. I suppose that dratted cat must have got into my lady's room in the night and forced its way the cunning brute into the birdcage, and there's them two sweet little birds, as Miss Margaret sets such store by, lying dead in their blood with their poor little heads torn right off of their bodies. Really, I don't know how to tell Miss Margaret when she wakes. She'll take on so!"

"I'll tell her," I said, as I followed her into the bedroom, hastily adding, "but, for heaven's sake, take away the cage. She mustn't see that awful sight when she wakes."

With little moans of concern the maid hurried away with her gruesome burden.

Margaret lay in deep unconsciousness. Her appearance was in every way the same as on the previous morning. I turned over her limp hand to feel her pulse. Then I heard my heart hammering in my ears. It was as though it had attended and taken in something my mind refused to accept. Soon I felt deadly sick. Self-protection, reason, fought against the evidence of my sight, but in vain. The lovely white hand that I had so often ached to kiss was thickly smeared with red, and sticking between the fingers and thumb was a cl.u.s.ter of bloodstained feathers.

For the first time I knew what it was to shudder with my whole being. Difficult though it was to control my thoughts, prompt action was necessary, and, fetching warm water, I hastily washed all traces from her hand.

Soon afterwards she turned and, struggling through layers of oblivion and subconsciousness, came to herself. Bewilderment showed in her eyes, then relief and welcome.

"What's the matter?" she said, looking at my face. Struggling to hide the shrinking that I felt, I explained my presence and wrote out a prescription.

Margaret looked round the room for her inseparable companion. "Where's Sheen?" she asked.

"He wasn't in here when I come in this morning, Miss," said Rebecca, "and I can't find him nowhere. I've asked everyone, and no one's seen him."

"He must have jumped out of the window," said Margaret. "How queer of him."

At her request I looked out of the window. The flower bed below plainly showed a dog's pawmarks.

"I must get up and go and hunt for him," said Margaret. "I had a horrid dream about him."

She looked deathly pale, quite unfit to leave her bed, but I knew it would be useless to attempt to detain her. I had come to the conclusion that I must tell her of her sleep-walking and insist that she should have a night nurse for a time. I wanted an opportunity to break this to her as unalarmingly as possible, so I reminded her of her promise to call on a farmer's wife and try to persuade the obstinate woman to obey my injunctions and send her crippled child to a hospital. She agreed to come that afternoon.

As I left the house I remembered that I had not told her about the death of the birds: neither had she noticed the absence of their cage.

At three o'clock we started on our two-mile walk across the fields. It was a lovely afternoon, resplendent summer, though a delicious tang in the air hinted at autumn and brought an exquisite pink to Margaret's cheeks. More than ever I was struck by her astonishing look of dewy youth. Like a just opened wild rose her face looked utterly unused, as though it had never harboured any expression save one of vague expectancy. My horrid misgivings began to seem fantastically unreal.

"Have you heard of the cat's crime?" she asked. Her eyes looked like wet flowers and her voice quivered, though characteristically she tried to laugh as she added: "Of all Shakespeare's adjectives, I think the queerest are his 'harmless' and 'necessary' applied to a cat. I adored those little birds."

I murmured sympathy.

"I'm wretchedly worried about Sheen's disappearance, too," she said. "He's never been away from me for even an hour before. He'll go mad with misery without me. Do you think he can have been stolen?"

"I'm quite sure he hasn't," I said emphatically.

I steered the conversation until, as unconcernedly as possible, I told her I had discovered that she was given to the quite common but not to be encouraged habit of sleep-walking.

Consternation flared in her eyes and she flushed painfully. She tried to laugh it off.

"I wonder what my particular 'd.a.m.ned spot' may be. It always is some d.a.m.ned spot that won't 'out' that makes people walk in their sleep, isn't it? Or may it be merely due to unsubmissive food?"

"It's far more often caused by indigestion than by conscience," I said, with a laugh, and I took advantage of this wave of flippancy to float the hospital nurse into the conversation.

To my surprise and relief Margaret promptly acquiesced. In fact, it seemed to me that a look of unmistakable relief flickered across her face. I told her an excellent nurse was just about to leave one of my patients, and that I would engage her to come in that evening.

"You won't need to see her at all during the day," I said. "She'll just sit up in your room at night."

"Oh, I hope she doesn't knit," laughed Margaret. "I don't expect sleep will ever slide into my soul with her sitting there. I shall be the watched pot that never boils! However, no sleep no walking; so it will be all to the good."

With that we dismissed the matter.

"Now let's forget everything, except this winged hour. It is such a heavenly afternoon!" she exclaimed. "Thank heaven I can always live in the present. I hope you don't think it's dreadful to have a nature like a duck's back?"

She stepped out and the shadow which had overhung her ever since that unexpected outburst in her sitting-room lifted from her. Once more she shone out as the radiant being I had first known. It was impossible not to be infused by her brilliant gaiety, and as her lovely peals of laughter rang out, for the time being my nightmare was almost dispersed. Her inimitable mimicry, delicious raillery and stream of brilliantly garbled quotations almost made me forget the unforgettable. But her radiance suddenly clouded over when I said: "What an amazing memory you have got!"

"Memory?" she answered almost sharply. "Yes, I admit I have plenty of memory and understanding. But what protection are such merely receptive qualities?"

"Protection?" I echoed blankly.

"Well, here we are," she said in evasion, her hand on the farmyard gate. "Now I propose that you stay here, while I go in by myself and twist the good woman round my little finger. I'm sure your presence would cramp my little finger's style. I'll wish it luck," and pulling off her glove she smilingly held up her tapering, pink-nailed finger. "What's the matter?" she asked uneasily.

I'm afraid an uncontrollable inward shudder must have shown on my face. The last time I had looked at that slender finger, it had been stained with blood, and I could still see the pitiful little feathers that had stuck to it.

"I've got a st.i.tch," I lied. "I'll wait here for your good news. Good luck."

A prey to uninvited thoughts, I leaned against the gate. About five minutes later I heard myself hailed and was delighted to see the gardener with Sheen on a chain. As I patted the beautiful dog's head, he slowly waved his sweeping tail.

"Please, sir," explained the gardener, "the keeper found him in a distant wood, and when he brings him home, Miss Park, knowing where you was goin', she asks me to follow you, thinking Miss Clewer would be that pleased to see him safe."

Delighted to be the bearer of good news, I hurried towards the farmhouse, and was met by Margaret.

"Triumph to my little finger!" she began, but directly I spoke of Sheen her successful mission was forgotten in delight, and she ran towards the gate. "Darling, darling Sheen! How could you leave me?" I heard her eager voice.

Then something so dreadful happened something so painful, that even now I can scarcely endure to recall it.

As Margaret approached her dog, expecting an exuberant welcome, an unaccountable change came over him. His tail was lowered until it disappeared between his cringing legs, and his whole body shook with unmistakable terror.

"Sheen what is the matter?"

Her voice was piteous and, looking at her face, I saw it contorted with unbearable suffering.

"It's Me!" she pleaded. "Sheen, it's Me!"

But the dog she had said "would be mad with misery without her" cowered lower and lower as though it would creep through the ground, and his golden coat grew dark with sweat.

"Oh, what did happen last night?" wailed Margaret, and put out her hands to the dog in anguished propitiation.

"Back, miss, back!" shouted the terrified gardener.

The dog's eyes showed white, he howled, snapped wildly in Margaret's direction, and tore at his collar in frantic efforts to escape.

"Take him away!" cried Margaret. "Take him away! I'll go back by the road," and she started off as fast as her swift stride could carry her.

I overtook her, but could think of nothing to say. A terrible constraint lay between us. I looked at her. Tears coursed down her white, strained face and her mortally affronted eyes stared straight in front.

"Unaccountable things, dogs," at last I ventured.

"Unaccountable? Do you think so?" she said sharply. "I wonder." And as she strode on, she clenched her hands till the knuckles stood out white.

A moment later she turned to me as though she were on the point of really speaking, of letting something gush out. She made a little movement with one hand, but then it was as though an iron shutter slid between us, and in a cold formal voice she told me of her successful interview with the farmer's wife. That was all we spoke of. We might almost have been strangers.

The next morning I went to give her some electric treatment. She looked bitterly troubled, but said she liked the hospital nurse, a pleasant, serene-faced young woman. I missed the accustomed twitter of the birds, and the room looked strangely deserted without the beautiful golden dog. I dared not ask about him, and I never saw him again.

With a pang of pity I noticed that all the mirrors had been removed.

"Has that queer thing happened again?" I ventured. "Did you think there was something wrong with your reflection?"

"Don't ask me about that any more," she answered feverishly. "I've finished with all that fanciful nonsense and I never wish to hear it alluded to again. Never, never, never!"

With that a safety-curtain of unhappy reserve fell between us. She seemed to consign herself to the loneliness of utter withdrawal, and from that time onward the shadows settled more and more darkly on her beautiful face.

A few days after her arrival I asked the nurse to come and talk to me about her patient. She had nothing very definite to report, except that, though her charge slept for a fair number of hours, her sleep was very troubled and brought little refreshment. In fact, she always seemed most tired and overwrought in the mornings.

"Of course," the nurse said, "I do think that having no fresh air in the room these stifling hot nights may have something to do with her condition."

"Why," I asked, "do you mean to say she doesn't have the window open in this weather?"

The stubborn summer had blazed out into a last fierce spell of heat, and I was indeed amazed.

"No, sir, I can't persuade her to, and sometimes I can scarcely bear the closeness myself."

I promised to use my influence.

"Then there's another thing," the nurse went on. "Do you think it can be good for anyone in an excited state of nerves to be doing all that rehearsing? If you'll excuse my saying so, sir, I think you should order her to give up those theatricals."

"Theatricals?" I echoed blankly. "What theatricals?"

"I don't know when they're to be, but I know she's very busy rehearsing for them. Whenever she sends me to fetch something during the night, and she's always asking me to fetch some book or something special from the stillroom not that she ever scorns to use the things when I bring them well, as I come back, all the way down that long pa.s.sage, I hear her fairly screaming out her part. Wonderful actress she must be! You wouldn't really think it could be her own voice; no, you wouldn't think such a sweet young lady could produce so horrid a voice. It simply raises my hair that acting voice of hers does. And, as I was saying, I really can't think it can be good for anyone whose nerves are disturbed to be studying so violent a part."

"Thank you, Nurse. I'll speak about it."

That afternoon I called on Margaret. After some casual talk I said, "I hear you sleep with your window shut. And, you know, you are looking extremely pale. To insist on keeping the window open all the year round may be a foolish fetish, but in this sort of weather, it really is essential."

"If the nurse makes a fuss about that, I won't keep her," Margaret burst out. "How can I leave the window open when it's from there that I feel that awful pressing in that pressing and pushing away? How can I? Though, heaven knows, it's foolish enough to think it's any use to shut things. If stone walls cannot a prison make, nor iron bars a cage, still less can they make a fortress." Suddenly she seemed to remember herself. "But these are but 'wild and whirring words'," she said, smiling. "I'm so sorry. Please don't pay any attention to them. My disease of quoting grows worse and worse. It's because I have no opinions of my own."