The Collected Supernatural and Weird Fiction of Sabine Baring-Gould Read online

  Table of Contents

  Margery of Quether

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  Colonel Halifax’s Ghost Story

  Little Joe Gander

  Crowdy Marsh

  Glámr

  Mustapha

  1

  2

  3

  4

  A Dead Finger

  1

  2

  3

  4

  The Leaden Ring

  The Dead Trumpeter of Hurst Castle

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  Jean Bouchon

  Black Ram

  Pomps and Vanities

  The White Flag

  The Fireman

  Aunt Joanna

  The 9.30 Up-Train

  A Professional Secret

  The Merewigs

  The Devil’s Mill

  A Happy Release

  H. P.

  McAlister

  The Red-Haired Girl

  Master Sacristan Eberhart

  The “Bold Venture”

  The Mother of Pansies

  On the Leads

  Only a Ghost!

  CHAPTER 1: WHY I CAME TO LONDON

  CHAPTER 2: HOW I WENT TO CHURCH WITH BOODLE

  CHAPTER 3: “THE POPULAR PREACHER”

  CHAPTER 4: SARUM USE

  THE COLLECTED SUPERNATURAL AND WEIRD FICTION OF SABINE BARING-GOULD

  Including Three Novelettes

  ‘Margery of Quether, ’ ‘Mustapha’ and ‘A Professional Secret’ and Twenty-Two Short Stories

  of the Strange and Unusual

  Sabine Baring-Gould

  The Collected Supernatural and Weird Fiction of

  Sabine Baring-Gould

  Including Three Novelettes ‘Margery of Quether, ’‘Mustapha’ and ‘A Professional Secret’ and Twenty-Two Short Stories of the Strange and Unusual

  by Sabine Baring-Gould

  FIRST EDITION

  Leonaur is an imprint of Oakpast Ltd

  Copyright in this form © 2012 Oakpast Ltd

  ISBN: 978-0-85706-876-7 (hardcover)

  ISBN: 978-0-85706-877-4 (softcover)

  http://www.leonaur. com

  Publisher’s Notes

  The views expressed in this book are not necessarily those of the publisher.

  Margery of Quether

  (A tale from Margery of Quether and Other Stories)

  CHAPTER 1

  This is written by my own hand, entirely unassisted. I am George Rosedhu, of Foggaton, in the parish of Lamerton, and in the county of Devon—whether to write myself Mister or Esquire, I do not know. My father was a yeoman, so was my grandfather, idem my great-grandfather. But I notice that when anyone asks of me a favour, or writes me a begging letter, he addresses me as Esquire, whereas he who has no expectation of getting anything out of me invariably styles me Mister. I have held my acres for five hundred years—that is, my family the Rosedhus have, in direct lineal descent, always in the male line, and I intend, in like manner, to hand it on, neither impaired nor enlarged, to my own son, when I get one, which I am sure of, as the Rosedhus always have had male issue. But what with Nihilism, and Communism, and Tenant-right, and Agricultural Holdings legislation, threatened by Radicals and Socialists, there is no knowing where a man with ancestral acres stand, and, in the general topsy-turvyism into which we are plunging—God bless me! —I may be driven, heaven preserve me, to have only female issue. There is no knowing to what we landed proprietors are coming.

  Before I proceed with my story, I must apologise for anything that smacks of rudeness in my style. I do not mean to say that there is anything intrinsically rude in my literary productions, but that the present taste is so vitiated by slipshod English and effeminacy of writing, that the modern reader of periodicals may not appreciate my composition as it deserves. Roast beef does not taste its best after Indian curry.

  My education has been thorough, not superficial. I was reared in none of your “Academies for Young Gentlemen,” but brought up on the Eton Latin Grammar and cane at the Tavistock Free Grammar School. The consequence is that what I pretend to know, I know. I am a practical man with a place in the world, and when I leave it, there will be a hole which will be felt, just as when a molar is removed from the jaw.

  There is no exaggeration in saying that my family is as old as the hills, for a part of my estate covers a side of that great hog’s-back now called Black Down, which lies right before my window; and anyone who knows anything about the old British tongue will tell you that Rosedhu is the Cornish for Black Down. Well, that proves that we held land here before ever the Saxons came and drove the British language across the Tamar. My title-deeds don’t go back so far as that, but there are some of them which, though they be in Latin, I cannot decipher. The hills may change their names, but the Rosedhus never. My house is nothing to boast of. We have been yeomen, not squires, and we have never aimed at living like gentry. Perhaps that is why the Rosedhus are here still, and the other yeomen families round have gone scatt (I mean, gone to pieces). If the sons won’t look to the farm and the girls mind the dairy, the family cannot thrive.

  Foggaton is an ordinary farmhouse substantially built of volcanic stone, black, partly with age, and partly because of the burnt nature of the stone. The windows are wide, of wood, and always kept painted white. The roof is of slate, and grows some clumps of stone-crop, yellow as gold.

  Foggaton lies in a combe, that is, a hollow lap, in Yaffell—or as the maps call it, Heathfield. Yaffell is a huge elevated bank of moor to the north-west and west, and what is very singular about it is, that at the very highest point of the moor an extinct volcanic cone protrudes, and rises to the height of about twelve hundred feet. This is called Brentor, and it is crowned with a church, the very tiniest in the world I should suppose, but tiny as it is it has chancel, nave, porch, and west tower like any Christian parish church. There is also a graveyard round the church. This occupies a little platform on the top of the mountain, and there is absolutely no room there for anything else. To the west, the rocks are quite precipitous, but the peak can be ascended from the east up a steep grass slope strewn with pumice.

  The church is dedicated to St. Michael, and the story goes that, whilst it was being built, every night the devil removed as many stones as had been set on the foundations during the day. But the archangel was too much for him. He waited behind Cox Tor, and one night threw a great rock across and hit the Evil One between the horns, and gave him such a headache that he desisted from interference thenceforth. The rock is there, and the marks of the horns are distinctly traceable on it. I have seen them scores of times myself. I do not say that the story is true; but I do say that the marks of the horns are on the stone. It is said also that there is a depression caused by the thumb of St. Michael. I have looked at it carefully, but I express no opinion thereon—that may have been caused by the weather.

  Looking up Foggaton Combe, clothed in oak coppice and with a brawling stream dancing down its furrow, Brentor has a striking effect, soaring above it high into the blue air, with its little church and tower topping the peak.

  I am many miles from Lamerton, which is my parish church, and all Heathfield lies between, so, as divine service is performed every Sunday in the church of St. Michael de Rupe, I ascend the rocky pinnacle to worship there.

  You must understand that there is no road, not even a path to the top; one scrambles up over the turf, in windy weather clinging to the heather bushes. It is
a famous place for courting, that is why the lads and lasses are such church-going folk hereabout. The boys help the girls up, and after service hold their hands to help them down. Then, sometimes a maiden lays hold of a gorse bush in mistake for a bunch of heath, and gets her pretty hand full of prickles. When that happens, her young man makes her sit down beside him under a rock away from the wind, that is, from the descending congregation, and he pricks the prickles out of her rosy palm with a pin. As there are thousands of prickles on a gorse bush, this sometimes takes a long time, and as the pin sometimes hurts, and the maid winces, the lad has to squeeze her hand very tight to hold it steady. I’ve known thorns drawn out with kisses.

  I always do say that parsons make a mistake when they build churches in the midst of the population. Dear, simple, conceited souls, do they really suppose that folks go to church to hear them preach? No such things—that is the excuse; they go for a romp. Parsons should think of that, and make provision accordingly, and set the sacred edifice on the top of moor or down, or in shady corners where there are long lanes well wooded. Church paths are always lovers’ lanes.

  When a woman gets too old for sweethearting—if that time ever arrives, in her own opinion—she goes to church for scandalmongery, and, of course, the farther she has to go, the more time she has for talk and the outpour of gossip. I know the butcher at Lydford kills once a week. Sunday is the character-killing day with us, and all our womankind are the butchers.

  Well! —this is all neither here nor there. I was writing about my house, and I have been led into a digression on church-going. However, it is not a digression either; it may seem so to my readers, but I know what I am about, and as my troubles came of church-going, what I have said is not so much out of the way as some superficial and inconsiderate readers may have supposed. I return, for a bit to the description of my farmhouse. As I have said once, and I insist on it again, Foggaton makes no pretensions to be other than a substantial yeoman’s residence. You can smell the pigs’ houses as you come near, and I don’t pretend that the scent arises from clematis or wisteria.

  The cowyard is at the back, and there is plenty of mud in the lane, and streams of water running down the cart ruts, and skeins of oats and barley straw hanging to the hollies in the hedge. There is no gravel drive up to the front door, but there is a little patch of turf before it walled off from the lane, with crystals of white spar ornamenting the top of the wall. In the wall is a gate, and an ascent by four granite steps to a path sanded with mundic gravel that leads just twelve feet six inches across the grass plot to the front door. This door is bolted above and below, and chained and doubled-locked, but the back door that leads from the yard into the kitchen is always open, and I go in and out by that. The front door is for ornament, not use, except on grand occasions. The rooms of Foggaton are low, and I can touch the ceiling easily in each with my hand; I can touch that in the bedrooms with my head. Low rooms are warmer and more homelike than the tall rooms of Queen Ann’s and King George’s reigns.

  On the other side of Heathfield is Quether, a farm that has belonged to the Palmers pretty nigh as long as Foggaton has belonged to the Rosedhus. Farmer John Palmer is a man of some substance, one of the old sort of yeomen, fresh in colour, with light blue eyes and fair hair; he is big-made and stout. He is a man who knows the world and can make money. He has a lime-kiln as well as a farm, but the lime-kiln is not his own; he rents it. His daughter Margaret is a very pretty girl. He has several sons, and a swarm of small children of no particular sex. They are all in petticoats. So Margaret can’t take much with her when she marries. Margaret used to go to chapel, but her religious views underwent a change since one Sunday afternoon she visited Brentor church. This change in her was not produced by anything in the parson’s sermon, but by the fact that I was there, aged three and twenty, was good-looking, and the sole owner of Foggaton.

  I accompanied her back to Quether. Since that Sunday she has been very regular in her devotions at St. Michael de Rupe; she has, I understand, returned her missionary box to the minister of the chapel, and no longer collects for the conversion of the heathen. As for me, I became a much more regular attendant at church after that Sunday afternoon than I had been before. When the day was windy, I helped Margaret up the rock, and held her hand very tightly in mine, for had she missed her footing she might have perished. When the day was rainy, we shared one gig umbrella. When the day was windy and rainy, it was better still; for the gig umbrella could not be unfurled, so I folded my wide waterproof over us both. When the day was foggy, that was best of all, for then we lost our way in the fog, and could not find the church door till service was ended. On sunshiny days we were merry; in rain and fog, sentimental.

  One Sunday she and I had gone round to the west end of the church after service. I told her that I wanted to show her Kit Hill, where the Britons made their last stand against King Athelstan and the Saxons; the real reason was that there is only a narrow ledge between the tower and the precipice, on which two cannot walk abreast, but on which two can stand very well with their backs to the wall, and no one else can come within eye and ear-shot of them. Whilst we stood there, a sudden cloud rolled by beneath our feet, completely obliterating the landscape, but we were left above the vapour, in sunlight, looking down, as it were, on a rushing, eddying sea of white foam. The effect was strange; it was as though we were insulated on a little rock in a vast ocean that had no bounds. Margaret pressed my arm and said, “We two seem to be alone in a little world to ourselves.”

  I answered, looking at the fog, “And a preciously dull world and dreary outlook.”

  I have not much imagination, and I did not at the moment take her words as an appeal for a pretty and lover-like reply. I missed the opportunity and it was gone past recall. She let go of my arm in dudgeon, and when I turned my head Margaret had disappeared. With a step she had left the ledge, and a few paces had taken her to her father. The fog at the same time rose and enveloped the top of the Tor and the church, so that I could no longer see Margaret, and the possibility of overtaking her and apologising was lost.

  Next Sunday she did not come to church. This made me very uncomfortable. I like to have the even tenor of neither my agricultural nor my matrimonial pursuits disturbed. I had been keeping company with Margaret Palmer for seven or eight months, and I had begun to hope that in the course of a twelvemonth, if things progressed, I might make a declaration of my sentiments, and that after the lapse of some three or four years more we might begin to think of getting married. This little outburst of temper was distasteful to me; I knew exactly what it meant. It showed an undue precipitancy, an eagerness to drive matters to a conclusion, which repelled me.

  My sentiments are my own, drawn from my own heart, as my cider is from my own apples. I will not allow anyone to go to the tap of the latter and draw off what he likes; and I will not allow anyone to turn the key of my bosom and draw off the sentiments that are therein. On the third Sunday, I did not go to church, but I sent my hind, and he reported to me that Margaret Palmer had been there. I knew she would be there, expecting to find me ripe and soft to the pitch of a declaration. By my absence I showed her that I could be offended as well as she.

  That next week there came a revivalist preacher to the chapel; he was a black man, and went by the name of “Go-on-all-fours-to-glory Jumbo.” I heard that Margaret Palmer had been converted by him. The week after there came a quack female dentist to Tavistock, and I went to her and had one of my back teeth out. Margaret Palmer learned a lesson by that. I let her understand that if she chose to be revived by Methodies, I’d have my teeth drawn by quacks. I’d stand none of her nonsense. My plan answered. Margaret Palmer came round, and was as meek as a sheep, and as mild as buttermilk after that. Next Sunday I went as near a declaration as ever a man did without actually falling over the edge into matrimony.

  Foggaton is a property of 356 acres 2 roods 3 poles, and it won’t allow a proprietor to marry much under fifty; my father did not marry
till he was fifty-three, and my grandfather not till he was sixty. Young wives are expensive luxuries, and long families ruin a small property. One son to inherit the estate, and a daughter to keep house for him till he marries, then to be pensioned off on £80 a year, that is the Rosedhu system. Now you can understand why I object to being hurried. Foggaton will not allow me to marry for twenty-seven years to come. But women are impatient cattle. They are like Dartmoor sheep; where you don’t want them to go, there they go; and when you set up hurdles to keep them in, they take them at a leap. I’ve known these Dartmoors climb a pile of rocks on the top of which is nothing to be got, and from which it is impossible to descend, just because the Almighty set up those rocks for the sheep not to climb.

  To my mind, courting is the happiest time of life, for then the maiden is on her best behaviour. She knows that there is many a slip between the cup and the lip, and she regulates her conduct accordingly. I’ve heard that in Turkey females are real angels; they never nag, they never peck, they never give themselves airs. And the reason is that a Turkish husband can always turn his wife out of the house and sell her in the slave market. With us it is otherwise; when a woman is a wife she has her husband at her feet in chains to trample on as she pleases. He cannot break away. He cannot send her off. She knows that, and it is more than a woman can bear to be placed in a position of unassailable security. As long as a man is courting, he holds the rod, and the woman is the fish hooked at the end; but when they are married the positions are reversed.

  Well, to turn to my story. We made up our quarrel and were like two doves. Then came the event I am about to relate, which disturbed our relations.

  It had been the custom on Christmas Eve from time immemorial for the sexton and two others to climb Brentor, and ring a peal on the three bells in the church tower at midnight. On a still Christmas night the sound of these bells is carried to a great distance over the moors. I daresay in ancient times there may have been service in the church at midnight, but there has been none for time out of mind, and the custom being unmeaning would have fallen into disuse were it not that a benefaction is connected with it—a field is held by feoffees in trust to pay the rent to the sexton and the ringers, on condition that the bells are rung at midnight on Christmas Eve.