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

  Of late years there has been some difficulty in getting men together for the job. Wages are so high that labouring men will not turn out of a winter’s night to climb a tor to earn a few shillings. Besides the sexton has been accused of disseminating a preposterous, idle tale of hobgoblins and bogies to frighten others from assisting him, so that he may pocket the entire sum himself.

  Be this as it may, it is certain that on the Christmas Eve that followed the quarrel I have spoken of, no additional ringers were forthcoming. The sexton, who was also clerk, Solomon Davy, worked for me and occupied one of my cottages. I beg, parenthetically, to observe that the cottages that belonged to me would do credit to any owner. My maxim is, look to your men and horses and cows that they be well fed and well, housed, and they are worth the money. Solomon Davy was an old man. His work was not worth his wages, but I kept him on because he had been on the farm all his life, and had married late in life. During the afternoon of Christmas Eve, Solomon Davy sent for me. He was taken ill with rheumatism and could not leave his cottage.

  “I’ve ventured on the liberty of asking you to step in, sir,” said he, when I entered his door, “because I’ve been took across the back cruel bad, and I can’t crawl across the room.”

  “Sorry to hear it, Solomon. Who will do the clerking for you tomorrow?”

  “I’m not troubled about that, master, as Farmer Palmer do the responses in a big voice. That which vexes me is about the ringing the bells this night.”

  “It can’t be done,” said I.

  “But, sir, meaning no offence, it must be done or I don’t get the money. The feoffees won’t pay a farthing unless Christmas be rung in.”

  “You must send somebody else to do it.”

  Solomon shook his head. “Then that person pockets the money, and I get naught.” He remained silent awhile, and then added, “Besides, who’d go?”

  “Make it worth a man’s while, and he’ll do anything,” said I. Again he shook his head, and this time he said,

  “There’s Margery of Quether.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked, flushing. “What has Miss Palmer to do with the bells? Oh, I understand; she likes to hear the peal, and you would not disappoint her.”

  Solomon looked up at me slyly. “I didn’t mean she.”

  “Then who the deuce do you mean?”

  “Her as never dies.”

  “Solomon, the lumbago has got into your brains. I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I will ring the bells for you, and you shall draw the fee for having done it. That, I hope, will content you, my good man.”

  “Now that be like you, master, the best and kindest of your good old stock,” exclaimed Solomon. ‘‘I never heard of a master as was of such right good stuff as you. You don’t turn off an old man because he is past work, nor grudge him a bit of best garden ground, took out of one of your fields, nor deny him skimmed milk because you want it for the pigs and calves, nor refuse him turnips and pertatees out of the fields as many as he can eat.”

  So he went on. I do not hesitate to repeat what he said, because he confined himself strictly within the bounds of truth. I flatter myself I always have been a good master, and just, even generous, to my men. I have been more, I have been considerate and kind. Lights were not made to be put under bushels, and I am not one of those who would distort or suppress the truth, even when it concerns myself. I know my own merits, and as for my faults, if I light on any at any time, I shall not scruple to publish them.”

  The old sexton jumped at my offer—I mean metaphorically, for his lumbago would not allow him to jump literally. I had made the offer out of consideration for him, but without considering myself, and I repented having made it almost as soon as the words had left my lips. However, I am a man of my word, and when I say a thing I stick to it.

  “Where is the key?” I asked.

  “Her be hanging upon thicky (that) nail behind the door,” answered the old man.

  As I took down the great church key, Solomon said, in a hesitating, timid voice. ‘‘If you should chance to meet wi’ Margery o’ Quether, you won’t mind.”

  “I do not in the least expect to see her,” I said, getting red, and hot, and annoyed.

  “No—mebbe not, but her has been seen afore on Christmas Eve.”

  “Margaret on the tor at midnight!” I exclaimed; then, highly incensed at the idea of the old man poking fun at me, and even alluding to my weakness for Margaret Palmer—love is a weakness—I said testily, as I walked out swinging the key on my forefinger, “Solomon, I object to Miss Palmer’s name being brought in in this flippant and impertinent manner. What with the Gladstone-Chamberlain general topsy-turvyism of the government, the working classes are forgetting the respect due to their superiors, and allow themselves liberties of speech which their forefathers would have turned green to think of.”

  If I was regular in my devotions every Lord’s Day, a labouring man in one’s employ earning thirteen shillings a week had no right to suppose that I did not ascend Brentor from the purest motives of personal piety. It is the duty of one in his position to think so. His insolence jarred my feelings, and I already regretted the offer I had made. It is a mistake to be good-natured. It is lowering in the eyes of inferiors; it is taken for weakness. The man who is universally respected, and obtains ready attention and exact obedience, is he who cares for nobody but himself; is loud, exacting, and self-asserting.

  To be good-natured involves a man in endless troubles. I had undertaken to ring the bells at midnight in midwinter in the windiest, most elevated steeple in England; I had to ascend a giddy peak on which one false step would precipitate me over the rocks, and dash every bone in my body to pieces. I am not one to shrink from danger, or to shirk a responsibility, freely, if inconsiderately undertaken. I have already said that I would frankly admit my faults when I noticed them; and now the opportunity arises. I admit without scruple that I am too prone to do kind acts. This is a fault. A man ought to consider himself. Charity begins at home. In this instance I did not think of myself, of the discomfort and danger involved in ascending Brentor at midnight.

  I took a stiff glass of hot rum and water about half-past ten or a quarter to eleven, and then turned out.

  There was no snow on the ground; we are not likely to have seasonable weather so long as this Gladstone-Chamberlain-Radical topsy-turvy Government remain in power. Our sheep get cawed with the wet, the potatoes get the disease, the bullocks get foot-and-mouth complaint, and the rain won’t let us farmers get in our harvest. If only we had Beaconsfield back! But there, politics have nothing to do with my story.

  The evening was not cold, it was raw, and the night was black as pitch. I had a lanthorn with me (I spell the substantive advisedly in the old way, lanthorn and not lantern, for mine had horn, not glass, sides). I knew my road perfectly. The lane is stony, wet, and overhung. Stony it must be, for it is worn down to the rock, and the rock breaks up as it likes and stones itself, just as the coats of the stomach renew themselves. Wet it is, because it serves as main drain to the fields on either side. Overhung it is, because trees grow on either side. If the trees were not there, it would not be overhung. You understand me. I like to be explicit. Some intelligences are not satisfied with a hint, everything must be described and explained to them to the minutest particular.

  By the lanthorn light I could see the beautiful ferns and mosses in the hedge, and the water oozing out of the sides, and the dribble that ran down the centre of the lane and then spread all over it, then accumulated on one side, and then took a fancy to run over to the other side. I notice that a stream in going down the hill zigzags just as a horse does in ascending a hill, and as a woman does in aiming at anything. The road rises steeply from my backyard gate to the church porch. When I say road, I mean way. For after one comes out on the moor, there is not even a track.

  I knew my direction well enough, so I went straight over the heath to the old volcano, and as I ascended the peak I thought to myself, if any travel
ler were on Heathfield tonight, what a tale he would make up of the Jack-o’-lanthorn seen dancing in and out among the rocks, and winding its way up the height, till at last it hopped in at the church door of St. Michael on the rock, and then a faint glimmer was visible issuing from all its windows. Probably he would suspect some witches’ frolic was going on there such as Tam o’ Shanter saw on All Hallowe’en, when—

  Kirk Alloway seem’d in ableeze,

  . . . though the “bleeze” could not be bright that issued from my tallow candle in a lanthorn.

  The sky was overcast. Not a star was visible; only in the S. W. was a little faint light, and a thread of it ran round the horizon. The simile is not poetical, but it is to the purpose, when I say that the earth seemed under a dish-cover which didn’t quite fit. I reached the church in safety, dark as the night was; the few gravestones lit up with a ghastly smile as the lanthorn and I went by them in the little yard. I set down the dickering article on the stone seat in the porch, turned the key, resumed my lanthorn and went into the tower.

  The church was not in first-rate repair. I believe the Duke of Bedford, who owns all Heathfield, did intend to do something to the church. He brought an architect there, and the architect said he must pull down the old church that dates from the thirteenth century, and build a sort of Norman Gothic cathedral in its place. You see the architect thought only of the duke’s pocket from which to draw; he gets five per cent on the outlay. But when the parson heard that, and I too, being churchwarden, we put our foot down and said, No! We loved the little old church; it was seen by Drake and Raleigh as they sailed into Plymouth Sound, just the same as we see it today, and we would not have a stone changed of the carcase. They might do what they liked with the vitals inside, that we conceded. Since that day we have heard nothing more of the restoration of Brentor church. Consequently, the sacred edifice has been getting more and more out of repair.

  The rain had driven for centuries through the joints of the masonry, even through the stone itself, and had streamed down inside, rotting the joists of the bell-chamber where they rested in the wall. I don’t blame the builders, they did their best. The walls are thick, but there is no stone in the country that is impervious to a south-western wind charged with rain. Granite is worst of all. You might as well build of sponge. Brentor Church is built of the stone of the hill on which it stands, a sort of pumice, full of holes, and therefore by nature spongy. It holds the wet, and weeps it out at every change of weather. Now the belfry joists had given way, rotted right off, and had brought the planking down with them, and lay a wreck at the bottom of the tower.

  By day, I have no doubt, anyone looking up would see the three bells, and the holes in the lead roof above them. It was difficult for me to get at the ropes, so encumbered was the floor with fallen beams and boards that smelt of mildew and death. I fancy the floor had given way since last Sunday, and that was why the litter lay there. Some of the sexton’s tools had been knocked over by the fallen beams. He wants strong tools, for the graves have to be hewn in the rock.

  After I had removed some of the rotten timber, I made myself space, and stood in a pool of coffee-coloured water that had leaked from the roof, and drained from the sodden joists, and then I began to ring the bells. As I rang I looked round now and then. It was, of course, possible, though hardly probable, that the blacksmith or Luke Petherick might come up and take a turn at the ropes. I did not expect anyone, but I thought one might come; and I almost wished I had knocked the blacksmith up on my way, and asked him as a personal favour to join me. He couldn’t have refused, for he does all my blacksmithing for me. But it might have seemed as if I were afraid to go alone, and it would have deprived Solomon of half the ringer’s fee. Looked at in another light, it would not have done, for one in my position is hardly the person to be seen ringing a church bell, and to be known to have done it out of good-nature.

  I soon found that, for one unaccustomed to bell-ringing, the exertion was great; it brought into play muscles not usually exercised, and I began to feel the strain. I paused and wiped my forehead. My hands were getting galled. I did not moisten them in the customary way, which is vulgar; but I dipped my palms in the coffee-coloured solution on the pavement at my feet. I had hitherto rung the “cock,” as Solomon designates one old heavy bell that has a curious Latin inscription on it, which begins, “Gallus vocor.” Now, as I rose from moistening my palms, I looked at the rope of the tenor bell, intending to pull that next. As I did so, I noticed something dark, like a ball of dirty cobwebs, hanging to the cord, rather high up. I elevated my lanthorn to see what it was, but the light afforded by the tallow dip was not sufficient to enable me to distinguish the outline of the object. I supposed it might be a great mass of filthy-cobweb, or perhaps a piece of broken flooring which had remained attached to the rope, caught when the rest fell away. I considered that if I pulled the rope, I should probably bring the thing—whatever it was—down on my head. You will understand that my desisting from touching that cord was prompted by the wisest discretion, not by inane fear. So I rang the treble bell, and ever and anon cast up my eye at the remarkable mass above.

  Presently, I desisted from ringing altogether. I thought that the object was descending the rope slowly. I say I thought so, I did think so at first, but very soon I was certain of it. So certain was I, that I stepped back, and in so doing fell over a balk. When I had picked myself up the thing had reached the bottom. I should have liked to leave the church, but to do this I must step past this creature; I must do more; it was in the only clear space between me and the tower arch, so that to get out I must lift it from its place to make a passage for myself, and this I did not feel inclined to do. I never have believed in the supernatural. I do not believe in it now. Ghosts, goblins, and pixies are the creations of fevered imaginations and illiterate ignorance. It puts me out of patience to hear people, who ought to know better, speak of such things. I did not for a moment, therefore, suppose that the object before me was a denizen of another world.

  As far as I can recollect and analyse my sensations at the time, I should say that blank amazement prevailed, attended by a dominating desire to be outside the church and careering down the flank of the hill in the direction of Foggaton. I had no theory as to what the thing was; indeed the inclination to theorise was far from me. The creature I could now see had a human form. It was of the size of a three months old baby. I have had no experience in babies myself, and am no judge of ages, so that when I say three months I do not wish to be tied down to that period exactly. In colour the object was brown, as if it had been steeped in peat water for a century, and in texture leathery.

  It scrambled, much as I have seen a bat scramble, out of the puddle on the pavement to the heap of broken timber, and worked its way with its little brown hands and long claws up a rafter, and seated itself thereon, holding fast by a hand on each side of what I suppose was the body, and then blinked, much in the same way as a monkey blinks, drawing a skin over the eyes different in colour from the skin of the face.

  “I be Margery Palmer of Quether,” it said in strange, far-off, mumbling words. “I couldn’t bide up yonder no longer; the wood be that rotten, it is all giving away, and I be afeared I may fall and break my bones. That ’ud be a gashly state o’ things, my dear, to hev’ to bide up there year after year with a body o’ bones all scattered abroad (broken to pieces), and never no chance of the bones healing.”

  “Who are you?” I asked, perhaps not as loudly or with as firm a voice as that in which I usually accost a stranger. The creature did not hear me. It went on, however, in its mumbling voice, and with a querulous intonation.

  “I be Margery Palmer of Quether. I reckon there be someone before me, but, my dear, I cannot see you, and if you speak I cannot hear you. I be deaf as a post, and I’ve the eyes white wi’ caterick.”

  “Are you a spirit?” I inquired. She did not hear me; so, waxing bolder, I put my hands to my mouth and shouted, as through a speaking trumpet, “Are y
ou a spirit?”

  ‘‘Spirit—spirit?” she echoed. “Laukamussy! I wish I was! Spirit! No such luck comed to me yet. If I was I’d be thankful! Ah! Wishes don’t fulfil themselves like as prayers do.”

  “How came you here?” I called.

  “Hear!” she repeated. “I can’t hear. I be got too old for that, I reckon. I be Margery Palmer o’ Quether.”

  “Impossible,” I said. Were my senses taking leave of me? “This is a sheer impossibility.”

  She did not hear my protest, but went mumbling on. “I lives up yonder among the bells. I’ve lived there these hundreds of years. I reckoned it were the safest place I could be in. I’d not ha’ come down now, but that I were fear’d the bells would give way and all fall together, and my bones would ha’ broke. It ’ud be a gashly thing to live on for hundreds o’ years wi’ broked arms and legs, and mebbe also a broked neck, so that the head hung down behind, and with no power to move it, not a bit and crumb. There ain’t no healing power in my bones now: they be as ancient as they in the graves, and no more power of joining in them than the dead and mouldering bones hev.”

  I held up the lanthorn to inspect this curious creature squatted before me on a beam. It was, as I said, of the size of a baby; but otherwise it was a grown woman very aged and withered. The face was not merely wizen: it was dried up to leather, quite tanned brown, the colour of the oak beams; the hands and arms were shrivelled and like those of a bat. There was actually no flesh on them, they were simply dry tanned skin about bone. The garments seemed to have been tanned like the hide by the liquor distilling from the oak. The eyes were blear.