Shivers for Christmas (9 page)

‘I shall not use it!' I cried, desperately.

‘You must—consider your children. Suppose you lose your connection with these publishers of yours?'

‘But it would be a crime.'

‘Not a bit of it. Whom do you rob? A man who voluntarily came to you, and gave you that of which you rob him. Think of it as it is—and act, only act quickly. It is now midnight.'

The tempter rose up and walked to the other end of the room, whence, while he pretended to be looking over a few of my books and pictures, I was aware he was eyeing me closely, and gradually compelling me by sheer force of will to do a thing which I abhorred. And I—I struggled weakly against the temptation, but gradually, little by little, I yielded, and finally succumbed altogether. Springing to my feet, I rushed to the table, seized my pen, and signed my name to the story.

‘There!' I said. ‘It is done. I have saved my position and made my reputation, and am now a thief!'

‘As well as a fool,' said the other, calmly. ‘You don't mean to say you are going to send that manuscript in as it is?'

‘Good Lord!' I cried. ‘What under heaven have you been trying to make me do for the last half hour?'

‘Act like a sane being,' said the demon. ‘If you send that manuscript to Currier he'll know in a minute it isn't yours. He knows you haven't an amanuensis, and that handwriting isn't yours. Copy it.'

‘True!' I answered. ‘I haven't much of a mind for details to-night. I will do as you say.'

I did so. I got out my pad and pen and ink, and for three hours diligently applied myself to the task of copying the story. When it was finished I went over it carefully, made a few minor corrections, signed it, put it in an envelope, addressed it to you, stamped it, and went out to the mail-box on the corner, where I dropped it into the slot, and returned home. When I had returned to my library my visitor was still there.

‘Well,' it said, ‘I wish you'd hurry and complete this affair. I am tired, and wish to go.'

‘You can't go too soon to please me,' said I, gathering up the original manuscripts of the story and preparing to put them away in my desk.

‘Probably not,' it sneered. ‘I'll be glad to go too, but I can't go until that manuscript is destroyed. As long as it exists there is evidence of you having appropriated the work of another. Why, can't you see that? Burn it!'

‘I can't see my way clear in crime!' I retorted. ‘It is not in my line.'

Nevertheless, realizing the value of his advice, I thrust the pages one by one into the blazing log fire, and watched them as they flared and flamed and grew to ashes. As the last page disappeared in the embers the demon vanished. I was alone, and throwing myself down for a moment's reflection upon my couch, was soon lost in sleep.

It was noon when I again opened my eyes, and, ten minutes after I awakened, your telegraphic summons reached me.

‘Come down at once,' was what you said, and I went; and then came the terrible
dénouement
, and yet a
dénouement
which was pleasing to me since it relieved my conscience. You handed me the envelope containing the story.

‘Did you send that?' was your question.

‘I did—last night, or rather early this morning. I mailed it about three o'clock,' I replied.

‘I demand an explanation of your conduct,' you said.

‘Of what?' I asked.

‘Look at your so-called story and see. If this is a practical joke, Thurlow, it's a damned poor one.'

I opened the envelope and took from it the sheets I had sent you— twenty-four of them.

They were every one of them as blank as when they left the paper-mill!

You know the rest. You know that I tried to speak; that my utterance failed me; and that, finding myself unable at the time to control my emotions, I turned and rushed madly from the office, leaving the mystery unexplained. You know that you wrote demanding a satisfactory explanation of the situation or my resignation from your staff.

This, Currier, is my explanation. It is all I have. It is absolute truth. I beg you to believe it, for if you do not, then my condition is a hopeless one. You will ask me perhaps for a
résumé
of the story which I thought I had sent you.

It is my crowning misfortune that upon that point my mind is an absolute blank. I cannot remember it in form or in substance. I have racked my brains for some recollection of some small portion of it to help make my explanation more credible, but alas! it will not come back to me. If I were dishonest I might fake up a story to suit the purpose, but I am not dishonest. I came near to doing an unworthy act; I did do an unworthy thing, but by some mysterious provision of fate my conscience is cleared of that.

Be sympathetic, Currier, or, if you cannot, be lenient with me this time.
Believe, believe, believe
, I implore you. Pray let me hear from you at once.

(Signed)

H
ENRY
T
HURLOW
.

(Being a note from George Currier, Editor of the ‘Idler,' to Henry Thurlow, Author.)

Your explanation has come to hand. As an explanation it isn't worth the paper it is written on, but we are all agreed here that it is probably the best bit of fiction you ever wrote. It is accepted for the Christmas issue. Enclosed please find a cheque for one hundred dollars.

Dawson suggests that you take another month up in the Adiron-dacks. You might put in your time writing up some account of that dream-life you are leading while you are there. It seems to me there are possibilities in the idea. The concern will pay all expenses. What do you say?

(Signed)

Yours ever,        G.C.

__________________________________________

__________________________________________

Grant Allen (1848–1899) was a Canadian-born writer who spent most of his career in Britain. He became one of the most prolific and famous authors of the 1890s, his most controversial works being
The Evolution of the Idea of God
(1897) and
The Woman Who Did
(1895), a novel (in the Keynotes series) in which the title-figure decided that free love was less degrading than the bondage of marriage.

‘Wolverden Tower’, one of the best of his supernatural tales, appeared in his collection
Twelve Tales
(1899).

M
aisie Llewelyn had never been asked to Wolverden before; therefore, she was not a little elated at Mrs. West’s invitation. For Wolverden Hall, one of the loveliest Elizabethan manor-houses in the Weald of Kent, had been bought and fitted up in appropriate style (the phrase is the upholsterer’s) by Colonel West, the famous millionaire from South Australia. The Colonel had lavished upon it untold wealth, fleeced from the backs of ten thousand sheep and an equal number of his fellow-countrymen; and Wolverden was now, if not the most beautiful, at least the most opulent country-house within easy reach of London.

Mrs. West was waiting at the station to meet Maisie. The house was full of Christmas guests already, it is true; but Mrs. West was a model of stately, old-fashioned courtesy: she would not have omitted meeting one among the number on any less excuse than a royal command to appear at Windsor. She kissed Maisie on both cheeks—she had always been fond of Maisie—and, leaving two haughty young aristocrats (in powdered hair and blue-and-gold livery) to hunt up her luggage by the light of nature, sailed forth with her through the door to the obsequious carriage.

The drive up the avenue to Wolverden Hall Maisie found quite delicious. Even in their leafless winter condition the great limes looked so noble; and the ivy-covered hall at the end, with its mullioned windows, its Inigo Jones porch, and its creeper-clad gables, was as picturesque a building as the ideals one sees in Mr. Abbey’s sketches. If only Arthur Hume had been one of the party now, Maisie’s joy would have been complete. But what was the use of thinking so much about Arthur Hume, when she didn’t even know whether Arthur Hume cared for her?

A tall, slim girl, Maisie Llewelyn, with rich black hair, and ethereal features, as became a descendant of Llewelyn ap Iorwerth—the sort of girl we none of us would have called anything more than ‘interesting’ till Rossetti and Burne-Jones found eyes for us to see that the type is beautiful with a deeper beauty than that of your obvious pink-and-white prettiness. Her eyes, in particular, had a lustrous depth that was almost superhuman, and her fingers and nails were strangely transparent in their waxen softness.

‘You won’t mind my having put you in a ground-floor room in the new wing, my dear, will you?’ Mrs. West inquired, as she led Maisie personally to the quarters chosen for her. ‘You see, we’re so unusually full, because of these tableaux!’

Maisie gazed round the ground-floor room in the new wing with eyes of mute wonder. If
this
was the kind of lodging for which Mrs. West thought it necessary to apologise, Maisie wondered of what sort were those better rooms which she gave to the guests she delighted to honour. It was a large and exquisitely decorated chamber, with the softest and deepest Oriental carpet Maisie’s feet had ever felt, and the daintiest curtains her eyes had ever lighted upon. True, it opened by French windows on to what was nominally the ground in front; but as the Italian terrace, with its formal balustrade and its great stone balls, was raised several feet above the level of the sloping garden below, the room was really on the first floor for all practical purposes. Indeed, Maisie rather liked the unwonted sense of space and freedom which was given by this easy access to the world without; and, as the windows were secured by great shutters and fasteners, she had no counterbalancing fear lest a nightly burglar should attempt to carry off her little pearl necklet or her amethyst brooch, instead of directing his whole attention to Mrs. West’s famous diamond tiara.

She moved naturally to the window. She was fond of nature. The view it disclosed over the Weald at her feet was wide and varied. Misty range lay behind misty range, in a faint December haze, receding and receding, till away to the south, half hidden by vapour, the Sussex downs loomed vague in the distance. The village church, as happens so often in the case of old lordly manors, stood within the grounds of the Hall, and close by the house. It had been built, her hostess said, in the days of the Edwards, but had portions of an older Saxon edifice still enclosed in the chancel. The one eyesore in the view was its new white tower, recently restored (or rather, rebuilt), which contrasted most painfully with the mellow grey stone and mouldering corbels of the nave and transept.

‘What a pity it’s been so spoiled!’ Maisie exclaimed, looking across at the tower. Coming straight as she did from a Merioneth rectory, she took an ancestral interest in all that concerned churches.

‘Oh, my dear!’ Mrs. West cried, ‘
please
don’t say that, I beg of you, to the Colonel. If you were to murmur “spoiled” to him you’d wreck his digestion. He’s spent ever so much money over securing the foundations and reproducing the sculpture on the old tower we took down, and it breaks his dear heart when anybody disapproves of it. For
some
people, you know, are so absurdly opposed to reasonable restoration.’

‘Oh, but this isn’t even restoration, you know,’ Maisie said, with the frankness of twenty, and the specialist interest of an antiquary’s daughter. ‘This is pure reconstruction.’

‘Perhaps so,’ Mrs. West answered. ‘But if you think so, my dear, don’t breathe it at Wolverden.’

A fire, of ostentatiously wealthy dimensions, and of the best glowing coal, burned bright on the hearth; but the day was mild, and hardly more than autumnal. Maisie found the room quite unpleasantly hot. She opened the windows and stepped out on the terrace. Mrs. West followed her. They paced up and down the broad gravelled platform for a while—Maisie had not yet taken off her travelling-cloak and hat—and then strolled half unconsciously towards the gate of the church. The churchyard, to hide the tombstones of which the parapet had been erected, was full of quaint old monuments, with broken-nosed cherubs, some of them dating from a comparatively early period. The porch, with its sculptured niches deprived of their saints by puritan hands, was still rich and beautiful in its carved detail. On the seat inside an old woman was sitting. She did not rise as the lady of the manor approached, but went on mumbling and muttering inarticulately to herself in a sulky undertone. Still, Maisie was aware, none the less, that the moment she came near a strange light gleamed suddenly in the old woman’s eyes, and that her glance was fixed upon her. A faint thrill of recognition seemed to pass like a flash through her palsied body. Maisie knew not why, but she was dimly afraid of the old woman’s gaze upon her.

‘It’s a lovely old church!’ Maisie said, looking up at the trefoil finials on the porch—‘all, except the tower.’

‘We
had
to reconstruct it,’ Mrs. West answered apologetically—Mrs. West’s general attitude in life was apologetic, as though she felt she had no right to so much more money than her fellow-creatures. ‘It would have fallen if we hadn’t done something to buttress it up. It was really in a most dangerous and critical condition.’

‘Lies! lies! lies!’ the old woman burst out suddenly, though in a strange, low tone, as if speaking to herself. ‘It would
not
have fallen—they knew it would not. It could not have fallen. It would never have fallen if they had not destroyed it. And even then—I was there when they pulled it down—each stone clung to each, with arms and legs and hands and claws, till they burst them asunder by main force with their new-fangled stuff—I don’t know what they call it—dynamite, or something. It was all of it done for one man’s vainglory!’

‘Come away, dear,’ Mrs. West whispered. But Maisie loitered.

‘Wolverden Tower was fasted thrice,’ the old woman continued, in a sing-song quaver. ‘It was fasted thrice with souls of maids against every assault of man or devil. It was fasted at the foundation against earthquake and ruin. It was fasted at the top against thunder and lightning. It was fasted in the middle against storm and battle. And there it would have stood for a thousand years if a wicked man had not raised a vainglorious hand against it. For that’s what the rhyme says—