A Night on the Moor and Other Tales of Dread Page 5

  A strange commingling of luxury and dread came over Endymion. He sank to her feet.

  She drew his face, with both hands, to her lap. Then she bowed her head until her soft lips touched his neck.

  Mary found herself unable to sleep – unable even to prepare for bed.

  In less than an hour after Endymion’s departure her disquietude became so painful that she left her chamber and hastened to Madam Padley’s bedside.

  The old lady was sleeping placidly. Her white horsehair headdress had been replaced by a decent cap of plaited linen.

  The girl laid a trembling hand upon her shoulder. ‘Waken, grandmother,’ she said. ‘Waken, I am miserable. I have done something that I had no right to do. I am bewildered. Some evil thing is happening!’

  The dame started, and sat up. ‘What is’t child?’ she said. ‘Art troubled with a nightmare?’ Mary spoke disconnectedly. Madam listened, piecing the broken sentences together; then she flung aside the bedclothes.

  ‘My God,’ she cried, ‘you have done wrongly! I had never wished to tell you, but the reason – the reason why yonder house is deserted is that your great-grandfather wooed and wed for second wife a foreign woman, who fed upon human blood! And the place grew foul with strange crimes!’

  She rang for her abigail; but before the worthy woman could appear Mary had fled from the chamber and from the house. In another minute the great fire-bell of the Dovecote was clanging wildly, and the servants leaping from their beds. Madam Padley could not speak for excitement. Her gestures alone bade them follow with all speed in the girl’s tracks.

  Mary reached the hall long before the others, and, entering through the open doorway, ran up the gallery and passed from room to room, calling passionately upon her lover’s name. The moonlight shone now through the latticed windows. Everywhere she saw bats flying into the comers. At last she reached the great chamber, not lighted now with mysterious fires, but dark and dusty, and fetid of odour.

  Endymion lay prone upon the floor; beside him crouched a woman’s figure, the head pressed close to his own. And Mary took the thing madly by the shoulders and thrust it aside, and linked her arms around the young man’s waist.

  His eyes opened; she heard the sound of his breathing.

  ‘There’s naught for it save that I drag you from the place,’ she whispered. ‘Who knows that she may not bring others stronger than I?’

  ‘I have dreamed terribly,’ he muttered; ‘dreamed of things that I dare not tell.’ In the gallery he rose awkwardly to his feet, and, leaning heavily against her, stumbled to the staircase. ‘Had you not come, dearest one,’ he said, ‘all the blood had left my body.’ There the servants met them, and prepared a rough litter, in which he was carried back to the Dovecote. Mary followed, but not until after she had done something that ere another night had blotted Calton Hall out of existence. As she left the place she set fire to the tapestries, and the woodwork took flame almost instantly. Since ’twas her own heritage none could complain. When Madam Padley and Endymion heard they said nothing; but it was easy to see that they approved.

  And when, two days afterwards, he was permitted to leave his room and sit with Mary in the sunlit garden, and she took his hand and held it to her bosom, and begged him to forgive her for submitting to such a weird ordeal, he put his disengaged arm around her neck and begged her to be silent.

  ‘For, sweet,’ he said, ‘there’s shame in my happiness. That night hath shown me how nobler is your love than mine.’

  The Manuscript Of Francis Shackerley

  (Being a True Account of the Most Noble Lady, Lady Millicent Campion.)

  Since that news has come this day of Sir Humphreville Campion—a death strangely caused by the bursting of an alembic—there is naught to hinder me from taking up my drowsy pen and writing a true history of certain matters that caused no small wonder in their day. True it is that I would liefer work in my garden amongst the simples and flowers, for since the last affairs to be narrated in my history, all thought has been painful to me, and the world a place rather to endure than to dwell in. There is a quiet joy in the breeding of small cattle and the growth of crops; but to one who has tasted of life’s sweetness such pleasure is wondrously pitiable.

  We met first in 1611. My father’s coach, as we were travelling to Sherenesse Manor, where dwelt my aunt Bargrave, broke down outside the village of Stratton—the left sling being overchafed. How it came about I know not, but in the scuffle, when my folks were hastening back to the inn, I stole unnoticed across the road to a mossy wall, and, filled with arrant mischief, leaped over and ran panting along the sward. Monstrous elms, with contorted boles, stood about: it was springtide and the leaves were freshly green; in the branches overhead squirrels played and squeaked.

  Soon I heard two sounds, cuckoo and a child mocking cuckoo; turning abruptly past a high jetto, as thin in the lower part as a needle, but towards the top breaking into mist which the sun made orange and purple and blue, I reached a tennis-court, where a girl danced, an odd pretty creature, with a pale face and ringlets so deeply hued that they might have been washed in blood. She was all alone, tripping round and round in a ring, first on one foot, then on the other, and singing to herself in baby language. The cuckoo marked time: at every note little mistress drew herself upright, clasped her hands, and cried cookoo, then continued her dance. I stood by in silence, till, as she passed for the third time, she lifted her eyes, showing how they were hazel and big.

  ‘Ah,’ she said in a proud fashion, ‘ ’tis not Humphreville! Day after day have I thought to see him. They said last summer he had flown away with the cuckoo, and I know that with the cuckoo he must return. It is lonely here with no playmates. Who are you?’

  ‘Frank Shackerley. My father’s coach broke down, and I ran away.’

  She held out a tapering brown hand, on whose marriage finger gleamed a golden ring. ‘And I am the most noble lady, the Lady Millicent Campion, wife to Sir Humphreville Campion.’

  ‘You tease me,’ I said vexedly. ‘You are not nearly as old as I, so you cannot be a wife.’

  The Lady Millicent came nearer tears gathering in her eyes; she put her arm around my neck. ‘Dear heart,’ she murmured, ‘’tis true. I know not how it came, but in the summer Humphreville stayed here with his parents, and I was wedded to him. At night when I was put to bed they brought him to kiss me, and when I awoke in the morning he had gone with the cuckoo. Why does not he stay with me and keep house like other husbands?’

  At this moment an elderly woman came through the yew archway: she leaped almost off her feet with surprise. ‘Bless us!’ she cried, ‘an elvling!’ And she caught little Millicent in her arms; but the child laughed and patted her cheeks.

  ‘Nurse Granmodè,’ she said, ‘Master Shackerley hath stole away from his friends to visit me. Put me down at once, for I must speak with him. At once, I say! Dear nurse, do!’

  The woman obeyed, and Millicent came again to my side. ‘Now let us kiss, for you must go back to your people,’ she whispered. ‘’Tis very good to meet you. I shall often think of you when you are gone.’

  She brought her smooth lips to mine, and kissed with evident delight. The nurse separated us. ‘Madam, your mother will be uneasy if we do not return now,’ she said. ‘The bell has rung: we must go at once.’

  Her charge took up the seams of her green skirt, and made a courtesy, then with a strange grace walked quietly away. In some manner she made me feel that I was utterly unpolished in comparison: her gait—her way of speaking—might have been copied in courts.

  When she had passed out of sight I hurried back to the coach, where I found the men taking out the valuables. My parents and sisters had gone back to Stratton, imagining that I had preceded them; so I hastened along the road and soon reached the ‘Bull and Butcher,’ which we had left only an hour before.

  In the inn-yard a set of mountebanks was playing ‘The Merriments of the Men of Gotham’; but though I loved these shows, I did not pause t
ill I entered the presence of my mother, who was in high unrest at my absence. My father stood conversing with the innkeeper, a comely, well-proportioned dame, who put me in mind of the portrait of Anne Bullen at Amnest. ‘’Twas more than strange—’twas wicked,’ I heard him say, ‘the lass to have no choice!’

  Mistress Nappy-ale replied, ‘A sweet child if ever there was any!’ My mother’s curiosity conquered. I was sitting on her knee—all fears were allayed. ‘Pray, husband, what is the purport of your long conversation?’ He took her hand lightly. ‘A pitiful story, indeed!’ he said. ‘Mistress here is telling me of Lord Dorel’s mad freak about his daughter’s marriage. Will you not repeat it to my wife? Dorel’s Park was where the sling broke.’

  Our hostess then began an account of how the Earl of Dorel, who had lost much of his fortune at the court of Elizabeth, had slightly retrieved his position by selling his child as wife to Humphreville Campion, a lad of thirteen: his father, Sir Withers Campion, being desirous for him to interwed with one of the purest stock in England. The Earl was old and profligate: he desired to shine amongst the gallants of Scottish James. Lady Millicent was seven years old at the time: her mother, a simple creature, so browbeaten that she dared not oppose any wish of her lord. After the ceremony, which was performed by the Bishop of Exeter, Sir Withers took Humphreville away to dwell at Campion Court until both parties attained ripe years. The act had made Lord Dorel very unpopular in the country, and since that day, now eight months ago, he had not once appeared at Dorel’s Park.

  This story made a deep impression on me. I remember that I was silent about my meeting with the baby-wife, not even telling the truth to my mother. When the coach was repaired and we went on to Aunt Bargrave’s, my quietness was construed by my sisters into a sense of shame because of my escapade. For some weeks I was dull and heavy: I desired a companionship that was not attainable, and was regarded for a time as wasting. Nature, however, took mistress-ship, and before midsummer the subtle influence of Millicent seemed to have worn away.

  Then intervened seventeen years, which, since they have little or naught to do with the Lady Millicent, I may pass over without excess of detail. I was educated at Salisbury Grammar School, and in 1617 became gentleman commoner at Christchurch, where, in 1622, I took the degree of Master of Arts. My father dying about this time, left me the estate of Amnest. My three sisters were married, one to a French noble, the others to men of position in our own county. Unaccustomed to the use of money, I set to squandering my fortune, and, being drawn into the vices of the court, kept wenches and horses both for myself and my less endowed friends. Time came when I discovered that half my money was dissipated: all my land mortgaged. I had some talent for writing: at Oxford I had composed many satires; so, with some wild view of retrieval, I wrote a play, which was often acted with great applause by the High and Mighty Prince Charles’s servants, at the private house in Salisbury Court. Three other comedies followed; then a tragedy, then an epic of Mars and Venus, then The Mother, a tragi-comedy, on the presentation of which, before the king and queen, at the ‘Red Bull’ in Drury Lane, I first met Humphreville, now Sir Humphreville Campion.

  His repute had often reached me, for he was accounted one of the maddest men in England. In his youth he had spent some years on the continent, and had there imbibed a love of occult things. ’Twas even said that he discovered the philosopher’s stone. Darcy, my schoolfellow, who was murdered in Italy on his first tour, wrote once from Paris, where he had visited Sir Humphreville, who showed him a richly-coloured water, which he declared would turn any metal into gold. Then, doubtless by some sleight of hand, he performed an experiment whereby two ounces of the great metal were found in a crucible where lead had been before. Darcy had begged for a piece, but had been denied on the plea that all was not perfected.

  Seeing that I had often wondered about him, it will amaze none to find that I examined him from top to toe. He was very tall—of at least six feet; his frame was thin; his hands and feet were small, the former exquisitely kept; his face was speckled like a toad’s belly; his eyes deep brown—the left one with a slight cast; his hair black and crisp; his lips ripe red, very full and voluptuous, and his teeth of dazzling purity.

  He seemed to favour notorieties. Hearing that I was the playwright he came to me, and, on the next seat’s being left unoccupied, sat there and watched. He dispersed a rich smell of violets—it was said that his skin by some artificial means had been impregnated lastingly with their odour. When the play was done I bade him to a supper I had made for the actors; and there, though his language savoured of the empiric, he discoursed most interestingly, particularly on antipathies: in France he said he had kept a mistress who fainted at the sight of velvet; and even if it were drawn over her face in sleep she would instantly fall into convulsions. This, and such like information, kept us together till late in the morning. On parting he entreated me to visit him at his house at Hampstead, where, he told me, the Lady Millicent was lying. I kept my own counsel about our former meeting, thinking it might give him some displeasure.

  On the morrow I went, to find Sir Humphreville away from home, but expected shortly. I was shown into his library, a spacious chamber, lighted by a louvre of many-coloured glass, and lined with a collection of books such as I had never seen before in the house of a private gentleman. It consisted chiefly of modern poets and dramatists, memoirs in divers foreign languages, works on witchcraft, chemistry, and astrology: on the whole being of more pretence than worth.

  As I took up a new copy of Michael Scott’s Quaestio Curiosa de Natura Solis et Lunae, I heard the rustling of a woman’s gown, and turning, saw Lady Millicent gazing at me with a mirthful face. She was much changed. As a child she had seemed sad and fantastic, now at twenty-four she had developed into a woman of heavenly beauty. Her face was white as snow, an admirable oval; her grey eyes clearer than crystal; her hair, which had not, as hair is wont, changed with the passage of years, fell in heavy curls down her back and over her bosom, held from her brow by an ornament of pearls.

  ‘So we meet again,’ she said. ‘You were my fairy prince. I almost doubted that you had ever really existed. It is very sweet to find you here. When they brought your name to me, years seemed to roll away. Ay me, for those long past days at Dorel’s Park!’ she sighed.

  Somehow her words brought back the hollowness of my manhood. Would that we two were children again! That once more I might run through the Park, where the jetto played and the squirrels squeaked, and the stately little maid kissed me. Lady Millicent noted my depression.

  ‘Childhood is sweeter than barren knowledge,’ she said in a low tone. ‘For one year of unalloyed happiness I would sell all the rest of my life.’

  As she spoke a curtain swung back, and one entered in the guise of a Saracen; turbaned and bedecked with many precious stones. He passed round the room by the wall; not until he reached the further door did I observe his face. It was the most terrible I had ever seen. Heavy brows leaned over green and yellow eyes: the skin was puckered in huge wrinkles: a few silver hairs swayed from his chin. His mouth was loathsome; by some preternatural means the lips had been drawn almost to the ears, and in the gulfed space lay a hedge of black teeth, which being opened—the jaw hanging loosely on his breast—showed me in that short space that the tongue was missing, and its place taken by some white snake-like roots. At the door he made his obeisance, accompanying it with a hoarse, frightful sound.

  ‘It is Sir Humphreville’s mute eunuch,’ she said frowning. ‘He has the leave of the house. My lord bought him from the Soldan. He is reputed to have stores of forbidden knowledge—Sir Humphreville sets a high value on him: they work for hours in the laboratory together.’

  When the creature had gone she laid her hand on my arm. ‘I have a fond belief that yonder gelding pollutes the air. Let us sit in my own chamber: there at least he is forbidden to enter.’

  She accompanied me to a cabinet furnished in the richest, most extravagant fashion. The w
alls, where not hung with white satin, were of alabaster, fretted with moresks of finely-beaten gold; the ceiling, also of white, but pierced with a crescent moon and stars that by some arrangement of changing mirrors and lights glittered more brightly than the real firmament. Tripods of silver with smouldering spills sent out dainty clouds that massed beneath this mock sky and filtered through its orifices.

  There we sat and discoursed of our lives. She had heard of my fame; had even seen one of my comedies at White Hall. She made no attempt to glose, but begged for information as simply as a begging child. When I had told her all, she began to relate her own history since her marriage. Sir Humphreville (whom, as I had already noted, she spoke of in a constrained fashion) had returned from the Continent in her sixteenth year to take possession. The Earl of Dorel had died meanwhile; and her husband, after a year of quiet life, had been appointed ambassador to Naples. There she had passed three unhappy years, the women of Italy not being companionable, and Sir Humphreville overmuch engrossed in his philosophical researches. After that they had resided in England; at divers seats of the Campions; and now, Sir Humphreville being called to the Court, where he was in high favour because of his proposal to turn all the copper of the kingdom into gold, he had bought the house at Hampstead. Day by day, she said, he worked with the king in the royal laboratory.

  When she had done, the noise, of a coach in the yard made her rise. ‘He has arrived. We will go back to the library,’ she said timidly. So we returned thither, and almost before I could kiss her hand she retired. As I turned towards the window I caught sight of the mute, half hidden behind a heavy crimson curtain, with his foul face drawn into one most filthy grin. A curious fascination—as is felt of him that looks upon a cockatrice—took possession of me; and I stared until Campion’s appearing, who came forward with a wry smile of welcome. I heard afterwards that some most precious liquid had been spilled that morning by the king’s carelessness.