“When we both went after her, she had gone. The others were all
there in the hall, frightened; they said: ‘What’s the matter with her?’
She had run right past them, out of the front door; it was still open
and the snow was outside. Aunt Shandie came out of the drawingroom and said: ‘I told you so.’ None of the others moved; they all
looked at me.”
6
Ghost Story
H
olly, no doubt brought in by the butler, was stuck
in the Sèvres vases each side of the clock. The oppressiveness of the
gilded and crowded drawing-room was increased by the glare from
the chandelier, and by the steadily roaring fire, which slowly baked
the unused air. The door stood ajar – it was no one’s business to shut
it – and a loud, halting tic-tac came from the hall clock. The high
hall and the gallery gave out a dull echo: except for this there was
not a sound in the house. The two guests stood by the fire; their
hostess had not appeared yet, and gave no sign.
These two cousins, who met for the first time, already eyed one
another with a certain good faith. The inclemency of their arrival
drew them together. Oswald had driven down from London; Verena
had come by train and had been met by the car. Overawed by the
drawing-room – this was their first visit – they had not yet sat down.
They were second cousins: any family likeness betrayed itself in
their less imposing traits – both were smallish, both wore spectacles,
both showed an innocent nervousness.
But Verena had the composed, rather challenging little manner of
a girl who has to go about by herself. She said: “But you’ve travelled;
you’ve been in Canada.”
“I was most of the time in an office in Ottawa.
1
I did not trap or
lumberjack, I’m afraid. I’ve never,” Oswald said, with his rather
feminine titter, “felt the call of the wild.”
“Then you’re like me,” said Verena. “I don’t like alarming ex
periences. Let’s admit we should both rather not be here – though
of course it’s nice to have met. Poor Patrick, killing himself at
Brooklands, has put us both in this rather awful position. I was
brought up to expect – and I daresay you were too – that Cousin
Meta would ignore my existence, always. I had never thought of her
money; not because I don’t like money but because there seemed no
reason why it should ever be mine. Now, Patrick’s awful death in
that car has left me all unsettled. And I understand that, quite apart
from her grief, Cousin Meta is very much put out. It really must be
annoying, at her age, to have to go into the family highways and
hedges to look for another heir.”
“Did you ever meet Patrick?”
“No,” said Verena, colouring slightly. “Though, for some reason,
I always hoped that I might. Though I can’t feel that much would
have come of it: I would not have been his type; he was very
handsome and dashing. I don’t know that he had a nice character,
but I daresay that was Cousin Meta’s fault. She spoilt him. They say
that pigheaded old maids always set their hearts on that type of
young man . . . Considering that he and I never met, his death was
a quite ridiculous blow to me.”
“I must confess,” said Oswald, “that when I heard of the smash I
did for a moment think, now what does this mean for me? Then
I made myself put the matter out of my mind, till Cousin Meta’s
invitation for Christmas came. Without being too mercenary,
Verena, we’ve got to face her motive in asking us here.”
“She may just be feeling lonely, poor old thing. This is her first
Christmas with no one at all left . . . It’s extraordinary that all those
brothers and sisters should have died off, without marrying anyone.”
“And they had a great deal of vitality. My father came here once
and said it was really dreadful. He said he could hardly see how any
one house could hold them. The thing was, they were greatly taken
up with each other.”
“With each other?”
“Yes, greatly taken up.”
“I wonder how Patrick stood it.”
“Oh, they were all dead when he started to come here. Cousin
Meta sent him a telegram the night her last brother died, and Patrick
walked straight in and more or less took possession.” Oswald,
conscious of being not handsome or dashing, added: “He knew
which side his bread was buttered, I daresay.”
“Well, so do we, Oswald,” said Verena frankly. “What else made
you and me give up our other Christmas plans?”
Oswald paused, then said: “Is your morale good?”
“No. I’ve felt like death since the car turned in at this gate.”
It was Oswald’s turn to say: “I
do
wonder how Patrick stood it.”
“But they were all dead.”
“That is just what I mean. You don’t suppose, do you, that they
died willingly?”
Verena, who had taken her gloves off, rolled the gloves up into a
tight ball and looked down at them with a slightly quivering chin.
She said: “I suppose we shall be meeting Cousin Meta at dinner. I
suppose we may feel more human when we have met her.”
The ageless butler, coming into the room, inserted between them
a tray of dark brown sherry.
In his lofty bedroom, dressing for dinner, Oswald felt the sherry
evaporate. Across a chasm of silence,
2
in the opposite gallery, he had
heard Verena uncertainly shut her door. Was she already as loth to
be alone as he was? He could have wished that he and she were
married . . . But, good heavens, thought Oswald, there’s hardly room
in here for
one
person to move. Except for the height above, there
seemed to be no space: from round the walls bureaux, brackets,
locked presses rode darkly into the room; a great scrolled couch was
pulled, diagonally, across a mirror. The mantlepiece, the bureaux,
the brackets were crowded with objects of a highly personal kind:
there were small pictures, trophies and curios, all suggesting the
exercise of some sinister taste. A row of bootjacks stood under the
dressing table. This was not like a spare room: all these things
round
3
seemed to Oswald so much in possession, so much to forbid
disturbance that he was given the very strong impression that he’d
been put in someone else’s room.
Oswald once more tweaked the lapels of his dinner jacket. As
he opened his door, Verena, also in evening dress, appeared on the
opposite gallery. After exchanging an apprehensive look, they went
round to meet at the head of the stairs.
But Cousin Meta did not appear at dinner.
The cousins’ places were set side by side at one end of a table
that, otherwise empty, stretched on into the distance like a damask
canal. “Quite a family table,” Verena said. Half-lights crossed on
the damask curiously, for the lighting system was focused on the
portraits: straight into every oily masterpiece light
4
was bent with
such violence that the faces seemed to start forward into the room.
The reassuring
5
coarseness of the family features – these people
seemed to be popping out of their ruddy skins – was undone by the
pressure behind
6
the mouths and eyes: each brother and sister
seemed to be sealed up in an inferno of haunted egotism. The
women were told
7
by their bosoms, men by their colours: sex left no
other differentiating mark. Not one of these was a face that one
cared to regard twice, and Verena and Oswald, after one look round,
ate with their eyes on their plates, or sipped claret like anxious
birds.
8
A long rich dinner was served. Just once, Verena said: “They
were all great eaters.” But the butler, by his continuous silent
presence made further allusions impossible.
Verena withdrew gladly, but Oswald did not sit long over the
port. He got up to go after her to the drawing-room, but found
her out in the hall, looking upstairs, clutching tightly about her
shoulders her white rabbit-skin
9
wrap. At a height over the pitchedpine galleries, above the hanging electric lights, the glass roof
admitted the black night. A Christmas Eve silence, made thick by
the mist of the Thames Valley, bound up the listening house.
Oswald said: “What’s the matter?”
“I heard somebody call me. Do you think she expects us to go up?
This is not my idea of a Christmas with relations.”
“That depends how you look at it. Come where no one is
listening: I don’t like this,” said Oswald, looking about.
“No – there’s one door open up there.”
In the drawing-room Verena looked about her, and finally drew
up a beaded stool – unlike the other chairs in the room, this did not
already seem to be occupied. Oswald walked round; he also opened
a box of dominoes, but glanced at the heavy albums on the piano.
“There are possibly more pictures in there,” he said. “Might not
Cousin Meta like us to look at them?”
“Not tonight. Do you think Cousin Meta’s ill?”
“The butler did not say so – but then I couldn’t ask him; he’s stone
deaf – did you notice? He just delivered that note of Cousin Meta’s
about not being at dinner, then went away.”
“Or perhaps they cut his tongue out.”
“My dear Verena, control yourself. – No, I think Cousin Meta is
just waiting a little, to see how much we can stand. Or she may
simply be feeling moody; Christmas makes some people a little
depressed, you know. After all, we’re still strangers to her.”
10
“You know we are not, Oswald. If we were, we should not be
feeling like this. Should we know so well that this house was
dreadful if it were nothing to do with us? No, we’ve got off light so
far because we’re only collaterals: poor Patrick stood between us and
all this . . . A maid came in when I was dressing for dinner; I said:
‘Whose room is this?’ She said: ‘Miss Janet’s room.’ Cousin Janet was
a bit of a naturalist; she often used to skin mice and stick moths on
pins. My room is full of glass cases. What have you got in yours?”
“Bootjacks,” said Oswald after a moment.
“Then that would be Cousin Henry’s room.”
“You seem well up in all this.”
“It all comes back – what I’ve heard. Cousin Mabel used to walk
in
11
her sleep; she weighed sixteen stone and fell down the turret
stairs. Cousin Sibella adopted a dumb child; it used to sleep in her
room but it got smothered one night: she thought someone had
done it and was so angry that she smothered herself. Cousin Aubrey
and Cousin Demeter were twins and used to make secret signs at
one another at meals. When they were sixty-five they went out in
their pony trap, which
12
bolted into a steam roller.
Your
Cousin
Henry had a stroke from which he never recovered when he was
trying on one of his tight boots. Cousin Janet – my Cousin Janet –
died of a rat-bite. Cousin Aloysius was the practical joker; he lived
on with Cousin Meta for
13
some years after the others, till one night
he let himself down from the gallery on a pulley, hoping to make
her think he was a vampire bat. But something went wrong with a
rope, and so he was hanged: Cousin Meta wired for Patrick then.”
“So then Patrick crashed at Brooklands.”
“Yes,” Verena sadly said. “He didn’t deserve to. Suppose, Oswald,
they
had a thing against him?”
“For being – ?”
“For being alive.” She stopped: the cousins exchanged a long
queasy evasive look. Verena got up and looked for the dominoes.
“We’re not half so alive as Patrick,” Oswald hurriedly said. “We are
not alive in a way
they’d
notice at all.”
“Then Cousin Meta will not think much of us.” The butler
brought in a tray of drinks. He bowed and handed Oswald another
note, which Oswald read and passed across to Verena. “Goodnight
to you,” their unseen relation had written. “We hope that you have
everything that you want.”
On Christmas morning, a thick white mist from the river surrounded
the house. Ornamental shrubs near the windows could just be seen
through it; the mist threw
14
indoors a sort of glare, like snow. In the
diningroom, gleams came from the gilt frames of the portraits, the
gilt scrolls on the embossed wallpaper. Oswald, coming down a few
minutes after Verena, opened the envelope that he found on his
plate: his Christmas card from Cousin Meta depicted a robin sitting
on a plum pudding. He shook the envelope; nothing else came out;
he gave a slight gulp and put the card away. “You haven’t opened
yours,” he said.
“Nor I have,” said Verena. She looked, in a sort of daze, at a
coach and four. “I think this is sweet of Cousin Meta,” she said.
Oswald, who had been tapping the top of his boiled egg, put his
spoon down and looked at her in amazement – her good faith was,
apparently, absolute. “How did you sleep?” he said. “Or rather, did
you sleep?”
“Well, it
was
rather odd . . .”
“Well, I’m through,” said Oswald. “I’m quitting. I’m getting out
before lunch, and I strongly advise you to come too. There are some
things – ”
Verena’s face fell; she said: “What happened?”
“I would really rather not tell you.”
“Cousin Henry?”
Oswald changed colour: he pushed his uneaten egg away, poured
himself out some coffee, then said: “This is no house for a girl.”
Verena said: “I am not sure that it isn’t.” Sitting facing the window
she looked, in the thick milky glare from the mist, quite nearly
handsome, elated, mysterious. She eyed Oswald once or twice, then
said, with a small smile: “I met Patrick, as a matter of fact.”
“Yes, he’d be due to turn up for Christmas, too.”
“Now Oswald, don’t speak in that horrid voice. Patrick’s not like
the others; he’s sympathetic. He came because we were here.”