The village of Maxley,
where, last summer and autumn, these strange events took place, lies on
a heathery and pine-clad upland of Sussex. In all England you could not
find a sweeter and saner situation. Should the wind blow from the south,
it comes laden with the spices of the sea; to the east high downs
protect it from the inclemencies of March; and from the west and north
the breezes which reach it travel over miles of aromatic forest and
heather. The village itself is insignificant enough in point of
population, but rich in amenities and beauty. Half-way down the single
street, with its broad road and spacious areas of grass on each side,
stands the little Norman Church and the antique graveyard long disused:
for the rest there are a dozen small, sedate Georgian houses,
red-bricked and long-windowed, each with a square of flower-garden in
front, and an ampler strip behind; a score of shops, and a couple of
score of thatched cottages belonging to labourers on neighbouring
estates, complete the entire cluster of its peaceful habitations. The
general peace, however, is sadly broken on Saturdays and Sundays, for we
lie on one of the main roads between London and Brighton and our quiet
street becomes a race-course for flying motor-cars and bicycles.
A notice just outside the village
begging them to go slowly only seems to encourage them to accelerate
their speed, for the road lies open and straight, and there is really no
reason why they should do otherwise. By way of protest, therefore, the
ladies of Maxley cover their noses and mouths with their handkerchiefs
as they see a motor-car approaching, though, as the street is asphalted,
they need not really take these precautions against dust. But late on
Sunday night the horde of scorchers has passed, and we settle down again
to five
days of cheerful and leisurely seclusion. Railway strikes which
agitate the country so much leave us undisturbed because most of the
inhabitants of Maxley never leave it at all.
I am the fortunate possessor of one of
these small Georgian houses, and consider myself no less fortunate in
having so interesting and stimulating a neighbour as Francis Urcombe,
who, the most confirmed of Maxleyites, has not slept away from his
house, which stands just opposite to mine in the village street, for
nearly two years, at which date, though still in middle life, he
resigned his Physiological Professorship at Cambridge University and
devoted himself to the study of those occult and curious phenomena which
seem equally to concern the physical and the psychical sides of human
nature. Indeed his retirement was not unconnected with his passion for
the strange uncharted places that lie on the confines and borders of
science, the existence of which is so stoutly denied by the more
materialistic minds, for he advocated that all medical students should
be obliged to pass some sort of examination in mesmerism, and that one
of the tripos papers should be designed to test their knowledge in such
subjects as appearances at time of death, haunted houses, vampirism,
automatic writing, and possession.
“Of course they wouldn’t listen to
me,” ran his account of the matter, “for there is nothing that these
seats of learning are so frightened of as knowledge, and the road to
knowledge lies in the study of things like these. The functions of the
human frame are, broadly speaking, known. They are a country, anyhow,
that has been charted and mapped out. But outside that lie huge tracts
of undiscovered country, which certainly exist, and the real pioneers of
knowledge are those who, at the cost of being derided as credulous and
superstitious, want to push on into those misty and probably perilous
places. I felt that I could be of more use by setting out without
compass or knapsack into the mists than by sitting in a cage like a
canary and chirping about what was known. Besides, teaching is very bad
for a man who knows himself only to be a learner: you only need to be a
self-conceited ass to teach.”
Here, then, in Francis Urcombe, was a
delightful neighbour to one who, like myself, has an uneasy and burning
curiosity about what he called the “misty and perilous places”; and
this last spring we had a further and most welcome addition to our
pleasant little community, in the person of Mrs. Amworth, widow of an
Indian civil servant. Her husband had been a judge in the North-West
Provinces, and after his death at Peshawar she came back to England, and
after a year in London found herself starving for the ampler air and
sunshine of the country to take the place of the fogs and griminess of
town. She had, too, a special reason for settling in Maxley, since her
ancestors up till a hundred years ago had long been native to the place,
and in the old churchyard, now disused, are many gravestones bearing her
maiden name of Chaston. Big and energetic, her vigorous and genial
personality speedily woke Maxley up to a higher degree of sociality than
it had ever known. Most of us were bachelors or spinsters or elderly
folk not much inclined to exert ourselves in the expense and effort of
hospitality, and hitherto the gaiety of a small tea-party, with bridge
afterwards and goloshes (when it was wet) to trip home in again for a
solitary dinner, was about the climax of our festivities. But Mrs.
Amworth showed us a more gregarious way, and set an example of
luncheon-parties and little dinners, which we began to follow. On other
nights when no such hospitality was on foot, a lone man like myself
found it pleasant to know that a call on the telephone to Mrs.
Amworth’s house not a hundred yards off, and an inquiry as to whether
I might come over after dinner for a game of piquet before bed-time,
would probably evoke a response of welcome. There she would be, with a
comrade-like eagerness for companionship, and there was a glass of port
and a cup of coffee and a cigarette and a game of piquet. She played the
piano, too, in a free and exuberant manner, and had a charming voice and
sang to her own accompaniment; and as the days grew long and the light
lingered late, we played our game in her garden, which in the course of
a few months she had turned from being a nursery for slugs and snails
into a glowing patch of luxuriant blossoming. She was always cheery and
jolly; she was interested in everything, and in music, in gardening, in
games of all sorts was a competent performer. Everybody (with one
exception) liked her, everybody felt her to bring with her the tonic of
a sunny day. That one exception was Francis Urcombe; he, though he
confessed he did not like her, acknowledged that he was vastly
interested in her. This always seemed strange to me, for pleasant and
jovial as she was, I could see nothing in her that could call forth
conjecture or intrigued surmise, so healthy and unmysterious a figure
did she present. But of the genuineness of Urcombe’s interest there
could be no doubt; one could see him watching and scrutinising her. In
matter of age, she frankly volunteered the information that she was
forty-five; but her briskness, her activity, her unravaged skin, her
coal-black hair, made it difficult to believe that she was not adopting
an unusual device, and adding ten years on to her age instead of
subtracting them.
Often, also, as our quite unsentimental
friendship ripened, Mrs. Amworth would ring me up and propose her
advent. If I was busy writing, I was to give her, so we definitely
bargained, a frank negative, and in answer I could hear her jolly laugh
and her wishes for a successful evening of work. Sometimes, before her
proposal arrived, Urcombe would already have stepped across from his
house opposite for a smoke and a chat, and he, hearing who my intending
visitor was, always urged me to beg her to come. She and I should play
our piquet, said he, and he would look on, if we did not object, and
learn something of the game. But I doubt whether he paid much attention
to it, for nothing could be clearer than that, under that penthouse of
forehead and thick eyebrows, his attention was fixed not on the cards,
but on one of the players. But he seemed to enjoy an hour spent thus,
and often, until one particular evening in July, he would watch her with
the air of a man who has some deep problem in front of him. She,
enthusiastically keen about our game, seemed not to notice his scrutiny.
Then came that evening, when, as I see in the light of subsequent
events, began the first twitching of the veil that hid the secret horror
from my eyes. I did not know it then, though I noticed that thereafter,
if she rang up to propose coming round, she always asked not only if I
was at leisure, but whether Mr. Urcombe was with me. If so, she said,
she would not spoil the chat of two old bachelors, and laughingly wished
me good night.
Urcombe, on this occasion, had been
with me for some half-hour before Mrs. Amworth’s appearance, and had
been talking to me about the medizval beliefs concerning vampirism, one
of those borderland subjects which he declared had not been sufficiently
studied before it had been consigned by the medical profession to the
dust-heap of exploded superstitions. There he sat, grim and eager,
tracing, with that pellucid clearness which had made him in his
Cambridge days so admirable a lecturer, the history of those mysterious
visitations. In them all there were the same general features: one of
those ghoulish spirits took up its abode in a living man or woman,
conferring supernatural powers of bat-like flight and glutting itself
with nocturnal blood-feasts. When its host died it continued to dwell in
the corpse, which remained undecayed. By day it rested, by night it left
the grave and went on its awful errands. No European country in the
Middle Ages seemed to have escaped them; earlier yet, parallels were to
be found, in Roman and Greek and in Jewish history.
“It’s a large order to set all that
evidence aside as being moonshine,” he said. “Hundreds of totally
independent witnesses in many ages have testified to the occurrence of
these phenomena, and there’s no explanation known to me which covers
all the facts. And if you feel inclined to say ‘Why, then, if these
are facts, do we not come across them now?’ there are two answers I
can make you. One is that there were diseases known in the Middle Ages,
such as the black death; which were certainly existent then and which
have become extinct since, but for that reason we do not assert that
such diseases never existed. Just as the black death visited England and
decimated the population of Norfolk, so here in this very district about
three hundred years ago there was certainly an outbreak of vampirism,
and Maxley was the centre of it. My second answer is even more
convincing, for I tell you that vampirism is by no means extinct now. An
outbreak of it certainly occurred in India a year or two ago.”
At that moment I heard my knocker plied
in the cheerful and peremptory manner in which Mrs. Amworth is
accustomed to announce her arrival, and I went to the door to open it.
“Come
in at once,” I said, “and save me from having my blood curdled. Mr.
Urcombe has been trying to alarm me.”
Instantly her vital, voluminous
presence seemed to fill the room.
“Ah, but how lovely!” she said.
“I delight in having my blood curdled. Go on with your ghost-story,
Mr. Urcombe. I adore ghost-stories.”
I saw that, as his habit was, he was
intently observing her.
“It wasn’t a ghost-story
exactly,” said he. “I was only telling our host how vampirism was
not extinct yet. I was saying that there was an outbreak of it in India
only a few years ago.”
There was a more than perceptible
pause, and I saw that, if Urcombe was observing her, she on her side was
observing him with fixed eye and parted mouth. Then her jolly laugh
invaded that rather tense silence.
“Oh, what a shame!” she said.
“You’re not going to curdle my blood at all. Where did you pick up
such a tale, Mr. Urcombe? I have lived for years in India and never
heard a rumour of such a thing. Some story-teller in the bazaars must
have invented it: they are famous at that.”
I could see that Urcombe was on the
point of saying something further, but checked himself.
“Ah! very likely that was it,” he
said.
But something had disturbed our usual
peaceful sociability that night, and something had damped Mrs.
Amworth’s usual high spirits. She had no gusto for her piquet, and
left after a couple of games. Urcombe had been silent too, indeed he
hardly spoke again till she departed.
“That was unfortunate,” he said,
“for the outbreak of — of a very mysterious disease, let us call it,
took place at Peshawar, where she and her husband were. And—”
“Well?” I asked.
“He was one of the victims of it,”
said he. “Naturally I had quite forgotten that when I spoke.”
The summer was unreasonably hot and
rainless, and Maxley suffered much from drought, and also from a plague
of big black night-flying gnats, the bite of which was very irritating
and virulent. They came sailing in of an evening, settling on one’s
skin so quietly that one perceived nothing till the sharp stab announced
that one had been bitten. They did not bite the hands or face, but chose
always the neck and throat for their feeding-ground, and most of us, as
the poison spread, assumed a temporary goitre. Then about the middle of
August appeared the first of those mysterious cases of illness which our
local doctor attributed to the long-continued heat coupled with the bite
of these venomous insects. The patient was a boy of sixteen or
seventeen, the son of Mrs. Amworth’s gardener, and the symptoms were
an anemic pallor and a languid prostration, accompanied by great
drowsiness and an abnormal appetite. He had, too, on his throat two
small punctures where, so Dr. Ross conjectured, one of these great gnats
had bitten him. But the odd thing was that there was no swelling or
inflammation round the place where he had been bitten. The heat at this
time had begun to abate, but the cooler weather failed to restore him,
and the boy, in spite of the quantity of good food which he so
ravenously swallowed, wasted away to a skin-clad skeleton.
I met Dr. Ross in the street one
afternoon about this time, and in answer to my inquiries about his
patient he said that he was afraid the boy was dying. The case, he
confessed, completely puzzled him: some obscure form of pernicious
anemia was all he could suggest. But he wondered whether Mr. Urcombe
would consent to see the boy, on the chance of his being able to throw
some new light on the case, and since Urcombe was dining with me that
night, I proposed to Dr. Ross to join us. He could not do this, but said
he would look in later. When he came, Urcombe at once consented to put
his skill at the other’s disposal, and together they went off at once.
Being thus shorn of my sociable evening, I telephoned to Mrs. Amworth to
know if I might inflict myself on her for an hour. Her answer was a
welcoming affirmative, and between piquet and music the hour lengthened
itself into two. She spoke of the boy who was lying so desperately and
mysteriously ill, and told me that she had often been to see him, taking
him nourishing and delicate food. But to-day — and her kind eyes
moistened as she spoke she
was afraid she had paid her last visit. Knowing the antipathy between
her and Urcombe, I did not tell her that he had been called into
consultation; and when I returned home she accompanied me to my door,
for the sake of a breath of night air, and in order to borrow a magazine
which contained an article on gardening which she wished to read.
“Ah, this delicious night air,” she
said, luxuriously sniffing in the coolness. “Night air and gardening
are the great tonics. There is nothing so stimulating as bare contact
with rich mother earth. You are never so fresh as when you have been
grubbing in the soil — black hands, black nails, and boots covered
with mud.” She gave her great jovial laugh.
“I’m a glutton for air and earth,” she said. “Positively
I look forward to death, for then I shall be buried and have the kind
earth all round me. No leaden caskets for me — I have given explicit
directions. But what shall I do about air? Well, I suppose one can’t
have everything. The magazine? A thousand thanks, I will faithfully
return it. Good night: garden and keep your windows open, and you
won’t have anzmia.”
“I
always sleep with my windows open,” said I.
I went straight up to my bedroom, of
which one of the windows looks out over the street, and as I undressed I
thought I heard voices talking outside not far away. But I paid no
particular attention, put out my lights, and falling asleep plunged into
the depths of a most horrible dream, distortedly suggested no doubt, by
my last words with Mrs. Amworth. I dreamed that I woke, and found that
both my bedroom windows were shut. Half-suffocating I dreamed that I
sprang out of bed, and went across to open them. The blind over the
first was drawn down, and pulling it up I saw, with the indescribable
horror of incipient nightmare, Mrs. Amworth’s face suspended close to
the pane in the darkness outside, nodding and smiling at me. Pulling
down the blind again to keep that terror out, I rushed to the second
window on the other side of the room, and there again was Mrs.
Amworth’s face. Then the panic came upon me in full blast; here was I
suffocating in the airless room, and whichever window I opened Mrs.
Amworth’s face would float in, like those noiseless black gnats that
bit before one was aware. The nightmare rose to screaming point, and
with strangled yells I awoke to find my room cool and quiet with both
windows open and blinds up and a half-moon high in its course, casting
an oblong of tranquil light on the floor. But even when I was awake the
horror persisted, and I lay tossing and turning. I must have slept long
before the nightmare seized me, for now it was nearly day, and soon in
the east the drowsy eyelids of morning began to lift.
I was scarcely downstairs next morning
— for after the dawn I slept late — when Urcombe rang up to know if
he might see me immediately. He came in, grim and preoccupied, and I
noticed that he was pulling on a pipe that was not even filled.
“I want your help,” he said, “and
so I must tell you first of all what happened last night. 1 went round
with the little doctor to see his patient, and found him just alive, but
scarcely more. I instantly diagnosed in my own mind what this anemia,
unaccountable by any other explanation, meant. The boy is the prey of a
vampire.”
He put his empty pipe on the
breakfast-table, by which I had just sat down, and folded his arms,
looking at me steadily from under his overhanging brows.
“Now about last night,” he said.
“I insisted that he should be moved from his father’s cottage into
my house. As we were carrying him on a stretcher, whom should we meet
but Mrs. Amworth? She expressed shocked surprise that we were moving
him. Now why do you think she did that?”
With a start of horror, as I remembered
my dream that night before, I felt an idea come into my mind so
preposterous and unthinkable that I instantly turned it out again.
“I haven’t the smallest idea,” I
said.
“Then
listen, while I tell you about what happened later. I put out all light
in the room where the boy lay, and watched. One window was a little
open, for I had forgotten to close it, and about midnight I heard
something outside, trying apparently to push it farther open. I guessed
who it was — yes, it was full twenty feet from the ground —and I
peeped round the corner of the blind. Just outside was the face of Mrs.
Amworth and her hand was on the frame of the window. Very softly I crept
close, and then banged the window down, and I think I just caught the
tip of one of her fingers.”
“But it’s impossible,” I cried.
“How could she be floating in the air like that? And what had she come
for? Don’t tell me such—”
Once more, with closer grip, the
remembrance of my nightmare seized me.
“I am telling you what I saw,” said
he. “And all night long, until it was nearly day, she was fluttering
outside, like some terrible bat, trying to gain admittance. Now put
together various things I have told you.”
He began checking them off on his
fingers.
“Number one,” he said: “there was
an outbreak of disease similar to that which this boy is suffering from
at Peshawar, and her husband died of it. Number two: Mrs. Amworth
protested against my moving the boy to my house. Number three: she, or
the demon that inhabits her body, a creature powerful and deadly, tries
to gain admittance. And add this, too: in medieval times there was an
epidemic of vampirism here at Maxley. The vampire, so the accounts run,
was found to be Elizabeth Chaston ... I see you remember Mrs.
Amworth’s maiden name. Finally, the boy is stronger this morning. He
would certainly not have been alive if he had been visited again. And
what do you make of it?”
There was a long silence, during which
I found this incredible horror assuming the hues of reality.
“I have something to add,” I said,
“which may or may not bear on it. You say that the — the spectre
went away shortly before dawn.”
“Yes.”
I told him of my dream, and he smiled
grimly.
“Yes, you did well to awake,” he
said. “That warning came from your subconscious self, which never
wholly slumbers, and cried out to you of deadly danger. For two reasons,
then, you must help me: one to save others, the second to save
yourself.”
“What do you want me to do?” I
asked.
“I want you first of all to help me
in watching this boy, and ensuring that she does not come near him.
Eventually I want you to help me in tracking the thing down, in exposing
and destroying it. It is not human: it is an incarnate fiend. What steps
we shall have to take I don’t yet know.”
It was now eleven of the forenoon, and
presently I went across to his house for a twelve-hour vigil while he
slept, to come on duty again that night, so that for the next
twenty-four hours either Urcombe or myself was always in the room where
the boy, now getting stronger every hour, was lying. The day following
was Saturday and a morning of brilliant, pellucid weather, and already
when I went across to his house to resume my duty the stream of motors
down to Brighton had begun. Simultaneously I saw Urcombe with a cheerful
face, which boded good news of his patient, coming out of his house, and
Mrs. Amworth, with a gesture of salutation to me and a basket in her
hand, walking up the broad strip of grass which bordered the road. There
we all three met. I noticed (and saw that Urcombe noticed it too) that
one finger of her left hand was bandaged.
“Good morning to you both,” said
she. “And I hear your patient is doing well, Mr. Urcombe. I have come
to bring him a bowl of jelly, and to sit with him for an hour. He and I
are great friends. I am overjoyed at his recovery.”
Urcombe paused a moment, as if making
up his mind, and then shot out a pointing finger at her.
“I forbid that,” he said. “You
shall not sit with him or see him. And you know the reason as well as I
do.”
I have never seen so horrible a change
pass over a human face as that which now blanched hers to the colour of
a grey mist. She put up her hand as if to shield herself from that
pointing finger, which drew the sign of the cross in the air, and shrank
back cowering on to the road. There was a wild hoot from a horn, a
grinding of brakes, a shout — too late — from a passing car, and one
long scream suddenly cut short. Her body rebounded from the roadway
after the first wheel had gone over it, and the second followed. It lay
there, quivering and twitching, and was still.
She was buried three days afterwards in
the cemetery outside Maxley, in accordance with the wishes she had told
me that she had devised about her interment, and the shock which her
sudden and awful death had caused to the little community began by
degrees to pass off. To two people only, Urcombe and myself, the horror
of it was mitigated from the first by the nature of the relief that her
death brought; but, naturally enough, we kept our own counsel, and no
hint of what greater horror had been thus averted was ever let slip.
But, oddly enough, so it seemed to me, he was still not satisfied about
something in connection with her, and would give no answer to my
questions on the subject. Then as the days of a tranquil mellow
September and the October that followed began to drop away like the
leaves of the yellowing trees, his uneasiness relaxed. But before the
entry of November the seeming tranquillity broke into hurricane.
I had been dining one night at the far
end of the village, and about eleven o’clock was walking home again.
The moon was of an unusual brilliance, rendering all that it shone on as
distinct as in some etching. I had just come opposite the house which
Mrs. Amworth had occupied, where there was a board up telling that it
was to let, when I heard the click of her front gate, and next moment I
saw, with a sudden chill and quaking of my very spirit, that she stood
there. Her profile, vividly illuminated, was turned to me, and I could
not be mistaken in my identification of her. She appeared not to see me
(indeed the shadow of the yew hedge in front of her garden enveloped me
in its blackness) and she went swiftly across the road, and entered the
gate of the house directly opposite. There I lost sight of her
completely.
My breath was coming in short pants as
if I had been running - and now indeed I ran, with fearful backward
glances, along the hundred yards that separated me from my house and
Urcombe’s. It was to his that my flying steps took me, and next minute
I was within.
“What have you come to tell me?” he
asked. “Or shall I guess?” “You can’t guess,” said I.
“No; it’s no guess. She has come
back and you have seen her. Tell me about it.”
I gave him my story.
“That’s Major Pearsall’s
house,” he said. “Come back with me there at once.”
“But what can we do?” I asked.
“I’ve no idea. That’s what we
have got to find out.”
A minute later, we were opposite the
house. When I had passed it before, it was all dark; now lights gleamed
from a couple of windows upstairs. Even as we faced it, the front door
opened, and next moment Major Pearsall emerged from the gate. He saw us
and stopped.
“I’m on my way to Dr. Ross,” he
said quickly, “My wife has been taken suddenly ill. She had been in
bed an hour when I came upstairs, and I found her white as a ghost and
utterly exhausted. She had been to sleep, it seemed — but you will
excuse me.”
“One moment, Major,” said Urcombe.
“Was there any mark on her throat?”
“How did you guess that?” said he.
“There was: one of those beastly gnats must have bitten her twice
there. She was streaming with blood.”
“And there’s someone with her?”
asked Urcombe.
“Yes, I roused her maid.”
He went off, and Urcombe turned to me.
“I know now what we have to do,” he said. “Change your clothes,
and I’ll join you at your house.”
“What is it?” I asked.
“I’ll tell you on our way. We’re
going to the cemetery.”
He carried a pick, a
shovel, and a screwdriver when he rejoined me, and wore round his
shoulders a long coil of rope. As we walked, he gave me the outlines of
the ghastly hour that lay before us.
“What I have to tell you,” he said,
“will seem to you now too fantastic for credence, but before dawn we
shall see whether it outstrips reality. By a most fortunate happening,
you saw the spectre, the astral body, whatever you choose to call it, of
Mrs. Amworth, going on its grisly business, and therefore, beyond doubt,
the vampire spirit which abode in her during life animates her again in
death. That is not exceptional — indeed, all these weeks since her
death I have been expecting it. If I am right, we shall find her body
undecayed and untouched by corruption.”
“But she has been dead nearly two
months,” said I.
“If she had been dead two years it
would still be so, if the vampire has possession of her. So remember:
whatever you see done, it will be done not to her, who in the natural
course would now be feeding the grasses above her grave, but to a spirit
of untold evil and malignancy, which gives a phantom life to her
body.”
“But what shall I see done?” said
I.
“I will tell you. We know that now,
at this moment, the vampire clad in her mortal semblance is out; dining
out. But it must get back before dawn, and it will pass into the
material form that lies in her grave. We must wait for that, and then
with your help I shall dig up her body. If I am right, you will look on
her as she was in life, with the full vigour of the dreadful nutriment
she has received pulsing in her veins. And then, when dawn has come, and
the vampire cannot leave the lair of her body, I shall strike her with
this” — and he pointed to his pick — “through the heart, and
she, who comes to life again only with the animation the fiend gives
her, she and her hellish partner will be dead indeed. Then we must bury
her again, delivered at last.”
We had come to the cemetery, and in the
brightness of the moonshine there was no difficulty in identifying her
grave. It lay some twenty yards from the small chapel, in the porch of
which, obscured by shadow, we concealed ourselves. From there we had a
clear and open sight of the grave, and now we must wait till its
infernal visitor returned home. The night was warm and windless, yet
even if a freezing wind had been raging I think I should have felt
nothing of it, so intense was my preoccupation as to what the night and
dawn would bring. There was a bell in the turret of the chapel, that
struck the quarters of the hour, and it amazed me to find how swiftly
the chimes succeeded one another.
The moon had long set, but a twilight
of stars shone in a clear sky, when five o’clock of the morning
sounded from the turret. A few minutes more passed, and then I felt
Urcombe’s hand softly nudging me; and looking out in the direction of
his pointing finger, I saw that the form of a woman, tall and large in
build, was approaching from the right. Noiselessly, with a motion more
of gliding and floating than walking, she moved across the cemetery to
the grave which was the centre of our observation. She moved round it as
if to be certain of its identity, and for a moment stood directly facing
us. In the greyness to which now my eyes had grown accustomed, I could
easily see her face, and recognise its features.
She drew her hand across her mouth as
if wiping it, and broke into a chuckle of such laughter as made my hair
stir on my head. Then she leaped on to the grave, holding her hands high
above her head, and inch by inch disappeared into the earth. Urcombe’s
hand was laid on my arm, in an injunction to keep still, but now he
removed it.
“Come,” he said.
With pick and shovel and rope we went
to the grave. The earth was light and sandy, and soon after six struck
we had delved down to the coffin lid. With his pick he loosened the
earth round it, and, adjusting the rope through the handles by which it
had been lowered, we tried to raise it. This was a long and laborious
business, and the light had begun to herald day in the east before we
had it out, and lying by the side of the grave. With his screw-driver he
loosed the fastenings of the lid, and slid it aside, and standing there
we looked on the face of Mrs. Amworth. The eyes, once closed in death,
were open, the cheeks were flushed with colour, the red, full-lipped
mouth seemed to smile.
“One blow and it is all over,” he
said. “You need not look.”
Even as he spoke he took up the pick
again, and, laying the point of it on her left breast, measured his
distance. And though I knew what was coming I could not look away...
He grasped the pick in both hands,
raised it an inch or two for the taking of his aim, and then with full
force brought it down on her breast. A fountain of blood, though she had
been dead so long, spouted high in the air, falling with the thud of a
heavy splash over the shroud, and simultaneously from those red lips
came one long, appalling cry, swelling up like some hooting siren, and
dying away again. With that, instantaneous as a lightning flash, came
the touch of corruption on her face, the colour of it faded to ash, the
plump cheeks fell in, the mouth dropped.
“Thank God, that’s over,” said
he, and without pause slipped the coffin lid back into its place.
Day was coming fast now, and, working
like men possessed, we lowered the coffin into its place again, and
shovelled the earth over it... The birds were busy with their earliest
pipings as we went back to Maxley.
<<---
From Your Dark Side
