C&T Publications Eye On Fine Art Photography - October 2014 | Page 88

table, so that they seemed to open and shut at me. Then the candle went out quite unexpectedly, though the door was fastened and there was not the
least draught; and I used up at least half a dozen matches before it would burn again.
I sat down rather suddenly, without quite knowing why. Probably I had been badly frightened, and perhaps you will admit there was no great shame
in being scared. The thing had come home, and it wanted to go upstairs, back to its cupboard. I sat still and stared at it for a bit till I began to feel
very cold; then I took it and carried it up and set it in its place, and I remember that I spoke to it, and promised that it should have its bandbox again
in the morning.
You want to know whether I stayed in the room till daybreak? Yes but I kept a light burning, and sat up smoking and reading, most likely out of
fright; plain, undeniable fear, and you need not call it cowardice either, for that's not the same thing. I could not have stayed alone with that thing I
the cupboard; I should have been scared to death, though I'm not more timid than other people. Confound it all, man, it had crossed the road alone,
and had got up the doorstep and had knocked to be let in.
When the dawn came, I put on my boots and went out to find the bandbox. I had to go a good way round, by the gate near the high road, and I
found the box open and hanging on the other side of the hedge. It had caught on the twigs by the string, and the lid had fallen off and was lying on
the ground below it. That shows that it did not open till it was well over; and if it had not opened as soon as it left my hand, what was inside it must
have gone beyond the road too.
That's all. I took the box upstairs to the cupboard, and put the skull back and locked it up. When the girl brought me my breakfast she said she was
sorry, but that she must go, and she did not care if she lost her month's wages. I looked at her, and her face was a sort of greenish yellowish white. I
pretended to be surprised, and asked what was the matter; but that was of no use, for she just turned on me and wanted to know whether I meant to
stay in a haunted house, and how long I expected to live if I did, for though she noticed I was sometimes a little hard of hearing, she did not believe
that even I could sleep through those screams again--and if I could, why had I been moving about the house and opening and shutting the front
door, between three and four in the morning? There was no answering that, since she had heard me, so off she went, and I was left to myself. I went
down to the village during the morning and found a woman who was willing to come and do the little work there is and cook my dinner, on
condition that she might go home every night. As for me, I moved downstairs that day, and I have never tried to sleep in the best bedroom since.
After a little while I got a brace of middle-aged Scotch servants from London, and things were quiet enough for a long time. I began by telling them
that the house was in a very exposed position, and that the wind whistled round it a good deal in the autumn and winter, which had given it a bad
name in the village, the Cornish people being inclined to superstition and telling ghost stories. The two hard-faced, sandy-haired sisters almost
smiled, and they answered with great contempt that they had no great opinion of any Southern bogey whatever, having been in service in two
English haunted houses, where they had never seen so much as the Boy in Grey, whom they reckoned no very particular rarity in Forfarshire.
They stayed with me several months, and while they were in the house we had peace and quiet. One of them is here again now, but she went away
with her sister within the year. This one--she was the cook--married the sexton, who works in my garden. That's the way of it. It's a small village
and he has not much to do, and he knows enough about flowers to help me nicely, besides doing most of the hard work; for though I'm fond of
exercise, I'm getting a little stiff in the hinges. He's a sober, silent sort of fellow, who minds his own business, and he was a widower when I came
here--Trehearn is his name, James Trehearn. The Scottish sisters would not admit that there was anything wrong about the house, but when
November came they gave me warning that they were going, on the ground that the chapel was such a long walk from here, being in the next
parish, and that they could not possibly go to our church. But the younger one came back in the spring, and as soon as the banns could be published
she was married to James Trehearn by the vicar, and she seems to have had no scruples about hearing him preach since then. I'm quite satisfied, if
she is! The couple live in a small cottage that looks over the churchyard.
I suppose you are wondering what all this has to do with what I was talking about. I'm alone so much that when an old friend comes to see me, I
sometimes go on talking just for the sake of hearing my own voice. But in this case there is really a connection of ideas. It was James Trehearn who
buried poor Mrs. Pratt, and her husband after her in the same grave, and it's not far from the back of his cottage. That's the connection in my mind,
you see. It's plain enough. He knows something; I'm quite sure that he does, though he's such a reticent beggar.
Yes, I'm alone in the house at night now, for Mrs. Trehearn does ev erything herself, and when I have a friend the sexton's niece comes in to wait on
the table. He takes his wife home every evening in winter, but in summer, when there's light, she goes by herself. She's not a nervous woman, but
she's less sure than she used to be that there are no bogies in England worth a Scotch-woman's notice. Isn't it amusing, the idea that Scotland has a
monopoly of the supernatural? Odd sort of national pride, I call that, don't you?
That's a good fire, isn't it? When driftwood gets started at last there's nothing like it, I think. Yes, we get lots of it, for I'm sorry to say there are still a
great many wrecks about here. It's a lonely coast, and you may have all the wood you want for the trouble of bringing it in. Trehearn and I borrow a
cart now and then, and load it between here and the Spit. I hate a coal fire when I can get wood of any sort A log is company, even if it's only a
piece of a deck beam or timber sawn off, and the salt in it makes pretty sparks. See how they fly, like Japanese hand-fireworks! Upon my word,
with an old friend and a good fire and a pipe, one forgets all about that thing upstairs, especially now that the wind has moderated. It's only a lull,
though, and it will blow a gale before morning.
You think you would like to see the skull? I've no objection. There's no reason why you shouldn't have a look at it, and you never saw a more
84
perfect one in your life, except that there are two front teeth missing in the lower jaw.