“I had one before ever I knew anything of Spiritualism. I hardly expect that you will believe me, but I assure you it is true. I was a very young curate up in the north. There was a house in the village which had a poltergeist, one of those very mischievous influences which cause so much trouble. I volunteered to exorcize it. We have an official form of exorcism in the Church, you know, so I thought that I was well-armed. I stood in the drawing-room which was the centre of the disturbances, with all the family on their knees beside me, and I read the service. What do you think happened?”
Mason’s gaunt face broke into a sweetly humorous laugh. “Just as I reached Amen, when the creature should have been slinking away abashed, the big bearskin hearthrug stood upon end and simply enveloped me. I am ashamed to say that I was out of that house in two jumps. It was then that I learned that no formal religious proceeding has any effect at all.”
“Then what has?”
“Well, kindness and reason may do something. You see, they vary greatly. Some of these earthbound or earth-interested creatures are neutral, like these simulacra or shells that I sp
eak of. Others are essentially good like these monks of Glastonbury, who have manifested so wonderfully of late years and are recorded by Bligh Bond. They are held to earth by a pious memory. Some are mischievous children like the poltergeists. And some—only a few, I hope—are deadly beyond words, strong, malevolent creatures too heavy with matter to rise above our earth plane—so heavy with matter that their vibrations may be low enough to affect the human retina and to become visible. If they have been cruel, cunning brutes in life, they are cruel and cunning still with more power to hurt. It is evil monsters of this kind who are let loose by our system of capital punishment, for they die with unused vitality which may be expended upon revenge.”
“This Dryfont spook has a doosed bad record,” said Lord Roxton.
“Exactly. That is why I disapprove of levity. He seems to me to be the very type of the creature I speak of. Just as an octopus may have his den in some ocean cave, and come floating out a silent image of horror to attack a swimmer, so I picture such a spirit lurking in the dark of the house which he curses by his presence, and ready to float out upon all whom he can injure.”
Malone’s jaw began to drop.
“I say!” he exclaimed, “have we no protection?”
“Yes, I think we have. If we had not, such a creature could devastate the earth. Our protection is that there are white forces as well as dark ones. We may call them ‘guardian angels’ as the Catholics do, or ‘guides’ or ‘controls’, but whatever you call them, they really do exist and they guard us from evil on the spiritual plane.”
“What about the chap who was driven mad, padre? Where was your guide when the spook put the rug round you? What!”
“The power of our guides may depend upon our own worthiness. Evil may always win for a time. Good wins in the end. That’s my experience in life.”
Lord Roxton shook his head.
“If good wins, then it runs a doosed long waitin’ race, and most of us never live to see the finish. Look at those rubber devils that I had a scrap with up the Putomayo River. Where are they? What! Mostly in Paris havin’ a good time. And the poor niggers they murdered. What about them?”
“Yes, we need faith sometimes. We have to remember that we don’t see the end. ‘To be continued in our next’ is the conclusion of every life-story. That’s where the enormous value of the other world accounts come in. They give us at least one chapter more.”
“Where can I get that chapter?” asked Malone.
“There are many wonderful books, though the world has not yet learned to appreciate them—records of the life beyond. I remember one incident—you may take it as a parable, if you like—but it is really more than that. The dead rich man pauses before the lovely dwelling. His sad guide draws him away. ‘It is not for you. It is for your gardener.’ He shows him a wretched shack. ‘You gave us nothing to build with. It was the best that we could do.’ That may be the next chapter in the story of our rubber millionaires.”
Roxton laughed grimly.
“I gave some of them a shack that was six foot long and two foot deep,” said he. “No good shakin’ your head, padre. What I mean— I don’t love my neighbour as myself, and never shall. I hate some of ‘em like poison.”
“Well, we should hate sin, and, for my own part, I have never been strong enough to separate sin from the sinner. How can I preach when I am as human and weak as anyone?”
“Why, that’s the only preachin’ I could listen to,” said Lord Roxton. “The chap in the pulpit is over my head. If he comes down to my level I have some use for him. Well, it strikes me we won’t get much sleep to-night. We’ve just an hour before we reach Dryfont. Maybe we had better use it.”
It was past eleven o’clock of a cold, frosty night when the party reached their destination. The station of the little watering-place was almost deserted, but a small, fat man in a fur overcoat ran forward to meet them, and greeted them warmly.
“I am Mr. Belchamber, owner of the house. How do you do, gentlemen? I got your wire, Lord Roxton, and everything is in order. It is indeed kind of you to come down. If you can do anything to ease my burden I shall indeed be grateful.”
Mr. Belchamber led them across to the little Station Hotel where they partook of sandwiches and coffee, which he had thoughtfully ordered. As they ate he told them something of his troubles.
“It isn’t as if I was a rich man, gentlemen. I am a retired grazier and all my savings are in three houses. That is one of them, the Villa Maggiore. Yes, I got it cheap, that’s true. But how could I think there was anything in this story of the mad doctor?”
“Let’s have the yarn,” said Lord Roxton, munching at a sandwich.
“He was there away back in Queen Victoria’s time. I’ve seen him myself. A long, stringy, dark-faced kind of man, with a round back and a queer, shuffling way of walking. They say he had been in India all his life, and some thought he was hiding from some crime, for he would never show his face in the village and seldom came out till after dark. He broke a dog’s leg with a stone, and there was some talk of having him up for it, but the people were afraid of him, and no one would prosecute. The little boys would run past, for he would sit glowering and glooming in the front window. Then one day he didn’t take the milk in, and the same the next day, and so they broke the door open, and he was dead in his bath—but it was a bath of blood, for he opened the veins of his arm. Tremayne was his name. No one here forgets it.”
“And you bought the house?”
“Well, it was re-papered and painted and fumigated, and done up outside. You’d have said it was a new house. Then, I let it to Mr. Jenkins of the Brewery. Three days he was in it. I lowered the rent, and Mr. Beale, the retired grocer, took it. It was he who went mad—clean mad—after a week of it. And I’ve had it on my hands ever since—sixty pounds out of my income, and taxes to pay on it, into the bargain. If you gentlemen can do anything, for God’s sake do it! If not, it would pay me to burn it down.”
The Villa Maggiore stood about half a mile from the town on the slope of a low hill. Mr. Belchamber conducted them so far, and even up to the hall door. It was certainly a depressing place, with a huge, gambrel roof which came down over the upper windows and nearly obscured them. There was a half-moon, and by its light they could see that the garden was a tangle of scraggy, winter vegetation, which had, in some places, almost overgrown the path. It was all very still, very gloomy and very ominous.