Best Short Stories Omnibus - Volume 3

Was it an illusion?-3

We sat up late that first night, I can hardly say conversing, for Wolstenholme did the talking, while I, willing to be amused, led him on to tell me something of his wanderings by land and sea.

So the time passed in stories of adventure, of perilous peaks ascended, of deserts traversed, of unknown ruins explored, of ‘hairbreadth ‘scapes’ from icebergs and earthquakes and storms; and when at last he flung the end of his cigar into the fire and discovered that it was time to go to bed, the clock on the mantel-shelf pointed far on among the small hours of the morning.

Next day, according to the programme made out for my entertainment, we did some seven hours’ partridge-shooting on the moors; and the day next following I was to go down Carshalton shaft before breakfast, and after breakfast ride over to a place some fifteen miles distant called Picts’ Camp, there to see a stone circle and the ruins of a prehistoric fort.

Unused to field sports, I slept heavily after those seven hours with the guns, and was slow to wake when Wolstenholme’s valet came next morning to my bedside with the waterproof suit in which I was to effect my descent into Hades.

‘Mr Wolstenholme says, sir, that you had better not take your bath till you come back,’ said this gentlemanly vassal, disposing the ungainly garments across the back of a chair as artistically as if he were laying out my best evening suit. ‘And you will be pleased to dress warmly underneath the waterproofs, for it is very chilly in the mine.’

I surveyed the garments with reluctance. The morning was frosty, and the prospect of being lowered into the bowels of the earth, cold, tasting, and unwashed, was anything but attractive.

Should I send word that I would rather not go? I hesitated; but while I was hesitating, the gentlemanly valet vanished, and my opportunity was lost. Grumbling and shivering, I got up, donned the cold and shiny suit, and went downstairs.

A murmur of voices met my ear as I drew near the breakfast-room. Going in, I found some ten or a dozen stalwart colliers grouped near the door, and Wolstenholme, looking somewhat serious, standing with his back to the fire.

‘Look here, Frazer,’ he said, with a short laugh, ‘here’s a pleasant piece of news. A fissure has opened in the bed of Blackwater tarn; the lake has disappeared in the night; and the mine is flooded! No Carshalton shaft for you today!’

‘Seven foot o’ wayter in Jukes’s seam, an’ eight in th’ owd north and south galleries,’ growled a huge red-headed fellow, who seemed to be the spokesman.

‘An’ it’s the Lord’s own marcy a’ happened o’ noight-time, or we’d be dead men all,’ added another.

‘That’s true, my man,’ said Wolstenholme, answering the last speaker. ‘It might have drowned you like rats in a trap; so we may thank our stars it’s no worse. And now, to work with the pumps! Lucky for us that we know what to do, and how to do it.’

So saying, he dismissed the men with a good-humoured nod, and an order for unlimited ale.

I listened in blank amazement. The tarn vanished! I could not believe it. Wolstenholme assured me, however, that it was by no means a solitary phenomenon. Rivers had been known to disappear before now, in mining districts; and sometimes, instead of merely cracking, the ground would cave in, burying not merely houses, but whole hamlets in one common ruin. The foundations of such houses were, however, generally known to be insecure long enough before the crash came; and these accidents were not therefore often followed by loss of life.

‘And now,’ he said, lightly, ‘you may doff your fancy costume; for I shall have time this morning for nothing but business. It is not every day that one loses a lake, and has to pump it up again!’

Breakfast over, we went round to the mouth of the pit, and saw the men fixing the pumps.

Later on, when the work was fairly in train, we started off across the park to view the scene of the catastrophe. Our way lay far from the house across a wooded upland, beyond which we followed a broad glade leading to the tarn. Just as we entered this glade-Wolstenholme rattling on and turning the whole affair into jest-a tall, slender lad, with a fishing-rod across his shoulder, came out from one of the side paths to the right, crossed the open at a long slant, and disappeared among the tree-trunks on the opposite side. I recognized him instantly. It was the boy whom I saw the other day, just after meeting the schoolmaster in the meadow.

‘If that boy thinks he is going to fish in your tarn,’ I said, ‘he will find out his mistake.’

‘What boy?’ asked Wolstenholme, looking back.

‘That boy who crossed over yonder, a minute ago.’

‘Yonder!-in front of us?’

‘Certainly. You must have seen him?’

‘Not I.’

‘You did not see him?-a tall, thin boy, in a grey suit, with a fishing-rod over his shoulder. He disappeared behind those Scotch firs.’

Wolstenholme looked at me with surprise.

‘You are dreaming!’ he said. ‘No living thing-not even a rabbit-has crossed our path since we entered the park gates.’

‘I am not in the habit of dreaming with my eyes open,’ I replied, quickly.

He laughed, and put his arm through mine.

‘Eyes or no eyes,’ he said, ‘you are under an illusion this time!’

An illusion-the very word made use of by the schoolmaster! What did it mean? Could I, in truth, no longer rely upon the testimony of my senses? A thousand half-formed apprehensions flashed across me in a moment. I remembered the illusions of Nicolini, the bookseller, and other similar cases of visual hallucination, and I asked myself if I had suddenly become afflicted in like manner.

‘By Jove! this is a queer sight!’ exclaimed Wolstenholme. And then I found that we had emerged from the glade, and were looking down upon the bed of what yesterday was Blackwater Tarn.

It was indeed a queer sight-an oblong, irregular basin of blackest slime, with here and there a sullen pool, and round the margin an irregular fringe of bulrushes. At some little distance along the bank-less than a quarter of a mile from where we were standing-a gaping crowd had gathered. All Pit End, except the men at the pumps, seemed o have turned out to stare at the bed of the vanished tarn.

Hats were pulled off and curtsies dropped at Wolstenholme’s approach. He, meanwhile, came up smiling, with a pleasant word for everyone.

‘Well,’ he said, ‘are you looking for the lake, my friends? You’ll have in go down Carshalton shaft to find it! It’s an ugly sight you’ve come to sue, anyhow!’

‘Tes an ugly soight, squoire,’ replied a stalwart blacksmith in a leathern apron; ‘but thar’s summat uglier, mebbe, than the mud, ow’r yonder.’

‘Something uglier than the mud?’ Wolstenholme repeated.

‘Wull yo be pleased to stan’ this way, squoire, an’ look strite across at yon little tump o’ bulrashes-doan’t yo see nothin’?’

I see a log of rotten timber sticking half in and half out of the mud,’ said Wolstenholme; ‘and something-a long reed, apparently . . . by love! I believe it’s a fishing rod!’

‘It is a fishin’ rod, squoire,’ said the blacksmith with rough carnesmess; ‘an’ if yon rotten timber bayn’t an unburied corpse, mun I never stroike hammer on anvil agin!’

There was a buzz of acquiescence from the bystanders. ’Twas an unburied corpse, sure enough. Nobody doubted it..Wolstenholme made a funnel with his hands, and looked through it long and steadfastly.

‘It must come out, whatever it is,’ he said presently. ‘Five feet of mud, do you say? Then here’s a sovereign apiece for the first two fellows who wade through it and bring that object to land!’

The blacksmith and another pulled off their shoes and stockings, turned up their trousers, and went in at once.

They were over their ankles at the first plunge, and, sounding their way with sticks, went deeper at every tread. As they sank, our excitement rose. Presently they were visible from only the waist upwards. We could see their chests heaving, and the muscular efforts by which each step was gained. They were yet full twenty yards from the goal when the mud mounted to their armpits . . . a few feet more, and only their heads would remain above the surface!

An uneasy movement ran through the crowd.

‘Call ’em back, for God’s sake!’ cried a woman’s voice.

But at this moment-having reached a point where the ground gradually sloped upwards-they began to rise above the mud as rapidly as they had sunk into it. And now, black with clotted slime, they emerge waist-high . . . now they are within three or four yards of the spot . . . and now . . . now they are there!

They part the reeds-they stoop low above the shapeless object on which all eyes are turned—they half-lift it from its bed of mud-they hesitate-lay it down again-decide, apparently, to leave it there; and turn their faces shorewards. Having come a few paces, the blacksmith remembers the fishing-rod; turns back; disengages the tangled line with some difficulty, and brings it over his shoulder.

They had not much to tell-standing, all mud from head to heel, on dry land again-but that little was conclusive. It was, in truth, an unburied corpse; part of the trunk only above the surface. They tried to lift it; but it had been so long under water, and was in so advanced a stage of decomposition, that to bring it to shore without a shutter was impossible. Being cross-questioned, they thought, from the slenderness of the form, that it must be the body of a boy.

‘Thar’s the poor chap’s rod, anyhow,’ said the blacksmith, laying it gently down upon the turf.

I have thus far related events as I witnessed them. Here, however, my responsibility ceases. I give the rest of my story at second-hand, briefly, as I received it some weeks later, in the following letter from Philip Wolstenholme:

‘Blackwater Chase, Dec. 20th, 18-.

Dear Frazer, My promised letter has been a long time on the road, but I did not see the use of writing till I had something definite to tell you. I think, however, we have now found out all that we are ever likely to know about the tragedy in the tarn; and it seems that-but, no; I will begin at the beginning. That is to say, with the day you left the Chase, which was the day following the discovery of the body.

You were but just gone when a police inspector arrived from Drumley (you will remember that I had immediately sent a man over to the sitting magistrate); but neither the inspector nor anyone else could do anything till the remains were brought to shore, and it took us the best part of a week to accomplish this difficult operation. We had to sink no end of big stones in order to make a rough and ready causeway across the mud. This done, the body was brought over decently upon a shutter. It proved to be the corpse of a boy of perhaps fourteen or fifteen years of age.

There was a fracture three inches long at the back of the skull, evidently fatal. This might, of course, have been an accidental injury; but when the body came to be raised from where it lay, it was found to be pinned down by a pitchfork, the handle of which had been afterwards whittled off, so as not to show above the water, a discovery tantamount to evidence of murder. The features of the victim were decomposed beyond recognition; but enough of the hair remained to show that it had been short and sandy As for the clothing, it was a mere mass of rotten shreds; but on being subjected to some chemical process, proved to have once been a suit of lightish grey cloth.

A crowd of witnesses came forward at this stage of the inquiry-for I am now giving you the main facts as they came out at the coroner’s inquest-to prove that about a year or thirteen months ago, Skelton the schoolmaster had staying with him a lad whom he called his nephew, and to whom it was supposed that he was not particularly kind. This lad was described as tall, thin, mud sandy-haired. He habitually wore a suit corresponding in colour and texture to the shreds of clothing discovered on the body in the tarn; and he was much addicted to angling about the pools and streams, wherever he might have the chance of a nibble.

And now one thing led quickly on to another. Our Pit End shoemaker identified the boy’s boots as being a pair of his own making and selling. Other witnesses testified to angry scenes between the uncle and nephew. Finally, Skelton gave himself up to justice, confessed the deed, and was duly committed to Drumley gaol for wilful murder.

And the motive? Well, the motive is the strangest part of my story. The wretched lad was, after all, not Skelton’s nephew, but Skelton’s own illegitimate son. The mother was dead, and the boy lived with his maternal grandmother in a remote part of Cumberland. The old woman was poor, and the schoolmaster made her an annual allowance for his son’s keep and clothing. He had not seen the boy for some years, when he sent for him to come over on a visit to Pit End. Perhaps he was weary of the tax upon his purse. Perhaps, as he himself puts it in his confession, he was disappointed to find the boy, if not actually half-witted, stupid, wilful, and ill brought-up. He at all events took a dislike to the poor brute, which dislike by and by developed into positive hatred.

Some amount of provocation there would seem to have been. The boy was as backward as a child of five years old. That Skelton put him into the Boys’ School, and could do nothing with him; that he defied discipline, had a passion for fishing, and was continually wandering about the country with his rod and line, are facts borne out by the independent testimony of various witnesses. Having hidden his fishing-tackle, he was in the habit of slipping away at school-hours, and showed himself the more cunning and obstinate the more he was punished.

At last there came a day when Skelton tracked him to the place where his rod was concealed, and thence across the meadows into the park, and as far as the tarn. His (Skelton’s) account of what followed is wandering and confused. He owns to having beaten the miserable lad about the head and arms with a heavy stick that he had brought with him for the purpose; but denies that he intended to murder him. When his son fell insensible and ceased to breathe, he for the first time realized the force of the blows he had dealt. He admits that his first impulse was one, not of remorse for the deed, but of fear for his own safety. He dragged the body in among the bulrushes by the water’s edge, and there concealed it as well as he could. At night, when the neighbours were in bed and asleep, he stole out by starlight, taking with him a pitchfork, a coil of rope, a couple of old iron-bars, and a knife. Thus laden, he struck out across the moor, and entered the park by a stile and footpath on the Stoneleigh side; so making a circuit of between three and four miles. A rotten old punt used at that time to be kept on the tarn. He loosed this punt from its moorings, brought it round, hauled in the body, and paddled his ghastly burden out into the middle of the lake as far as a certain clump of reeds which he had noted as a likely spot for his purpose. Here he weighted and sunk the corpse, and pinned it down by the neck with his pitchfork. He then cut away the handle of the fork; hid the fishing-rod among the reeds; and believed, as murderers always believe, that discovery was impossible. As regarded the Pit End folk, he simply gave out that his nephew had gone back to Cumberland; and no one doubted it.

Now, however, he says that accident has only anticipated him; and that he was on the point of voluntarily confessing his crime. His dreadful secret had of late become intolerable. He was haunted by an invisible Presence. That Presence sat with him at table, followed him in his walks stood behind him in the school-room, and watched by his bedside. He never saw it; but he felt that it was always there. Sometimes he raves of a shadow on the wall of his cell. The gaol authorities are of opinion that he is of unsound mind.

I have now told you all that there is at present to tell. The trial will not take place till the spring assizes. In the meanwhile I am off tomorrow to Paris, and thence, in about ten days, on to Nice, where letters will find me at the Hotel des Empereurs.

Always, dear Frazer.

Yours, e., c..

P. W.

P.S.-Since writing the above, I have received a telegram from Drumley to say that Skelton has committed suicide. No particulars given. So ends this strange eventful history.

By the way, that was a curious illusion of yours the other day when we were crossing the park; and I have thought of it many times. Was it an illusion?-that is the question.’

Ay, indeed! that is the question; and it is a question which I have never yet been able to answer.

Certain things I undoubtedly saw-with my mind’s eye, perhaps-and as I saw them, I have described them; withholding nothing, adding nothing, explaining nothing. Let those solve the mystery who can. For myself, I but echo Wolstenholme’s question: Was it an illusion?