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CASE IX
THE ROOM BEYOND. AN ACCOUNT OF THE HAUNTINGS AT HENNERSLEY, NEAR AYR
To me Hennersley is what
the Transformation Scene at a Pantomime was to the imaginative child—the
dreamy child of long ago — a floral paradise full of the most delightful
surprises. Here, at Hennersley, from out the quite recently ice-bound
earth, softened and moistened now by spring rain, there rises up row
upon row of snowdrops, hyacinths and lilies, of such* surpassing
sweetness and beauty that I hold my breath in astonishment, and
ecstatically chant a Te Deum to. the fairies for sending such white-clad
loveliness.
And then—then, ere my wonder has had time to fade, it is summer. The
ground opens, and there springs up, on all sides, a veritable sea of
vivid, variegated colour,—scarlet, pink, and white geraniums; red, white
and yellow roses; golden honeysuckle; bright-hued marigolds; purple
pansies; pale forget-me-nots; wallflowers; sweet peas; many-tinted
azaleas; showy hydrangeas; giant rhododendrons; foxgloves, buttercups,
daisies, hollyhocks, and heliotropes; a floral host too varied to
enumerate.
Overcome with admiration, bewildered with happiness, I kneel on the soft
carpet of grass, and, burying my face extravagantly, in alternate laps
of luxurious, downy, scent-laden petals, fill iny lungs with
soul-inspiring nectar.
My intoxication has barely worn off before my eyes are dimly conscious
that the soil all around me is generously besprinkled with the remains
of my floral friends. I spring hurriedly to my feet, and, gazing
anxiously about me, suddenly perceive the gaily nodding heads of new
arrivals — dahlias, sunflowers, anemones, chrysanthemums. As I continue
gazing, the aromatic odour of mellow apples from the Hennersley orchards
reaches my nostrils; I turn round, and there, there in front of me, I
see row upon row of richly-laden fruit trees, their leaves a brilliant
copper in the scintillating rays of the ruddy autumn sun. I gasp for
breath—the beauty of tint and tone surpasses all that I have hitherto
seen—it is sublime, the grand climax of transformation. As the curtain
falls with the approach of winter, I hurry to my Edinburgh home and pray
for the prompt return of early spring.
For many years my aged relatives, the Misses Amelia and Deborah
Har-bordeens, lived at Hennersley. Rarest and kindest of old ladies,
they were the human prototypes of the flowers both they and I loved.
Miss Amelia, with her beautiful complexion, rounded form and regal mien,
suggested to my childish mind more, much more, than the mere semblance
of a rose, whilst Miss Deborah, with her sprightly grace and golden
hair, was only masquerading as a woman—she was in reality a daffodil.
Unlike so many of the fair sex who go in for gardening, my aunts were
essentially dainty. Their figures were shapely and elegant, their hands
slim and soft. I never saw them working without gloves, and I have good
reason to believe they anointed their fingers every night with a special
preparation to keep them smooth and white. They were not—decidedly
not—“brainy,” neither were they accomplished, never having made any
special study of the higher arts; but they evinced nevertheless the
keenest appreciation of painting, music, and literature. Their library—a
large one—boasted a delightful harbourage of such writers as Jane
Austen, Miss Mitford, and Maria Edgeworth. And in their drawing-room, on
the walls of which art was represented by the old as well as modern
masters, might be seen and sometimes heard — for the Misses Harbordeens
often entertained—a well-tuned Broadwood, and a Bucksen harpsichord. I
will describe this old-world abode, not as I first saw it, for when I
first visited my aunts Amelia and Deborah, I was only one year old, but
as I first remember it—a house with the glamour of a many-gabled roof
and diamond window-panes.
The house stood by the side of the turnpike road—that broad, white,
interminable road, originating from goodness knows where in the north,
and passing through Ayr—the nearest town of any importance—to goodness
knows where in the south. A shady avenue, entered by a wooden swing gate
bearing the superscription “Hennersley” in neat, white letters, led by a
circuitous route to it, and not a vestige of it could be seen from the
road. In front of it stretched a spacious lawn, flanked on either side
and at the farthest extremity by a thick growth of chestnuts, beeches,
poplars, and evergreens.
The house itself was curiously built. It consisted of two storeys, and
formed a main building and one wing, which gave it a peculiarly
lop-sided appearance that reminded me somewhat ludicrously of
Chanticleer, with a solitary, scant, and clipped appendage.
It was often on the tip of my tongue to ask my relatives the reason of
this singular disparity; whether it was the result of a mere whim on the
part of the architect, or whether it had been caused by some
catastrophe; but my curiosity was always held in check by a strange
feeling that my relatives would not like to be approached on the
subject. My aunts Amelia and Deborah belonged to that class of people,
unhappily rare, who possess a power of generating in others an
instinctive knowledge of “dangerous ground”—a power which enabled them
to avert, both from themselves and the might-be offender, many a painful
situation. To proceed—the nakedness of the walls of Hennersley was
veiled—who shall say it was not designedly veiled—by a thick covering of
clematis and ivy, and in the latter innumerable specimens of the
feathered tribe found a sure and safe retreat.
On entering the house, one stepped at once into a large hall. A gallery
ran round it, and from the centre rose a broad oak staircase. The rooms,
with one or two exceptions, opened into one another, and were large, and
low and long in shape ; the walls and floors were of oak and the
ceilings were crossed by ponderous oak beams.
The fireplaces, too, were of the oldest fashion; and in their
comfortable ingle-nook my aunts—in the winter—loved to read or knit.
When the warm weather came, they made similar use of the deep-set
windowsills, over which they indulgently permitted me to scramble on to
the lawn.
The sunlight was a special feature of Hennersley. Forcing its way
through the trellised panes, it illuminated the house with a radiancy, a
soft golden radiancy I have never seen elsewhere.
My relatives seemed to possess some phenomenal attraction for the
sunlight, for, no matter where they sat, a beam brighter than the rest
always shone on them; and, when they got up, I noticed that it always
followed them, accompanying them from room to room and along the
corridors.
But this was only one of the many pleasant mysteries that added to the
joy of my visits to Hennersley. I felt sure that the house was
enchanted—that it was under the control of some benevolent being who
took a kindly interest in the welfare of my relatives.
I remember once, on the occasion of my customary good-morning to Miss
Amelia, who invariably breakfasted in bed, I inhaled the most delicious
odour of heliotrope. It was wafted towards me, in a cool current of air,
as I approached her bed, and seemed, to my childish fancy, to be the
friendly greeting of a sparkling sunbeam that rested on Miss Amelia’s
pillow.
I was so charmed with the scent, that, alas ! forgetful of my manners, I
gave a loud sniff, and with a rapturous smile ejaculated, “Oh! Auntie!
Cherry pie!” Miss Amelia started. “Dear me, child!” she exclaimed, “how
quietly you entered. I had no idea you were in the room. Heliotrope is
the name of the scent, my dear, but please do not allude to it again.
Your Aunt Deborah and I are very fond of it ”— here she sighed—“but for
certain reasons —reasons you would not understand—we do not like to hear
the word heliotrope mentioned. Kiss me, dear, and run away to your
breakfast.”
For the first time in my life, perhaps, I was greatly puzzled. I could
not see why I should be forbidden to refer to such a pleasant and
harmless subject—a subject that, looked at from no matter what point of
view, did not appear to me to be in the slightest degree indelicate. The
more I thought over it, the more convinced I became that there was some
association between the scent and the sunbeam, and in that association I
felt sure much of the mystery lay.
The house was haunted — agreeably, delightfully haunted by a golden
light, a perfumed radiant light that could only have in my mind one
origin, one creator— Titania—Titania, queen of the fairies, the guardian
angel of my aged, my extremely aged relatives.
“Aunt Deborah,” I said one morning, as I found her seated in the
embrasure of the breakfast room window crocheting, “Aunt Deborah! You
love the sunlight, do you not?”
She turned on me a startled face. “What makes you ask such strange
questions, child?” she said. “Of course I like the— sun. Most people do.
It is no uncommon thing, especially at my age.”
“But the sunbeams do not follow every one, auntie, do they?” I
persisted.
Miss Deborah’s crochet fell into her lap. “How queerly you talk,” she
said, with a curious trembling of her lips. “How can the sunbeams follow
one?”
“But they do, auntie, they do indeed!” I cried. “I have often watched a
bright beam of golden light follow Aunt Amelia and you, in different
parts of the room. And it has settled on your lace collar now.”
Miss Deborah looked at me very seriously; but the moistening of her eyes
I attributed to the strong light. “Esther,” she said, laying one of her
soft hands on my forehead, “there are things God does not want little
girls to understand—question me no more.”
I obeyed, but henceforth I felt more than ever assured that my aunts,
consciously or unconsciously, shared their charming abode with some
capricious genii, of whose presence in their midst I had become
accidentally aware; and to find out the enchanted neighbourhood of its
mysterious retreat was to me now a matter of all-absorbing importance. I
spent hour after hour roaming through the corridors, the copses, and my
beloved flower gardens, in eager search of some spot I could
unhesitatingly affirm was the home of the genii. Most ardently I then
hoped that the sunbeams would follow me, and that the breeze charged
with cool heliotrope would greet me as it did Aunt Deborah.
In the daytime, all Hennersley was sunshine and flowers, and, stray
where I would, I never felt lonely or afraid; but as the light waned I
saw and felt a subtle change creep over everything. The long aisles of
trees that in the morning only struck me as enchantingly peaceful and
shady, gradually filled with strangely terrifying shadows; the hue of
the broad swards deepened into a darkness I did not dare interpret,
whilst in the house, in its every passage, nook, and corner, a gloom
arose that, seeming to come from the very bowels of the earth, brought
with it every possible suggestion of bogey.
I never spoke of these things to my relatives, partly because I was
ashamed of my cowardice, and partly because I dreaded a fresh rebuke.
How I suffered! and how I ridiculed my sufferings in the mornings, when
every trace of darkness was obliterated, and amid the radiant bloom of
the trees I thought only of heliotrope and sunbeams.
One afternoon my search for the abode of the genii, led me to the
wingless side of the house, a side I rarely visited. At the foot of the
ivy-covered walls and straight in their centre was laid a wide bed of
flowers, every one of which was white. But why white? Again and again I
asked myself this question, but I dared not broach it to my relatives. A
garden all white was assuredly an enigma—and to every enigma there is
undoubtedly a key. Was this garden, which was all white, in any way
connected with the sunbeams and heliotrope? Was it another of the
mysteries God concealed from little girls? Could this be the home of the
genii? This latter idea had no sooner entered my head than it became a
conviction. Of course! There was no doubt whatever— it was the home of
the genii.
The white petals were now a source of peculiar interest to me. I was
fascinated : the minutes sped by and still I was there. It was not until
the sun had disappeared in the far-distant horizon, and the grim shadows
of twilight were creeping out upon me from the neighbouring trees and
bushes, that I awoke from my reverie— and fled!
That night—unable to sleep through the excitement caused by my discovery
of the home of the genii—I lay awake, my whole thoughts concentrated in
one soul-absorbing desire, the passionate desire to see the fairy of
Hennersley — I had never heard of ghosts—and hear its story. My bedroom
was half-way down the corridor leading from the head of the main
staircase to the extremity of the wing.
After I said good-night I did not see my aunts again till the
morning—they never by any chance visited me after I was in bed. Hence I
knew, when I had retired for the night, I should not see a human face
nor hear a human voice for nearly twelve hours. This—when I thought of
the genii with its golden beams of light and scent of heliotrope—did not
trouble me; it was only when my thoughts would not run in this channel
that I felt any fear, and that fear was not of the darkness itself, but
of what the darkness suggested.
On this particular night, for the first few hours, I was sublimely
happy, and then a strange restlessness seized me. I was obsessed with a
wish to see the flower-garden. For some minutes, stimulated by a dread
of what my aunts would think of such a violation of conventionality on
the part of a child, I combated furiously with the desire ; but at
length the longing was so great, so utterly and wholly irresistible,
that I succumbed, and, getting quietly out of bed, made my way
noiselessly into the corridor.
All was dark and still—stiller than I had ever known it before. Without
any hesitation I plunged forward, in the direction of the wingless side
of the house, where there was a long, narrow, stained window that
commanded an immediate prospect of the white garden.
I had seldom looked out of it, as up to the present this side of the
house had little attraction for me; but all was changed now; and, as I
felt my way cautiously along the corridor, a thousand and one fanciful
notions of what I might see surged through my brain.
I came to the end of the corridor, I descended half a dozen stairs, I
got to the middle of the gallery overlooking the large entrance
hall—below me, above me, on all sides of me, was Stygian darkness. I
stopped, and there suddenly rang out, apparently from close at hand, a
loud, clear, most appallingly clear, blood-curdling cry, which,
beginning in a low key, ended in a shriek so horrid, harsh, and
piercing, that I felt my heart shrivel up within me, and in sheer
desperation I buried my fingers in my ears to deaden the sound.
I was now too frightened to move one way or the other. All the strength
departed from my limbs, and when I endeavoured to move my feet, I could
not— they appeared to be fastened to the ground with lead weights.
I felt, I intuitively felt that the author of the disturbance was
regarding my terror with grim satisfaction, and that it was merely
postponing further action in order to enjoy my suspense. To block out
the sight of this dreadful creature, I clenched my eyelids tightly
together, at the same time earnestly imploring God to help me.
Suddenly I heard the low wail begin again, and then the echo of a
far-off silvery voice came softly to me through the gloom: “It’s an
owl—only an owl! ”
With lightning-like rapidity the truth then dawned on me, and as I
withdrew my clammy finger-tips from my ears, the faint fluttering of
wings reached me, through an open skylight. Once again I moved on; the
gallery was left behind, and I was well on my way down the tortuous
passage leading to my goal, when a luminous object, of vast height and
cylindrical shape, suddenly barred my progress.
Overcome by a deadly sickness, I sank on the floor, and, burying my face
in my hands, quite made up my mind that my last moments had come.
How long I remained in this position I cannot say, to me it seemed
eternity. I was eventually freed from it by the echo of a gentle laugh,
so kind, and gay, and girlish, that my terror at once departed, and, on
raising my head, I perceived that the cause of my panic was nothing more
than a broad beam of moonlight on a particularly prominent angle of the
wall.
Heartily ashamed at my cowardice, I got up, and, stepping briskly
forward, soon reached the stained-glass window.
Pressing my face against the pane, I peered through it, and there
immediately beneath me lay the flowers, glorified into dazzling gold by
the yellow colour of the glass. The sight thrilled me with joy— it was
sublime. My instinct had not deceived me, this was indeed the
long-looked-for home of the genii.
The temperature, which had been high, abnormally so for June, now
underwent an abrupt change, and a chill current of air, sweeping down on
me from the rear, made my teeth chatter. I involuntarily shrank back
from the window, and, as I did so, to my utter astonishment it
disappeared, and I saw, in its place, a room.
It was a long, low room, and opposite to me, at the farthest extremity,
was a large bay window, through which I could see the nodding tops of
the trees. The furniture was all green and of a lighter, daintier make
than any I had hitherto seen. The walls were covered with pictures, the
mantelshelf with flowers. Whilst I was busily employed noting all these
details, the door of the room opened, and the threshold was gorgeously
illuminated by a brilliant sunbeam, from which suddenly evolved the
figure of a young and lovely girl.
I can see her now as I saw her then— tall, and slender, with masses of
golden hair, waved artistically aside from a low forehead of snowy
white; finely-pencilled brows, and long eyes of the most lustrous
violet; a straight, delicately-moulded nose, a firm,
beautifully-proportioned chin, and a bewitching mouth. At her bosom was
a bunch of heliotrope, which, deftly undoing, she raised to her nose and
then laughingly held out to me. I was charmed; I took a step forward
towards her. The instant I did so, a wild look of terror distorted her
face, she waved me back, something jarred against my knee, and, in the
place of the room, I saw only the blurred outline of trees through the
yellow window-panes.
Bitterly disappointed, but absolutely sure that what I had seen was
objective, I retraced my steps to my bedroom and passed the remainder of
the night in sound sleep.
After breakfast, however, unable to restrain my curiosity longer, I
sought Miss Amelia, who was easier to approach than her sister, and,
managing after several efforts to screw up courage, blurted out the
story of my nocturnal escapade.
My aunt listened in silence. She was always gentle, but on this occasion
she surpassed herself.
“I am not going to scold you, Esther,” she said, smoothing out my curls.
“After what you have seen it is useless to conceal the truth from you.
God perhaps intends you to know all. Years ago, Esther, this house was
not as you see it now. It had two wings, and, in the one that no longer
exists was the bedroom you saw in your vision. We called it the Green
Room because everything in it was {green, your Aunt Alicia—an aunt you
have never heard of — who slept there, having a peculiar fancy for that
colour.
“Alicia was our youngest sister, and we all loved her dearly. She was
just as you describe her—beautiful as a fairy, with golden hair, and
violet eyes, and she always wore a bunch of heliotrope in her dress.
“One night, Esther, one lovely, calm, midsummer night, forty years ago,
this house was broken into by burglars. They got in through the Green
Room window, which was always left open during the warm weather. We—my
mother, your Aunt Deborah, and I—were awakened by a loud shriek for
help. Recognising Alicia’s voice, we instantly flew out of bed, and,
summoning the servants, tore to the Green Room as fast as we could.
“To our horror, Esther, the door was locked, and before we could break
the lock the ruffians had murdered her! They escaped through the window
and were never caught. My mother, your greatgrandmother, had that part
of the house pulled down, and on the site of it she planted the white
garden.
“Though Alicia’s earthly body died, and was taken from us, her beautiful
spirit remains with us here. It follows us about in the daytime in the
form of a sunbeam, whilst occasionally, at night, it assumes her earthly
shape. The house is what is generally termed haunted, and, no doubt,
some people would be afraid to live in it. But that, Esther, is because
they do not understand spirits—your Aunt Deborah and I do.”
“Do you think, auntie,” I asked with a thrill of joy, “do you think it
at all likely that I shall see Aunt Alicia again to-night?”
Aunt Amelia shook her head gently. “No, my dear,” she said slowly, “I
think it will be impossible, because you are going home this afternoon.” |
