The Midnight Folk Read online

  As he spoke, the door of the library was thrust open, a pointer came shambling, wagging and cringing all at once to his master’s feet. The library changed and blurred at his coming. He seemed to have let a lot of light into the room. Indeed, even as Kay looked, it was not a room, but the field where the cows were grazing. But the cows were blurring all together, into one. They were, in fact, not cows, they were bushes, browner than bushes ought to be, with a blueness above them which he knew was meant to be the sky. He saw great-grandpapa Harker standing there, but something dark and oblong surrounded him and shut him away. “Why, he’s gone back into the picture,” Kay thought. The glass of the picture shut the old man still further away. The picture was over the mantelpiece, and there was he, Kay, on the other side of the table, bent over the French verb “pouvoir.” Baxter’s portrait of great-grandpapa Harker was staring down unmoving. The governess entered.

  “Put away your ‘pouvoir’ now, Kay,” she said. “It’s time for writing lesson. Take a piece of paper and write a nice letter to yourself while I do my books.”

  Kay began his letter.

  “My dear Kay,

  I hop you are quite well.

  I hop your friends, the cats, are quite well.

  I am quite well.

  Please give my love to Ellen. I hop she is quite well.

  We have a nice dog here, but he is norty.”

  He sucked the end of his pen for a long time, but could think of nothing more to say, except that the norty dog was quite well.

  “Haven’t you finished yet?” the governess said. “How many more times am I to tell you not to suck your pen like that? You are a disobedient child. Let me see what you have written. Really, Kay,” she said, having read the letter, “I forbid you to mention the words ‘quite well’ in any other letter that you write. You learn a phrase and then repeat it just like a little parrot. And then how do you spell ‘naughty’? N-A-U-G-H-T spells naught. N-A-U-G-H-T-Y spells—what does it spell?”

  “I don’t know quite what it would spell.”

  “Yes, you do, sir. Think. Now what does it spell?”

  “Think.”

  “No, it doesn’t spell ‘think.’ It spells what you are, naughty. Now you’ll write out N-A-U-G-H-T-Y twenty-five times. And look at your writing, all slopping and sliding. You will not put both your fingers on the pen. You never see me with my finger under the pen in that way. You’ll never be able to write unless you get both your fingers onto the pen. Now put them on the proper way.”

  ☆

  Usually after lessons he played by himself in the garden, in the shrubberies if it were dry, and on the paths if it were wet. Today he went out of the garden, to walk by the brook which ran beside it, to watch the minnows in the shallows, and to see his friend, the water-rat, coming from his cool swim to nibble a cress.

  The water was clear, with green weeds swaying in it like fishes’ tails. The water-rat slid into it with a little fall of earth and swam downstream to his hole.

  “I do wish I could be a water-rat,” he thought.

  He wandered into a lane and then away across the fields to the church, where he found old Bert the sexton going up the tower to wind the clock.

  “Mr. Bert,” he said, “did you ever know my great- grandfather Harker?”

  “Why, Master Kay, I’ve known all of you. I’ve known your father, Mr. Harker, and your grandfather, old Mr. Harker, afore him; and, yes, I knew old, old Mr. Harker, but he was an old man when I came on to be a boy. That is, he wasn’t an old man, but he seemed old; and he was old, beside old Mr. Harker.”

  “Will you tell me about him?”

  “Why, I don’t know that I can. Let me see, now: old, old Mr. Harker. He’d been a savage Indian, so they did use to say. Ah! old, old Mr. Harker. Yes; things were very different in those days. They’d no railways in those days; nothing but the coach up and down. And they’d the old gallows up on the hill. Let me see about old, old Mr. Harker, then, whether I can tell you anything. He lived where you live, only it wasn’t built on to then, the new part; that was your grandfather built that, old Mr. George. I remember old, old Mr. Harker had a stick he used to walk with, a foreign stick all carved by the savages. They used to say he had a lot of foreign treasures all buried away, all gold and that; but I never believed that; for my father once heard him say to old Mr. Robert, that used to live in the Dingles’s old place, but they made him Bishop after, ‘Robert,’ he said, ‘if I could only find that treasure, it would be a load off my mind.’ So I never believed he had treasure.”

  “But about him, Master Kay. I used to see him stumping about with his stick: he had the rheumatic complaint from being wet through so often. He gave me some of these foreign fruits once, done up in sugar, because I took a letter for him. They did say he oughtn’t to have died when he did, for he wasn’t what you would call old, but they did use to say that he had something on his mind, if you understand me. He had his tomb done out very pretty in the south aisle, though it seems old-fashioned now. There it is, by the pew where they Pengas sit, just this side of where they put your grandfather.”

  Kay stood upon the stone which covered great-grandpapa Harker. On the wall, above the pews near it, was a memorial tablet carved with a small lady in high relief mourning beside a very big urn. A ship showed in the distance, part of an anchor stuck out of the urn; underneath the design was an inscription:

  Beside this Stone

  Lie the mortal remains of

  ASTON TIRROLD HARKER,

  son of Charles Tirrold Harker, Esquire,

  late of Seekings House, in this Parish.

  Born 17th August, 1782. Died 13th January, 1850.

  He was constant in Affection, spotless in Integrity, a useful Magistrate, eminent in his Calling, manly in Fortitude, womanly in Tenderness. He combined the graces of a Scholar with the Virtues of a good Citizen. Reader, canst thou say as much? If not, forbear to judge.

  This Stone was erected 1850 by his sorrowing Widow, Jemima Siskin Harker, eldest daughter of Sir Brambling Siskin, of Siskin Hall, whom he married in 1811.

  A stone to Jemima Siskin Harker, erected by her sorrowing son, George Tirrold Siskin Harker, lay a little to the east of this tablet on the same south wall.

  Kay spent some few minutes looking at these and other tablets in the aisle. He then tried to make out the subject of a stained glass window, which he had puzzled over at a distance during many a dreary sermon. He could not get it clear: there were bits of heads, glories, horses and old writing; what he had decided was a yellow, half-lop rabbit seemed to be a hat with spikes. This was a blow, for the rabbit, named Bunkin, had beguiled even the litany.

  “Mr. Bert,” he said, “could you tell me the name of the gamekeeper who looks after Coneycop Spinney?”

  “Why, yes,” the sexton said. “That’s the Squire’s covert. His keeper lives by they pine trees, out by Rye Meadows. Roper Bilges is his name, and Bilges is his nature, they do say.”

  “Roper Bilges!” Kay cried. “Roper Bilges? Were his ancestors gunners?”

  “No,” Bert answered, “not so far as I know, unless shot-gunners.”

  “Did they come from these parts, do you know?”

  “No, they came from up Salop way somewhere; not so long since. That Roper’s brother is footman to Sir Hassle.”

  “Were there ever many smugglers here when you were a boy, Mr. Bert?” Kay asked.

  “You mean what they used to call the Night Hawks? Why, no, those were done before I began; they took to killing people. No; but there was something like them going on, bringing brandy and tea and that: not so very many years ago. I knew some who were concerned in it, though it’s best not to speak of it. Only it was a blessing to poor folk in those dear times . . . dreadful the prices were. I don’t know who the head of it was, except that he was a gentleman; and he worked it very cleverly, no one quite knew how. No, they never caught him, but it came to an end.”

  “Was there anyone called Brown, or Trigger, doing it,
do you know?” Kay asked. Mr. Bert’s face changed at the two names; he looked hard at Kay.

  “The name I always heard tell was Mr. Galloway,” he said. “But it may not have been his real name.”

  “I suppose all the things were brought up the river?”

  “Yes, all these fellows, the Night Hawks as well, brought their things up the river. And a very queer thing, now that we’re talking of this, was what happened at the time of the great flood. There were some barges that had come up with corn to the old mill that was: he’s gone now, but you can see where the wheels used to be . . . Condicote Old Mill, they called it; a very big mill he used to be; you’ll have been to the place.”

  “Yes,” Kay said. “I went there to a picnic once, and afterwards we all fished, but never caught anything.”

  “Well, that’s where Condicote Old Mill was,” Mr. Bert said. “And about these barges that had come up: they’d come to what they called the wharf just below the lock in very rough rainy weather. You’ll remember the wharf, maybe; it is just at the Mill. Then there came the Great Flood, when all those barges were washed away and stove in about Cold Comfort Bridge. My father was a carpenter and builder, and as the barges were stove, he offered for the wood, to break up the wrecks and carry them away. Now when he came to break up those barges, he found that every one had a false bottom; there was a secret place in each one, where quite a lot of things could be put; and in two of them he found packs of tobacco, only the flood had got at it. So that shows you, doesn’t it, how the stuff came and where it came to. My father never mentioned it to people; but it was queer, come to think of it, wasn’t it?”

  “Yes, indeed,” Kay said. “And do you remember the Great Flood?”

  “Why yes, Master Kay; no people who saw it will forget it. There was a week of storm in January after a very wet season, oh, dreadful it had been, with the corn all lying out as late as October, all sprouting in the stooks. Then in this week it rained very hard, and the river rose; and then at full moon the spring tides came up and stopped the head of water from getting out. So it was like a sea all the way from Upwaters to Seven Hatches and beyond; bridges broken, all except the old one; cows, pigs and sheep carried away: no getting across the river anywhere for days and days; and the weirs . . . oh, they were terrible . . . they would turn a man’s mind to look at them . . . with all bits of cow-byres, haystacks, pig-troughs, trees, hencoops, bee-skeps, everything just going tumbling down. I saw a cradle go over at Condicote Old Mill, and if there had been even twins in it, no man could have saved them. And nearly all the boats were gone, too. It was all like a big sea as far as one could see, with hedges and trees standing out of it, and sometimes a sort of island, with a few cows on it mooing to be milked, poor things, or a poor horse, running round, half-starved.”

  “Did you ever hear of a Mr. Brown who was drowned in the flood?”

  Again Mr. Bert’s face changed. “You mentioned that name before,” he said, “as well as another name. There was a lot of talk about those two: that that Sir Trigger, for he was a Sir, murdered Mr. Brown, and flung him in the water and then fled.”

  “Do you think he did?” Kay asked.

  “No, Master Kay, I don’t. It’s my belief that they both fell into the flood at Condicote Old Mill, and were drowned, only the Sir Trigger was washed into a mud-bank and buried, whereas Mr. Brown was carried to Seven Hatches and found. Three or four people disappeared in the flood and were never heard of again. I believe Sir Trigger was one of them. If not, Master Kay, I would say that it was the other way about: that the Brown man murdered him and was drowned while escaping.”

  “What makes you think that, Mr. Bert?”

  “It’s a long while ago,” Mr. Bert said, “and everybody concerned is dead. But that Pimply Whatto’s father, who was a bad one, when he was dying told my father that on the last night those two were seen, he saw them both at the Ring of Bells, so as to know them. And at midnight that night he saw them both again, near the Mill, and the Brown man was threatening the Trigger man, saying, ‘I’ve warned you twice: you’ll get no third time.’ And the Trigger man said, ‘If I lay hands on you again, I’ll mark you. Get out!’ And the Brown man did get out; but when the Trigger man moved on, Whatto saw the Brown man creep after him and take out a pistol; and no man ever saw them again alive. They both went on towards the flood. Whatto never came forward with this story at the Enquiry, because he was afraid he might be charged with murdering them himself. Besides, he wasn’t there himself for any good, you may be sure. And maybe his story isn’t true, for he wasn’t always quite the one for the truth. It’s best to give them both the benefit. The Great Flood was more than enough to drown them without either of them doing murder. Still, that was the tale he told.

  “They put a tablet to that Brown in Little Zennor Church, if ever you go there.

  “To the memory of ABNER BROWN, Esq., a stranger,

  A victim of the Great Flood.

  “But there, I’m rambling on past dinner time.” He had moved away, after dusting the knees of his trousers, when he stopped.

  “That Mr. Brown was a western gentleman, it was thought,” he said. “No one knew where he came from. He had twenty-five pounds in his bag at the Inn, and no clue to where his home and people were. A white-haired man, he was. I’ve often thought of his people, far away, never knowing; though they’ll have done sorrowing by now, poor souls.”

  ☆

  That night Kay had not been long asleep before he woke up to find the room brightly lit as before, although it was dark night outside. In the passages near his room there were whisperings and footsteps, as though people were pausing at his door to mutter some password. He sat up, expecting them to come in, but they passed on. When they had gone, he quietly opened his door an inch or two and peeped out. Some people in scarlet cloaks were just passing through a door at the end of the corridor, but one of them had paused. She was a young, very handsome witch, with long earrings. “Come along, sweet Belladonna,” her companion said, “we shall be late for our Chapter.”

  “Wait,” Belladonna said; “I must just see what is in here.”

  “No, come along; we must not keep Abner Brown waiting.”

  Saying this, the witch pulled Belladonna away, and in a moment the door closed behind them. Whether it was the closing of the door or the sudden movement, Kay could not tell, but at the instant something fell onto the carpet from Belladonna’s sleeve or pocket. Kay crept out to see what it was. It was a little red glass bottle, with a cut-glass stopper.

  “I expect it’s her scent-bottle,” he thought. He tried to open the door through which she had gone, so that he could give it back to her, but the door was fast closed, and what was worse, the handle gave him pins and needles when he touched it. And another strange thing was that all this part of the house was unlit, while his own room was brighter than a summer day. The cuckoo clock, inside the closed room, cuckooed for eleven o’clock.

  When he was back in his room, he looked at the little glass bottle. “Witches’ scent,” he thought. “I wonder what it smells like.” But it was not scent; it was labelled like a physic bottle:

  INVISIBLE MIXTURE.

  Take 3 drops upon a lump of sugar. Night Dose.

  “ 6 “ “ “ “ Day Dose.

  Repeat dose if necessary.

  “I believe it’s the stuff they take to make themselves invisible,” he thought. “I’ll try it; and then I’ll go out to the gamekeeper’s cottage to see how they behave when they find that the hunters aren’t at Coneycop Spinney at all.”

  He had some old lumps of sugar put away under the carpet. He took out one of these and carefully opened the bottle. The mixture had a warm, rich smell, like the smell of green bracken on a very hot day. “I must be very careful of this,” he thought. He dropped three drops onto a lump, popped it into his mouth, and re-stoppered the phial. A glow went through him, as though he were sucking the loveliest peppermint ever made. He hid the phial in a mouse-hole in the skirting-boa
rd behind the valance, and then stood up. He felt a pepperminty feeling go tingling along his toes, and lo, he looked at his toes and could not see them, nor his legs, nor his pyjamas; and though he looked at himself in the glass, he was not there; he was invisible. “I say, what fun,” he said. He put on his slippers and went down into the hall, where a mouse was eating a crumb in the centre of a patch of moonlight. The mouse did not see him, but went on grinding and nibbling at the crumb till it was finished. He pushed the chair against the garden door, clambered up it, drew the bolts, turned the key, undid the chain, took off the burglar alarm bell, and opened a way for himself. In a minute he was over the wall and away to the pine wood out by Ryemeadows.

  It was thrilling to walk up to rabbits in the grassy places, and to stroke them, while they thought that his touch was either a grass-blade or the wind. An owl blundered right into him, bounced off, hovered, tried to make out what it was that it had hit, and then sheered off, much puzzled. At Peter’s Patch the keeper’s dogs came out barking at him, with the keeper after them.

  “What are Sol and Jo barking at?” his wife asked.

  “Sounded like a footstep to me; but there’s no one here.”

  “I expect it was only a rabbit.”

  “I’ll rabbit them rabbits. Come in, dogs.”

  When they had gone into the cottage, Kay crept a little nearer. Some friends of Mr. Bilges were there. Kay peeped in at the open door. The dogs snarled, and their hair stood on end with terror.

  “Quiet, dogs, will you?” Mr. Bilges said, kicking them in the ribs. “Now we’ll have a little drop of our nice spirit, which nobody knows about.” He produced a bottle, some sugar and a lemon while his wife brought a kettle of hot water and a bowl; then they began to brew a punch. Kay could see the keeper’s friends: they were Brassy Cop and the Pimply Whatto, as they were called; the two worst poachers and fighters in the district. The other was the young Bilges, who was footman to Sir Hassle Gassle. They drank the punch when it was made; then they began to boast.