The man’s face was bleached to a dull shining whiteness. “Yes, sir,” he said. “It was the master’s voice.”

       *       *       *       *       *

Together they hurried down the stairs, and through the dining-room where
an orderly table for breakfast had already been laid, and out on to the
terrace. The rain for the moment had been utterly stayed, as if the tap
of the heavens had been turned off, and under the lowering black sky,
not quite dark, since the moon rode somewhere serene behind the
conglomerated thunder-clouds, Darcy stumbled into the garden, followed
by the servant with the candle. The monstrous leaping shadow of himself
was cast before him on the lawn; lost and wandering odours of rose and
lily and damp earth were thick about him, but more pungent was some
sharp and acrid smell that suddenly reminded him of a certain chalet in
which he had once taken refuge in the Alps. In the blackness of the hazy
light from the sky, and the vague tossing of the candle behind him, he
saw that the hammock in which Frank so often lay was tenanted. A gleam
of white shirt was there, as if a man sitting up in it, but across that
there was an obscure dark shadow, and as he approached the acrid odour
grew more intense. He was now only some few yards away, when suddenly the black shadow
seemed to jump into the air, then came down with tappings of hard hoofs
on the brick path that ran down the pergola, and with frolicsome
skippings galloped off into the bushes. When that was gone Darcy could
see quite clearly that a shirted figure sat up in the hammock. For one
moment, from sheer terror of the unseen, he hung on his step, and the
servant joining him they walked together to the hammock. It was Frank. He was in shirt and trousers only, and he sat up with
braced arms. For one half-second he stared at them, his face a mask of
horrible contorted terror. His upper lip was drawn back so that the gums
of the teeth appeared, and his eyes were focussed not on the two who
approached him but on something quite close to him; his nostrils were
widely expanded, as if he panted for breath, and terror incarnate and
repulsion and deathly anguish ruled dreadful lines on his smooth cheeks
and forehead. Then even as they looked the body sank backwards, and the
ropes of the hammock wheezed and strained. Darcy lifted him out and carried him indoors. Once he thought there was
a faint convulsive stir of the limbs that lay with so dead a weight in
his arms, but when they got inside, there was no trace of life. But the
look of supreme terror and agony of fear had gone from his face, a boy
tired with play but still smiling in his sleep was the burden he laid on
the floor. His eyes had closed, and the beautiful mouth lay in smiling
curves, even as when a few mornings ago, in the meadow by the weir, it
had quivered to the music of the unheard melody of Pan’s pipes. Then
they looked further. Frank had come back from his bathe before dinner that night in his usual
costume of shirt and trousers only. He had not dressed, and during
dinner, so Darcy remembered, he had rolled up the sleeves of his shirt
to above the elbow. Later, as they sat and talked after dinner on the
close sultriness of the evening, he had unbuttoned the front of his
shirt to let what little breath of wind there was play on his skin. The
sleeves were rolled up now, the front of the shirt was unbuttoned, and
on his arms and on the brown skin of his chest were strange
discolorations which grew momently more clear and defined, till they saw
that the marks were pointed prints, as if caused by the hoofs of some
monstrous goat that had leaped and stamped upon him. BETWEEN THE LIGHTS


The day had been one unceasing fall of snow from sunrise until the
gradual withdrawal of the vague white light outside indicated that the
sun had set again. But as usual at this hospitable and delightful house
of Everard Chandler where I often spent Christmas, and was spending it
now, there had been no lack of entertainment, and the hours had passed
with a rapidity that had surprised us. A short billiard tournament had
filled up the time between breakfast and lunch, with Badminton and the
morning papers for those who were temporarily not engaged, while
afterwards, the interval till teatime had been occupied by the majority
of the party in a huge game of hide-and-seek all over the house, barring
the billiard-room, which was sanctuary for any who desired peace. But
few had done that; the enchantment of Christmas, I must suppose, had,
like some spell, made children of us again, and it was with palsied
terror and trembling misgivings that we had tip-toed up and down the dim
passages, from any corner of which some wild screaming form might dart
out on us. Then, wearied with exercise and emotion, we had assembled
again for tea in the hall, a room of shadows and panels on which the
light from the wide open fireplace, where there burned a divine mixture
of peat and logs, flickered and grew bright again on the walls. Then, as
was proper, ghost-stories, for the narration of which the electric light
was put out, so that the listeners might conjecture anything they
pleased to be lurking in the corners, succeeded, and we vied with each
other in blood, bones, skeletons, armour and shrieks. I had just given
my contribution, and was reflecting with some complacency that probably
the worst was now known, when Everard, who had not yet administered to
the horror of his guests, spoke. He was sitting opposite me in the full
blaze of the fire, looking, after the illness he had gone through during
the autumn, still rather pale and delicate. All the same he had been
among the boldest and best in the exploration of dark places that
afternoon, and the look on his face now rather startled me. “No, I don’t mind that sort of thing,” he said. “The paraphernalia of
ghosts has become somehow rather hackneyed, and when I hear of screams
and skeletons I feel I am on familiar ground, and can at least hide my
head under the bed-clothes.”

“Ah, but the bed-clothes were twitched away by my skeleton,” said I, in
self-defence. “I know, but I don’t even mind that. Why, there are seven, eight
skeletons in this room now, covered with blood and skin and other
horrors. No, the nightmares of one’s childhood were the really
frightening things, because they were vague. There was the true
atmosphere of horror about them because one didn’t know what one feared. Now if one could recapture that----”

Mrs Chandler got quickly out of her seat. “Oh, Everard,” she said, “surely you don’t wish to recapture it again. I
should have thought once was enough.”

This was enchanting. A chorus of invitation asked him to proceed: the
real true ghost-story first-hand, which was what seemed to be indicated,
was too precious a thing to lose. Everard laughed. “No, dear, I don’t want to recapture it again at all,”
he said to his wife.