At about ten o'clock I mounted the gangway and waited behind a deserted bungalow built for Fenella Stanley till I should hear the Odd-Fellows returning. In a few minutes I heard them approaching. They were singing snatches of songs they had been entertained with at Graylingham, and chatting and laughing as they went down Wilderness Road towards Raxton. As they passed the bungalow and adjoining mill there was a silence.
I heard one man say: ''Ez Tom Wynne's ghooast bin seen here o' late?'
'Nooa, but the Squoire's 'ez,' said another.
'I say they've both on 'em bin seed,' exclaimed a third voice, which I recognised to be that of old Lantoff of the 'Fishing Smack'—'leaseways, if they ain't bin seed they've bin 'eeared. One Saturday arternoon old Sal Gunn wur in the church a-cleanin' The Hall brasses, an' jist afore sundown, as she wur a-comin' away, she 'eeared a awful scrimmage an squealin' in the crypt, and she 'eeared the v'ice o' the Squoire a-callin' out, and she 'eeared Tom Wynne's v'ice a-cussin' an' a-swearin' at 'im. And more nor that, Sal told me that on the night when the Squoire wur buried, she seed Tom a-draggin' the Squoire's body along the churchyard to the cliff; only she never spoke on it at the time. And Sal says she larnt in a dream that the moment as Tom went and laid 'is 'and on that 'ere dimind cross in the coffin, up springs Squoire and claps 'old o' Tom's throat, and Tom takes 'old on him, and drags him out o' the church, meanin' to chuck him over the cliffs, when God o' mighty, as wur a-keepin' 'is eye on Tom all the time, he jist lets go o' the cliffs and down they falls, and kills Tom, an' buries him an' Squoire tew.'
'Did you say Sal seed all that in a dream? or did she see it in ole ale, Muster Lantoff?' said Shales.
'Well,' replied Lantoff, as the party turned past the bungalow, 'p'raps it wur ole ale as made me see in this very bungaler when I wur a bor the ghooast o' the great Gypsy lady whose pictur hangs up at the Hall, her as they used to call the old Squoire's Witch-wife.' Soon the singing and laughing were renewed; and I stood and listened to the sounds till they died away in the distance. Then I unlocked the church door and entered.
V
As I walked down an aisle, the echoes of my footsteps seemed almost loud enough to be heard on the Wilderness Road. No one could have a more contemptuous disbelief in ghosts than I, and yet the man's words about the ghost of Fenella Stanley haunted me. When I reached the heavy nailed door leading down to the crypt, I lit the lantern. The rusty key turned so stiffly in the lock, that, to relieve my hands (which were burdened with the implements I had brought), I slung the hair-chain of the cross around my neck, intending merely to raise the coffin-lid sufficiently high to admit of my slipping the amulet in.
Having, with much difficulty, opened the door, I entered the crypt. The atmosphere, though not noisome, was heavy, and charged with an influence that worked an extraordinary effect upon my brain and nerves. It was as though my personality were becoming dissipated, until at last it was partly the reflex of ancestral experiences. Scarcely had this mood passed before a sensation came upon me of being fanned as if by clammy bat-like wings; and then the idea seized me that the crypt scintillated with the eyes of a malignant foe. It was as if the curse which, until I heard Winnie a beggar singing in the street, had been to me but a collocation of maledictory words, harmless save in their effect upon her superstitious mind, had here assumed an actual corporeal shape. In the uncertain light shed by the lantern, I seemed to see the face of this embodied curse with an ever-changing mockery of expression; at one moment wearing the features of my father; at another those of Tom Wynne; at another the leer of the old woman I had seen in Cyril's studio.
'It is an illusion,' I said, as I closed my eyes to shut it out; 'it is an illusion, born of opiate fumes or else of an over-taxed brain and an exhausted stomach.' Yet it disturbed me as much as if my reason had accepted it as real. Against this foe I seemed to be fighting towards my father's coffin as a dreamer lights against a nightmare, and At last I fell over one of the heaps of old Danish bones in a corner of the crypt. The candle fell from my lantern, and I was in darkness. As I sat there I passed into a semi-conscious state. I saw sitting at the apex of a towering pyramid, built of phosphorescent human bones that reached far, far above the stars, the 'Queen of Death, Nin-ki-gal,' scattering seeds over the earth below. At the pyramid's base knelt the suppliant figure of a Sibyl pleading with the Queen of Death: