The Australian Star/The Farmhouse on the Hill

William Beach, surveyor, arrived about midday at the small station of a south Dorchester village, and shouldered his bag and instruments to walk across to the Inn, where he had already telegraphed earlier in the day for a room. His surveying, having little to do with the account of his distressing subsequent adventures, may be left at once out of the story; but the fact that the Inn was in the throes of temporary building operations is important to mention, since it led to the landlord’s directing him to the only place in all the length and breadth of the scattered hamlet where accommodation was likely, or even possible⁠—the farmhouse half way up the hill. “That dark old house where you see the smoke ’anging about the trees,” he pointed. “Garfit’s away, but his missus’ll find you a place. That is,” he added quickly, by way of correction, “if you ain’t too partickler.” “Anything wrong with it, d’you mean?” asked the surveyor. “Oh, I don’t say there’s nothing wrong with it,” said the man, emphasising a word in every phrase, “I’m not one to criticise my neighbours at any time, and I’ve known of other gentlemen sleepin’ there quite comfortable. Any’ow there’s no other house to take you!” And he looked savagely at his own dilapidated hostel as though it cut him to the heart to send a customer elsewhere. Now there was something in the tone of the disappointed Innkeeper and in his curiously suggestive choice of words that combined to affect the surveyor disagreeably and make him vaguely conscious of a certain depression of spirits. He slipped at once into a minor key, and when he turned a corner of the sandy path and found himself suddenly face to face with the old grey-stoned Tudor house, massive of wall and irregular of shape, its forbidding aspect produced so marked an impression on him that he instinctively hesitated trying to seize the actual definite quality that caused gloom to hang about it like a cloud; and wondering rather uncomfortably how, and why, so picturesque a building, bucking against a whole hill-side of heather⁠—there in the full flood of midday sunshine should contrive to present so dolorous and lugubrious an appearance, For this first view at close quarters struck the dominant note of the place with undeniable⁠—vividness; the impression it conveyed was unpleasant; but “sinister” was the word that at once leaped to his mind.

With the weakness peculiar to impressionable persons, Beach would probably have retired there and then, but while his purpose was still an instinct merely, he became suddenly aware that a figure with fixed gaze had been staring at him for some time from the pillars of the deep porch where the yew trees that lined the approach threw their darkest shadow. A second glance showed him that it was a woman, a woman dressed in black. Clearly this was Mrs. Garfit, and he advanced to meet her. She was, he saw, a big strong-faced woman, yet with a cast of features somewhat melancholy, and she gave him a formal smile of welcome which, if not over cordial at first, changed to something more pleasant as soon as she learned his errand. “We can manage something, perhaps,” she said in a flat colourless sort of voice, cutting short his explanations about the Inn, and turning slowly to enter the house. “I’m willing to pay the ordinary Inn charges,” he added, noticing her want of alacrity, and smiling to observe the changes produced by his words. “Oh, of course, if you pay in advance,” she said⁠—which he had not exactly offered to do⁠—and signing him to follow her in. The surveyor no longer was puzzled by the Innkeeper’s description. Plainly the farmer’s wife was a grasping woman; she bled her occasional customers more successfully than he did; that was, no doubt, where the poison lay! He followed her through the cold hall, stone-flagged, and up the broad wooden stairs to the landing, noting the dark beams across the ceiling and the curious sudden slopings of the floors; for the odour of great age breathed everywhere about him, and the interior of the building was as charming as the exterior was sinister. Then Mrs. Garfit opened a door, moving aside for him to pass, and he saw a small room with a skylight window in the sloping ceiling, a cramped brass bed in the far corner and hooks in the wall from which a number of faded old dresses hung in a dingy row. The air smelt musty, and there was no fireplace. The surveyor’s heart sank appreciably. “If you have a somewhat larger room⁠—” he began, turning to her, “one with a fireplace, too, as I shall be working a bit in the evenings⁠—” Mrs. Garfit looked blankly at him, screwing up her eyes a little, while she weighed the possibility. “The fire would be a shillin’ extra,” she said presently, “and I could let you ’ave this room for another two shillin’ more than the small room,” She crossed the landing and showed him the room referred to; it was large, with two windows, an armchair, and a deep fireplace. “Only I recommends the other,” she added somewhat inconsequently, “I prefer the larger one, thank you,” said Beach shortly, and then and there clinched the bargain, making the best terms he could with her for breakfast and supper as well. “Then you holds to the big one,” repeated the woman, after counting over the silver in her big bony hands, “because my ’usband⁠—and he’ll be back termorrer⁠—’e says the little one sleeps in best.”

Beach ordered his fire to be lit immediately, and then went out to catch the short hour of light still available, glad to escape for the moment from both house and woman. His work took him out upon the open hilltops, where the sight of the sea, dull crimson under the wintry sunset, and the beauty of the hilly country, did so much towards further dissipating the original impression of gloom that when he returned about six o’clock, with a roaring appetite, he had passed into a more vigorous and cheerful state of mind, and paid little attention to the dour-faced farmer’s wife or to sensations of uneasiness and dismay which had at first oppressed him. He had a high-tea before the kitchen fire, shared⁠—both tea and fire⁠—by a black cat of huge proportions, which insisted upon rubbing against his knees, jumping up on his lap, and at last even putting her velvet paws into the very middle of his jam and butter. The general servant clattered about the place, waiting upon him, under occasional orders from the mistress; and a young man, presumably a Garfit, lumbered once or twice through the kitchen with noisy nailed boots and a curiosity to inspect the stranger within his gates. But the food was excellent; he had done a good bit of work; and the friendly attentions of the black cat soothed him so pleasantly that he passed gradually into a happy state of indifference to everything but the seductions of a good pipe and the prospect later of a refreshing sleep. Then, midway in a stream of most pleasantly flowing reflections, his nerves answered to a startling shock, and his sensations of content were scattered suddenly to the winds of heaven. There, at the end of the room, Mrs. Garfit was bending over an open drawer, and, through the smoke curling upwards from his pipe, he had caught sight unexpectedly of her face reflected in the mirror that hung upon the cupboard door. She was evidently not aware of being inspected, and her visage, sombre at any time, now wore an aspect so malefic that the sudden revelation positively horrified him. He saw it, dark and hard, with eyes at once terrible yet haunted, the mouth set, and a deep settled gloom upon the features that was quite dreadful. A flicker of fear, like the faint passing of a light, showed itself for a moment there, and was gone as swiftly as it came, The surveyor gave a sudden start that sent the cat flying from his knee, and when the woman turned again to face the kitchen, she had resumed the mask of her normal expression of countenance. “I’ll take my candle and go up to read a bit,” he stammered, as though surprised in an unauthorised or guilty act, “And⁠—please let me have breakfast at 5 o’clock.” He was disturbed, and not a little alarmed, the sight of that changed and evil face, and as he slowly went upstairs he could not help connecting it in his mind with the pain of a tormenting conscience. It seemed to turn the face black⁠—black with mental pain⁠—and the pallor of the skin had made the contrast truly horrible. It lived vividly in his imagination, unpleasantly alive. A blazing fire in his bedroom, a good novel, and a tolerably comfortable armchair, he hoped, would soon put to flight, however, the distressing effects of the vision. Yet, somehow, when he closed the door, it did not keep the woman out. That face came into the room with him. It perched on the table beside his book, and seemed to watch him as he read. The picture persisted in his mind; it kept rising before his eyes and the printed page. A sense of presentiment and apprehension began to gather heavily about his heart. Then, as he sat there, half reading, halt listening to the sounds below stairs, his thoughts took another turn; he thought of his brother, Hubert. Now, Hubert was the antithesis of himself; practical and keen-minded. They had formerly known great arguments⁠—visionary versus materialist, in which Hubert’s cool and logical mind invariably gained the victory, and William, with what dignity he could muster, always fell back upon the quotation that has often helped others in a similar predicament: “There are more things in heaven and earth, Hubert”⁠—the lines need not be completed, but he wished Hubert were with him now, Hubert might have argued things away; certain feelings and trepidations, a strangely persistent inner trembling⁠—a slowly growing fear.⁠ ⁠… Then, with a fresh start he recognised that it was this very sense of alarm that had suggested Hubert to his mind at all, and that in his sub-consciousness he was already groping for help! Plainly, this was the reason of his brother’s appearance upon the scene. The sinister setting of his night’s lodging, the desolate hills, and, above all, that revelation of the woman’s changed face had combined to touch his imagination with unholy suggestion. The idea of companionship became uncommonly pleasant. His thoughts dwelt a good deal upon these things, but, after all, the strong Dorsetshire air was not to be denied; the fire, moreover, was comforting, and his limbs ached. By degrees he persuaded the novel to possess him more and more until at length he found relief from his inquietudes in the exciting adventures of others.

The coals dropped softly into the grate, and the winter wind came mournfully over the hills, and sighed round the walls of the house; there was no other sound; downstairs everyone seemed to have gone to bed. He would read one more chapter and turn in himself. Good sleep would chase the phantoms effectually. But the new chapter began with wearisome description, and his thoughts wandered again⁠—theodolite⁠—black cat⁠—Hubert⁠—the woman’s face.⁠ ⁠… His eyes were travelling heavily through a big paragraph, when a faint sound made itself audible in the room behind him, and he turned with a quick start to look over the back of his chair. The candle threw his head and shoulders, greatly magnified, upon wall and ceiling; but the room was empty; nothing seemed to stir. Yet, the moment he looked down again upon his book the sound was repeated. Instantly he was in the whirl of a genuine nervous flurry, confused a little, and thinking of a dozen things at once. Perhaps the friendly black cat had followed him up and was hiding in the room; he would get up and search. But before he could actually leave his chair a slight movement close beside him caught the corner of his eye. The brass knob of the door-handle at his left was turning, That was where the sounds came from. There was someone at the door. Beach caught his breath with a rush. His first instinct was to dash forward and turn the key; his second, to seize the poker; yet he found no strength to do either the one or the other, He glued his eyes to the knob, watching It slowly turn, It stopped for a moment, and then the door pushed gently open, and he saw the figure of Mrs. Garfit, partially concealed by a black shawl over the head, and wearing the very expression that he had seen reflected in the mirror downstairs a few hours before. She was staring intently into the empty room behind him. Encircled by both arms, and grasped by her great muscular hands, she carried a kind of loose bundle, which she held pressed closely into her body. The woman, thus drawn in patches of black and white, standing erect in the doorway with darkness at her back, and that face of set evil dominating the picture, presented an appearance so appalling that at once the fear in the surveyor’s heart passed into terror, pure and simple, and he found himself unable to utter a sound or make the smallest movement. Without taking the slightest notice of him, she tiptoed softly forward into the room, and Beach then became aware for the first time that she was not alone. A man crouched behind her in the darkness of the landing, holding a lantern beneath the folds of a cloak. He was kneeling: and his face, with red hair and beard, and half-opened mouth showing the teeth, was just distinguishable in the faint glimmer of the shrouded light. Looking neither to the right hand nor to the left, the woman passed almost soundlessly beside him, brushing the arm of the chair with her black gown, and making obviously for the end of the room. And when Beach, fearing that any moment she might face about and come towards himself, turned his head by a supreme effort and saw that she was already at the far end beside the bed, he made at the same time the further startling discovery⁠—a cold sweat bursting through his skin⁠—that the bed was occupied. For one second he saw on the pillow the face of a young girl, sleeping peacefully, with masses of light hair about her, and then the black outline of that terrible woman bent double over her, and the loose bundle she carried in her hands descended full upon the pillow with her great weight above it, and remained there motionless, like a tiger upon its prey, for the space of what seemed to him many minutes. There was no struggle and no sound; nothing but a little convulsive movement beneath the bedclothes lower down; and then the surveyor, still powerless to move or cry in the grip of a real terror, was aware that the man had left his post of observation in the passage and was already half way across the floor. He, too, went past him, as though unaware of his presence, but the woman, hearing the stealthy approach, straightened herself up beside the bed and turned to meet him. The lantern carried by the man, who was short and humpbacked shed a faint upward light upon her features, and the slow smile it revealed coming into being on her fixed white face was so ghastly that it gave Beach that little extra twist of terror needed to release the frozen will, and make speech and movement possible. With a loud cry he leaped out of his chair and dashed forward upon the fiendish couple still standing beside the bed of murder⁠—and woke with a violent start in his arm-chair before an extinguished fire in a room that was pitch dark and miserably cold.

Whew! A nightmares after all! But the chill in his blood was due to more, he could swear, than a cold room and a blackened grate. With trembling fingers he lit the second candle and saw to his immense relief that the room was untenanted, the bed smooth and empty. The other candle had long ago guttered out, and his watch showed him that he had slept three hours. It was one o’clock in the morning. He examined the bed, that awful bed where he had seen a young girl smothered in her sleep, and the horror of the nightmare remained so vividly with him that he gave up trying to persuade himself that it had been nothing more than a dream, and that two evil persons, and a third, had not vacated the room. One thing was certain he could never sleep in such a bed. He would slip across to the other room, The dread of perhaps meeting the woman in the passage gave him pause for a moment, but after all it was a lesser terror, and he softly opened the door and crept, candle in hand, over the cold boards to the other side of the landing. He stood and listened for a moment⁠—the house was utterly still⁠—and then quietly turned the knob. But the door was locked. He was obliged to return to his own room, where he passed the remainder of a troubled night in what sleep he could snatch upon an arm chair and two others. The late daylight, cold and grey, brought no such balm to his imagination as the bright sunshine of a spring morning might have done, and the horror of his dream possessed him so painfully that he realised he could not spend another night in that room unless⁠—yes, that was a splendid idea⁠—unless he could get his brother Hubert down for the weekend to share it with him. Hubert’s cold logic would work wonders. Ah, and another thought! It would be interesting to see if he felt anything odd about the house or room, He would say nothing about his own impressions or his own experience, and would see what Hubert felt. The idea possessed him at once, and he decided to telegraph the moment he had finished breakfast. Then, having arranged for another bed to be moved into the room, he took some bread and cheese with him and spent the entire day surveying on the hills until the darkness fell over the country and it was time to meet the train. And Hubert came; glad of the prospects of walks and talks with his brother, and seduced by the telegraphic descriptions of the “jolly old farmhouse” among the hills. He appeared delighted, too, with the Tudor building. “You ought to advertise, ma’am, and take in summer boarders,” he said briskly to Mrs. Garfit. “You better tell my ’usband that,” she replied with something like a sigh mixed up in her sullen volce. “He’ll be here tonight or tomorrow morning.” “Surly old cat,” said Hubert, when they were alone at bedtime in their room; “she’d have to wear a veil to keep her boarders. Her face is like some of those women in the Chamber of Horrors.” He laughed cheerfully, and plunged into the details of his week’s work⁠—he was a stockbroker⁠—and of family matters that were of interest between them, William avoided all reference to his own feelings and kept the talk purposely on the most matter-of-fact subjects possible. He had carefully manoeuvered that Hubert should occupy the large bed, but he could not repress a creeping sense of horror When the time for sleep came and he saw his brother snuggling down under the sheets and blankets, and putting his head upon that haunted pillow. All through the night, as long as the firelight lasted, he lay awake and watched to see if anything would happen, but, up to the late hour when he finally fell asleep, nothing did happen.

It must have been very early in the morning when he woke with a start and saw someone standing beside his bed in the darkness, and heard his name called softly. It was Hubert. “I say, Billy, is that cursed woman in the room, or what⁠—who is calling?” His brother jumped up and struck a light, Hubert’s face was blanched. This was the first thing he noticed. “What’s up?” he stammered, still dazed with sleep. “The door’s locked; there's no one here⁠—is there?” Hubert stood there shivering. Then he took the candle and walked round the room, poking into corners and cupboards and ever looking under the beds. He went back to his own bed again and pulled the sheets about savagely. “What did you hear?” asked William nervously. “I’m not sure I heard anything. Something woke me⁠—I couldn’t breathe properly⁠—felt suffocated⁠—and I thought I heard that woman calling to ‘hurry up.’ Been dreaming, I suppose⁠—” He hesitated a moment. William saw that he had only told half, and wanted to say something else that rather stuck in his gorge. “You’ll get your death of cold standing there,” he whispered. Hubert ceased fumbling at his own bed and crossed the floor; his face was white as chalk. “I say, old Billy, do you mind very much if I sleep with you? I think, perhaps, my sheets seem a bit damp,” he whispered at length, And when he had crawled into bed William felt that he was shaking all over, and for a long time before sleep again overtook them he kept giving little nervous starts of fear. He knew his brother too well to ask him just then what had really happened, but next morning, when the sunshine was in the room, he pressed him for an explanation, and Hubert admitted that he had never felt so frightened in his life; horrible dreams of being stifled had haunted his sleep, and, finally, someone had come stealthily up to the bed and tried to suffocate him by putting a blanket over his face. For a wonder, too, when he heard his brother's story, he neither argued nor scoffed, but merely remarked that it would be interesting to find out the history of the house and also to see if Mr. Garfit resembled the man with the lantern. And the first person they met on going down to a belated breakfast was the farmer himself coming in from a gig standing in the yard, He was humpbacked and very short. Moreover he had red hair and beard, and a trick of leaving his mouth open so that the teeth showed. The landlord of the Purbeck Arms, when suitably urged, furnished something of the required “history” of the house by stating that, some years before, Garfit’s step-daughter had been found suffocated in her bed, and that the couple of them, man and wife, had only escaped the gallows because the circumstantial evidence was weak. “It was long before I came to these parts,” he said, “but you’ll find the whole story in the newspapers of that date.” “I remember the Garfit case when I was a boy, now you mention it,” the surveyor said. “You see,” interrupted the man significantly, “the girl had money of her own from her mother. The Garfits, of course got that.” The Sunday trains were very bad, but they were preferable, the brothers thought, to another night in such a house. “And such damp sheets too!” explained Hubert with a shudder, “There are more things in heaven and earth, Hubert,” began his brother gravely. “You felt the presence of the dead, and I, being more psychic, was impressed by the vivid thoughts of the living⁠—the haunted living⁠—” “Ah!” said Hubert, looking straight ahead, “We must have a chat about it some day. By the way,” he added, “have you got tuppence for the porter, Billy?” But a thorough search of the newspaper files at the club when they got back to London corroborated all that the Innkeeper had told them of the Garfit murder. The surveyor, moreover, prepared a careful report of the case for the Psychical Research Society, and, when it was published, sent a copy to his brother with various annotations down the margins in red ink.