Speaker 1: A strange Christmas game by missus J. H. Riddle, When,
through the death of a distant relative I John Lester
succeeded to the Martindale estate, there could not have been
found in the length and breadth of England a happier
pair than myself and my only sister Claire. We were
not such utter hypocrites as to affect sorrow for the
loss of our kinsman Paul Lester, a man we had
never seen, of whom we had heard but little, and
that little unfavorable, at whose hands we had never received
a single benefit, who was in short as great a
strange a to us as the then Prime Minister, the
Emperor of Russia, or any other human being utterly removed
from our extremely humble sphere of life. His loss was
very certainly our gain. His death represented to us not
a dreary parting from one long loved and highly hones,
but the accession of lands, houses, consideration wealth to myself,
John Lester, Esquire, Martindale, Bedfordshire, Willem Jack Lester, artist and
second floor lodger at thirty two Great Smith Street, Bloomsbury.
Not that Martindale was much of an estate, as county
properties go. The Lesters who had succeeded to that domain
from time to time during the course of a few
hundred years, could by no stretch of courtesy, have been
called prudent men in regard of their posterity. They were
indeed scarcely honest, for they parted with manners and farms,
with common rights and adversons, in a manner at once
so baronial and so unbusinesslike that Martingdale, at length in
the hands of Jeremy Leicester, the last resident owner, melted
to a mere little dot in the map of Bedfordshire.
Concerning this Jeremy Leicester, there was a mystery. No man
could say what had become of him. He was in
the oak parlor at Martindale one Christmas Eve, and before
the next morning he had disappeared, to reappear in the
flesh no more. Overnight one mister Worley, a great friend
and boon companion of Jeremy's, had sat playing cards with
him until after twelve o'clock chimed. Then he took leave
of his host and rode home under the moonlight. After that,
no person, as far as could be ascertained, ever saw
Jeremy Lester alive. His ways of life had not been
either the most regular or the most respectable, and it
was not until a new year had come in without
any tidings of his whereabouts reaching the house, that his
servants became seriously alarmed concerning his absence. Then inquiries were
set on foot concerning him, inquiries which grew more urgent
as weeks and months passed by without the slightest clue
being obtained as to his whereabouts. Rewards were offered, advertisements inserted,
but still Jeremy made no sign, and so in course
of time the heir at law, Paul Leicester, took possession
of the house and went down to spend the summer
months at Martingdale with his rich wife and her four
children by a first husband. Paul Leicester was a barrister,
an overworked barrister who every one supposed would be glad
enough to leave the bar and settle at Martingdale, where
his wife's money and the fortune he had accumulated could
not have failed to give him a good standing even
among the neighboring county families. And perhaps it was with
some such intention that he went down into Bedfordshire. If
this were so, however, he speedily changed his mind, for
with the January snows, he returned to London, let off
the land surrounding the house, shut up the hall, put
in a caretaker, and never troubled himself further about his
ancestral seat. Time went on, and people began and to
say the house was haunted, that Paul Lester had seen something,
and so forth, all which stories were duly repeated for
our benefit. When forty one years after the disappearance of
Jeremy Lester, Claire and I went down to inspect our inheritance,
I say our, because Claire had stuck bravely to me
in poverty, grinding poverty and prosperity was not going to
part us now. What was mine was hers, and that
she knew God bless her without my needing to tell her. So.
The transition from rigid economy to comparative wealth was in
our case the more delightful also because we had not,
in the least degree anticipated it. We never expected Paul
Leicester's shoes to come to us, and accordingly it was
not upon our consciences that we had ever in our
dreariest moods, wished him dead. Had he made a will,
no doubt we never should have gone to Martindale, and
I consequently never written this story. But luckily for us,
he died intestate, and the Bedfordshire property came to me
as for his fortune, he had spent it in traveling
and in giving great entertainments at his grand house in
Portman Square. Concerning his effects, Missus Lester and I came
to a very amicable arrangement, and she did me the
honor of inviting me to call upon her occasionally, and
as I heard, spoke of me as a very worthy
and presentable young man for my station, which, of course,
coming from so good an authority, was gratifying. Moreover, she
asked me if I intended residing at Martindale, and, on
my replying in the affirmative, hoped I should like it.
It struck me at the time that there was a
certain significance in her tone. And when I went down
to Martingdale and heard the absurd stories that were afloat
concerning the house being haunted, I felt confident that if
Missus Lester had hoped much, she feared more. Said mister
Jeremy walked at Martindale, he had been seen. It was
averred by poachers, by gamekeepers, by children who had come
to use the park as a near cut to school,
by lovers who kept their tryst under the elms and beeches.
As for the caretaker and his wife, the third in
residence since Jeremy Lester's disappearance, the man gravely shook his
head when questioned, while the woman stated that wild horses
were even wealth untold should not draw her into the
red bedroom, nor into the Oak parlor after dark. I
have heard my mother tell sir it was her as
followed old missus Reynolds, the first caretaker. How there were
things went on in those self same rooms as might
make any Christian's hair stand on end, such stamping and
swearing and knocking about of furniture, And then tramp tramp
up the great staircase and along the corridor, and sow
into the red bedroom, and then bang and tramp tramp again,
They do say, sir, mister Paul Lester met him once,
and from that time the Oak parlor has never been opened.
I never was inside it myself. Upon hearing which fact,
the first thing I did was to proceed to the
Oak parlor, open the shutters, and let the August sun
stream in upon the haunted chamber. It was an old fashioned,
plainly furnished apartment, with a large table in the center,
a smaller in a recess by the fireplace, chairs ranged
against the walls, and a dusty, moth eaten carpet on
the floor. There were dogs on the hearth, broken and rusty.
There was a brass fender tarnished and battered, a picture
of some sea fight over the mantelpiece, while another work
of art about equal in merit hung between the windows.
All together an utterly prosaic and yet not uncheerful apartment
from out of which the ghosts flitted as soon as
daylight was let into it, and which I proposed as
soon as I felt my feet to redecorate, refurnish, and
convert into a pleasant morning room. I was still under thirty,
but I had learned prudence in that very good school Necessity,
and it was not my intention to spend much money
until I ascertained for certain what were the actual revenues
derivable from the land still belonging to the Martindale estates
and the charges upon them. In fact, I wanted to
know what I was worth before committing myself to any
great extravagance, and the place had for so long a
time been neglected that I experienced some difficulty in arriving
at the state of my real income. But in the meanwhile,
Claire and I found great enjoyment in exploring every nook
and corner of our domain, in turning over the contents
of old chests and cupboards, in examining the faces of
our ancestors looking down on us from the walls, in
walking through the neglected gardens full of weeds, overgrown with
shrubs and bird weed, where the boxes wood was eighteen
inches high, and the shoots of the rose trees yards long.
I have put the place in order. Since then there
is no grass on the paths, there are no trailing
brambles over the ground. The hedges have been cut and trimmed,
and the trees pruned and the boxwood clipped. But I
often say nowadays that spite of all my improvements, or
rather in consequence of them, Martindale does not look one
half so pretty as it did in its pristine state
of uncivilized picturesqueness. Although I determined not to commence repairing
and decorating the house till better informed concerning the rental
of Martindale. Still, the state of my finances were so
far satisfactory that Claire and I had decided on going
abroad and take our long talked of holiday before the
fine weather was passed. We could not tell what a
year might bring forth. As Claire sagely remarked, it was
wise to take our pleasure while we could, and accordingly,
before the end of August arrived we were wandering about
the continent, loitering at Rouen, visiting the galleries in Paris,
and talking of extending our one month of enjoyment to three.
What decided me on this course was the circumstance of
our becoming acquainted with an English family who intended wintering
in Rome. We met accidentally, but discovering we were near
neighbors in England, in fact that mister Cronson's property lay
close beside Martindale. The slight acquaintance soon ripened into intimacy,
and ere long we were traveling in company. From the
first Claire did not much like this arrangement. There was
a little girl in England she wanted me to marry,
and mister Cronson had a daughter who certainly was both
handsome and attractive. The little girl had not despised John
Lester artist, while Miss Cronson indisputably set her cap at
John Lester of Martindale and would have turned away her
pretty face from a poor man's admiring gaze. All this
I can see plainly enough now, But I was blind
then and should have proposed for Mary Bell, that was
her name, before the winter was over. Had news not
suddenly arrived of the illness of missus Cronson, in a moment,
the program was changed. Our pleasant days of foreign travel
were at an end. The Cronsons packed up and departed,
while Claire and I returned more slowly to England, a
little out of humor, it must be confessed with each other.
It was the middle of November when we arrived at
Martindale and found the place anything but romantic or pleasant.
The walks were wet and sodden, the trees were leafless.
There were no flowers save a few late pink roses
blooming in the garden. It had been a wet season
and the place looked miserable. Claire would not ask Alice
down to keep her company in the winter months, as
she had intended, and for myself the Cronsons were still
absent in Norfolk, where they meant to spend Christmas with
old missus Cronson, now recovered altogether, Martingdale seemed dreary enough,
and the ghosts stories we had laughed at while sunshine
flood of the rooms became less unreal when we had
nothing but blazing fires and wax candles to dispel the gloom.
They became more real also when servant after servant left
us to seek situations elsewhere, when noises grew frequent in
the house, when we ourselves, Claire and I, with our
own ears, heard the tramp tramp, the banging, and the
clattering which had been described to us. My dear reader,
you doubtless are utterly free from superstitious fancies. You pooh
pooh the existence of ghosts, and only wish you could
find a haunted house in which to spend a night,
which is all very brave and praiseworthy. But wait till
you are left in a dreary, desolate, old country mansion,
filled with the most unaccountable sounds, without a servant, with
no one save an old caretaker and his wife, who
living at the extremest end of the building, heard nothing
of the tramp, tramp, bang bang, going on at all
hours of the night. At first I imagined the noises
were produced by some evil disposed persons who wished, for
purposes of their own, to keep the house uninhabited. But
by degrees Claire and I came to the conclusion the
visitation must be supernatural, and Martindale, by consequence untenantable. Still
being practical people, and unlike our predecessors, not having money
to live where and how we liked, we decided to
watch and see whether we could trace any human influence
in the matter. If not, it was agreed we were
to pull down the right wing of the house and
the principal staircase for nights. And nights we sat up
till two or three o'clock in the morning, Claire engaged
in needlework, I reading with a revolver lying on the
table beside me. But nothing, neither sound nor appearance, rewarded
our vigil. This confirmed my first idea that the sounds
were not supernatural. But just to test the matter, I
determined on Christmas Eve, the anniversary of mister Jeremy Lester's disappearance,
to keep watch by myself in the red bed chamber.
Even to Claire, I never mentioned my intention. About ten.
Tired out with our previous vigils, we each retired to rest,
somewhat ostentatiously. Perhaps I noisily shut the door of my room,
and when I opened it half an hour afterwards, no
mouse could have pursued its way along the corridor with
greater silence and caution than myself. Quite in the dark,
I sat in the red room for over an hour.
I might as well have been in my grave, for
anything I could see in the apartment. But at the
end of that time, the moon rose and cast strange
lights across the floor and upon the wall of the
haunted chamber. Hitherto I had kept my watch opposite the window.
Now I changed my place to a corner near the door,
where I was shaded from observation by the heavy hangings
of the bed and an antique wardrobe. Still I sat on,
but still no sound broke the silence. I was weary
with many nights watching, and tired of my solitary vigil
I dropped at last into a slumber, from which I
was awakened by hearing the door softly opened. John, said
my sister, almost in a whisper, John, are you here, Yes, Claire,
I answered, but what are you doing up at this hour?
Come downstairs, she replied, They are in the oak parlor.
I did not need any explanation as to whom she meant,
but crept downstairs after her warned by an uplifted hand
of the necessity for silence and caution by the door.
By the open door of the oak parlor, she paused,
and we both looked in. There was the room we
left in darkness over night, with a bright wood fire
blazing on the hearth, candles on the chimney piece. The
small table pulled out from its accustomed corner, and two
men seated beside it, playing at cribbage. We could see
the face of the younger player. It was that of
a man of about five and twenty, of a man
who had lived hard and wickedly, who had wasted his
substance and his health, who had been while in the
flesh Jeremy Lester. It would be difficult for me to
say how I knew this, how in a moment I identified
the features of the player with those of the man
who had been missing for forty one years. Forty one
years that very night, he was dressed in the costume
of a by gone period. His hair was powdered, and
round his wrists there were ruffles of lace. He looked
like one who, having come from some great party, had
sat down after his return home, to play at cards
with an intimate friend. On his little finger there sparkled
a ring. In the front of his shirt, there gleamed
a valuable diamond. There were diamond buckles in his shoes,
and according to the fashion of his time, he wore
knee breeches and silk stockings, which showed off advantageously the
shape of a remarkably good leg and ankle. He sat
opposite to the door, but never once lifted his eyes
to it. His attention seemed concentrated on the cards. For
a time there was utter silence in the room, broken
only by the momentous counting of the game. In the doorway.
We stood holding our breath, terrified and yet fascinated by
the scene which was being acted before us. The ashes
dropped on the hearth softly, and like the snow. We
could hear the rustle of the cards as they were
dealt out and fell upon the table. We listened to
the count fifteen one, fifteen two, and so forth there
was no other words spoken till at length the player,
whose face we could not see, exclaimed, I win the
game is mine. Then his opponent took up the cards,
sorted them over negligently in his hand, put them close together,
and flung the whole pack in his guest's face, exclaiming, cheat, liar.
Take that there was a bustle and confusion, a flinging
over of chairs, and fierce gesticulation, and such a noise
of passionate voices mingling that we could not hear a
sentence which was uttered all at once. However, Jeremy Lester
strode out of the room in so great a hurry
that he almost touched us where we stood out of
the room, and tramp tramp up the staircase to the
red room, whence he descended in a few minutes with
a couple of rapiers under his arm. When he re
entered the room, he gave, as it seemed to us,
the other man his choice of the weapons, and then
he flung open the window, and, after ceremoniously giving place
for his opponent to pass out first, he walked forth
into the night air. Claire and eye following we went
through the garden and down a narrow, winding walk to
a smooth piece of turf, sheltered from the north by
a plantation of young fir trees. It was a bright
moonlight night by this time, and we could distinctly see
Jeremy Leicester measuring off the ground. When you say three,
he said at last to the man whose back was
still towards us. They had drawn lots for the ground,
and the lot had fallen against mister Lester. He stood thus,
with the moonbeams falling full upon him, and a handsomer
fellow I would never desire to behold one began the
other two, and before our kinsman had the slightest suspicion
of his design, he was upon him and his rapier
through Jeremy Lester's breast. At the sight of that cowardly treachery,
Claire screamed aloud. In a moment, the combatants had disappeared,
the moon was obscured behind a cloud, and we were
standing in the shadow of the fir plantation, shivering with
coal and terror. But we knew at last what had
become of the late owner of Martindale. That he had
fallen not in fair fight, but foully murdered by a
false friend. When late on Christmas morning I awoke, it
was to see a white world. To behold the ground
and trees and shrubs all laden and covered with snow.
There was snow everywhere, such snow as no person could
remember having fallen for forty one years. It was on
just such a Christmas as this that mister Cheremie disappeared,
remarked the old sexton to my sister, who had insisted
on dragging me through the snow to church, whereupon Claire
fainted away and was carried into the vestry, where I
made a full confession to the vicar of all we
had beheld the previous night. At first that worthy individual
rather inclined to treat the matter lightly, But when a
fortnight after the snow melted away and the fur plantation
came to be examined, he confessed that there might be
more things in heaven and Earth than his limited philosophy
had dreamed of. In a little clear space just within
the plantation, Jeremy Lester's body was found. We knew it
by the ring and the diamond buckles, and the sparkling
breastpin and mister Cronson, who in his capacity as magistrate,
came over to inspect these relics, was visibly perturbed at
my narrative. Pray, mister Lester, did you, in your dream
see the face of the gentleman your kinsman's opponent, No,
I answered, He sat and stood with his back to
us all the time. There is nothing more, of course,
to be done in the matter, observed mister Cronson. Nothing,
I replied, and there the affair would doubtless have terminated.
But that a few days afterwards, when we were dining
at Cronson Park, Claire all of a sudden dropped a
glass of water she was carrying to her lips, and exclaiming, look, John,
there he is, rose from her seat, and, with a
face as white as the tablecloth, pointed to a portrait
hanging on the wall. I saw him for an instant
when he turned his head towards the door as Jeremy
Lester left it. She explained, that is he Of what
followed after this identification, I have only the vaguest recollection.
Servants rushed hither and thither missus Cronson dropped off her
chair into hysterics. The young ladies gathered round their Mamma.
Mister Cronson, trembling like one in an au fit, attempted
some kind of an explanation while Claire kept praying to
be taken away, only to be taken away. I took
her away, not merely from Cronson Park, but from Martingdale.
Before we left the latter place, however, I had an
interview with mister Cronson, who said the portrait Claire had
identified was that of his wife's father, the last person
who saw Jeremy Lester alive. He is an old man
now finished, mister Cronson, a man of over eighty, who
has confessed everything to me. You won't bring further sorrow
and disgrace upon us by making this matter public. I
promised him I would keep silence. But the story gradually
oozed out and the Cronsons left the country. My sister
never returned to Martingdale. She married and is living in London.
Though I assure her there are no strange noises now
in my house, she will not visit Bedfordshire, where the
little girl she wanted me so long ago to think
of seriously is now my wife and the mother of
my children. End of a strange Christmas Game by Charlotte Riddell,