Randalls Round (21 page)

“I did meet Adela, you see,” I said, “and we’ve been having a lovely long talk. She’s been awfully kind – she says she’d like me to come again. I wonder if I really may?”

“I should be delighted if you would,” purred the old lady, with her polite, surface smile. I wondered with one part of my mind if she really could see into my mind and read my thoughts. “When can you manage it?”

“We go down on the twentieth of June,” I said. “Could I come straight to you then on the twentieth?”

I heard Adela give a terrified gasp, and her hand, tucked under my elbow, clutched my arm convulsively. The old lady’s blank, black glasses above her shallow smile made me shiver a little; I had the impression that, owing to their very emptiness, they read me and concealed their knowledge. But I kept a hold on myself, thanks to Adela’s trembling hand in my arm; I think there was not even a tremor in my voice as I made all the arrangements and polite speeches that one does make when one fixes up a visit.

We went back to Oxford that afternoon, and after that, I returned to Connemara for the rest of the vac. And, during those few weeks, I thought it all out. Finally I took my twin brother Conal into my secret. I knew he would know that I hadn’t panicked over nothing and that he would help me to pull through. We spent long afternoons in the glens with a wise man. My family chaffed me about my sudden interest in fairy lore. I left Conal to carry on our preparations and went back to Oxford for the Summer Term.

One’s first summer term generally seems to stand out in people’s memory. Mine is a blank. I could think of nothing but what was to come on the day after term ended on Midsummer Day. And I was not helped to forget it by Adela, who followed me round with mute, imploring, adoring eyes and half-begun, quavering sentences that she never completed. I nearly lost my patience with her more than once, and begged her not to destroy the little nerve I had left. After all it was my risk, not hers, and I’d seen – and, even worse, felt – quite enough to make it unnecessary and maddening to hear her constant appeals – “Oh, Honor, do take care – oh, don’t try it – you don’t understand…” I was determined to take every possible care, but I was equally determined to see the business through.

I don’t believe Adela and I exchanged a single word on our journey down to Bedfordshire on that twentieth of June. It was a steamy, breathless day – not a leaf stirring on the heavy trees, the streams crawling sluggishly between the fields where the very grass was motionless. I hoped for thunder vaguely; and with all my might I hoped and prayed that Conal had managed his part of the business. I had said nothing about him, or our plans, to Adela, because I now believed that, owing to her long subjection and terror, her mind was really open to her terrible guardian even when they were apart. But my mind was free, my own; I was strong and independent; so I made my plans – and kept them entirely to myself. All I had said to Adela was that she was to slip out of the house at midnight and remain away from it. I had learnt that all the servants left it each evening – I could guess why.

The house seemed asleep, in a heavy, enchanted torpor that was, as it were, embodied in the thick flowery patens and sickly, pungent scent of the elder trees about it. It was silent, motionless. In the airless heat I felt my hands and feet dead cold. It was sinister – evil. It had not been like that before, I thought stupidly; it was as if the heat drew out some evil emanation as it drew the scent from the elder blossoms. My feet seemed turned to lead, heavy, cold. I could hardly drag them along. I felt drugged, stupefied, by the scent that enveloped the house and by the heat that only seemed to touch the outside of me and left an icy core of fear within. I kept thinking, all that dreadful evening, “Five hours more – only four hours now…” as the time loitered by and midnight approached.

I don’t remember much of the evening except that I heard my own voice making conversation, and remember being vaguely surprised to hear how easy and ordinary it sounded. I remember wondering if I had developed a dual personality. My mind felt like my body – giving normal reactions on the surface, while deep down in the centre it was frozen by sheer unnameable terror. I still dream sometimes of that hot, airless evening, with the smell of the elders outside the windows, and the smooth flow of mechanical talk concealing hatred and horror under a mask as smooth and thin as silk.

The sky darkened slowly, and at ten, I made my excuses. I said I was tired – the weather made me headachey – might I go to bed? I smothered a yawn convincingly. The old lady was very solicitous, and, I thought, relieved. I was urged to go to bed at once – she would send me hot milk and a mild sleeping draught. I thanked her, accepted everything, and went to my room.

I wondered, as I undressed, whether I should take that sleeping draught. Suppose Conal failed… I felt so sick at the thought that I had to sit down – I was trembling too much to stand. I felt despairing now. The house had sucked away my courage and my hope. I knew, now, that I was doomed as those others had been doomed… We would fail – we must. What could we do against -
that?
I would be sacrificed as Adela’s brothers had been – as her children would be. Would I not be better drugged, only half aware of the final horror?

I stood hesitating, the draught in my hand. All my pluck was gone… I can’t describe the awful abyss of sheer terror that engulfed me. I heard myself whimpering a little, like a terrified dog, and felt my face twitching. I couldn’t,
couldn’t
do it – that terrible little enclosure, hedged by the secret shrubs – the fire – the stone bench – I couldn’t – I couldn’t…

Then the idea of Conal came into my mind. I mustn’t let him down. I had my part to play. If I were a heavy, unconscious lump I might fail him just when he needed me. That braced me at once. I could do it now. I knew how I would have looked and felt if I had yielded to the temptation and taken the drug – I had seen myself as clearly as if I had stood beside my own drugged body. I could do it, and I would. I should not fail… I undressed and lay down in the bed. Somewhere in the silent house a clock tolled half past ten. My agony had lasted only a few minutes, and – I had to wait till midnight. I can’t attempt to describe those crawling minutes – the alternation of determination and overwhelming terror, of the picture of the secret, evil enclosure, and of my brother. At last I heard the heavy, boding stroke – a quarter to twelve. My time had come. Any minute now…

A step in the passage – light, shuffling, furtive. I relaxed every muscle; I half buried my face in the pillow, breathing slowly and heavily, and rejoicing that I had thought of smearing the edges of my lips with the pungent drug she had given me. The door opened inch by inch. I wondered if she could hear my heart thumping in the dead silence.

Not a sound. Had she gone? If only I dared look! It was awful, wondering and waiting. Had she gone? Or was she there, beside me, watching me.. ? No sound. I had to keep relaxing my muscles; they stiffened as soon as I listened. And I had to go on breathing steadily, quietly…

I nearly screamed when I felt a cold, light touch on my neck. I was just able to turn it into a restless sign and the little movement of a heavy sleeper settling again to slumber.

“Take the head,” came a bodiless whisper. “We have only just time.”

Hands were slipped under my shoulders; other hands – tiny, cold, soft hands – took my feet. I could hardly bear that cold, soft ruthless touch. I knew whose hands they were…

They carried me downstairs. I think they were too heavily burdened – or perhaps too anxious – to notice how, twice, I forgot and found my muscles tense with loathing and terror. I lay, for most of that awful journey, limp and relaxed, breathing as if asleep, with my heart in my throat with terror.

We were out of doors. There was no stir of air, but it felt different, and the scent of the elders was heavier, more cloying than ever. On and on, through the rank grass that smelt of dew as they pressed it; over a path that gave a dull echo to their shuffling feet; through a gap in a hedge that smelt stuffily of evergreens…

They laid me on the stone bench. I could feel it, cold and rough, through my thin nightgown; and then – can hardly bear to remember it – I smelt thick, heavy smoke and heard the rasp of steel on stone…

I could not endure another instant. I leapt up and shrieked – shrieked the words I had learned – heard a crash…

I don’t remember anything more. All I know is that Conal had not failed me. He, outside that evil enclosure, had done his part as I had done mine within. It was over… An hour later the house was roaring in flame to the darkened sky, while lightning flickered overhead and Adela crouched weeping beside me…

I was ill after that, and went up late next term. Almost the first person I met was Maude Evans.

“Hullo!” she said. “Better?”

I said I was all right.

“Fancy you being so upset about a fire!” she said. “But there was a death in it, wasn’t there?” she added, as an extenuation.

“Yes,” I said.

“You were there when it broke out, weren’t you?” she went on.

“Oh yes. I was staying there. You’ve lost your fiver all right,” I said, hoping that would make her sheer off. But it didn’t. She had clearly forgotten the fiver, and was rather crestfallen, but looking for a loophole at once.

“Well, but did the Young kid ever confide anything to you?” she demanded. “That was part of it, you know.”

I shivered a little.

“Oh yes, she confided in me all right,” I said.

“Really intimate?”

“Oh yes – very. Too intimate to tell you, Maude.”

Maude scowled sulkily.

“Men?” she asked then.

Again I shivered.

“Well,” I said, “marriage came into it.”

Eleanor Scott followed the splendid literary tradition of the great Victorian women authors, notably Elizabeth Gaskell, Mary E. Braddon, Amelia B. Edwards, Charlotte Riddell and Margaret Oliphant, who all created some of the finest ghost stories ever written.

She was one of the best, but ultimately least known, writers in this genre during the 1920s. With the fleeting appearance of her only collection –
Randalls Round
– she was never as prolific as her great contemporaries, E. F. Benson, H. Russell Wakefield, A. M. Burrage, Marjorie Bowen, Margery Lawrence, L. P. Hartley, and the most important and admired of all – M. R. James.

His influence is clearly evident in several of Eleanor Scott’s stories. The Biblical and antiquarian research leading to the climactic emergence of the hideous slimy creature from a deep hole in the wall in ‘The Twelve Apostles’ can be seen as an ingenious pastiche of ‘The Treasure of Abbot Thomas’. Jamesian buffs will also spot similarities between MRJ’s Parkins and Maddox in
‘Celui-là’
(‘That One’), and the small Breton village of Kerouac is not unlike Burnstow in ‘Oh, Whistle, and I’ll Come to You, My Lad’ with its long unfrequented beach; but Scott always adds several new and disturbing touches, inspired by her own constant bad dreams.

‘Eleanor Scott’ was the pseudonym of Helen M. Leys, born on 11 July 1892 at the family home, Richmond Villa in Hampton Hill, Middlesex. Although her middle name was registered as ‘Madeline, she always used the alternative ‘Magdalen’ when signing official documents throughout her adult life. She had three brothers (and two elder step-brothers) and was particularly close to her only sister, Mary Dorothy Rose Leys, who later became a highly regarded historian.

Their father John Kirkwood Leys (1847-1909) was a former barrister who became a popular novelist, beginning with
The Lindsays: a romance of Scottish Life
(1888; 3 volumes), and then moving on to a long run of exciting thrillers including
The Lawyer’s Secret
(1897),
The Black Terror: a romance of Russia
(1899),
The House-Boat Mystery
(1905) and
The Missing Bridegroom
(1908). Both his daughters had active and lively imaginations, and it is known that Mary invented and provided several plots for these Edwardian thrillers, and it is quite likely that Helen (two years younger than Mary) also helped her father with plot-lines, especially for his last adventure story – written specifically for children -
By Creek and Jungle
(1909).

After the sudden death of John Kirkwood Leys, his widow Ellen was forced to follow his example by writing stories and novelettes which helped to keep ahead of the weekly bills. In a private unpublished memoir Helen’s brother Duncan Leys recalled that their remarkable and hard-working mother “almost unaided prepared my sisters for their university scholarship examinations. Neither of them ever went to school; she taught them Latin, French, English language and literature, elementary mathematics, geography, music, and, of course, earlier on, reading and writing… The sisters were clever and original, and both of them became scholars at Oxford colleges (Somerville and St. Hilda’s)”.

Both Mary and Helen developed a keen interest in history and geography, and Helen was especially devoted to the subject of women travellers and explorers (which eventually led to two books on these themes). In spite of winning an Oxford scholarship, Helen later joked (to her niece Susan) with undue modesty that “the only prize she ever won was for milking a cow”! This probably suggests that she worked as a landgirl on a farm during the First World War. Her elder brother Colin was killed in action on the Somme in 1916, while her youngest brother Alan was severely wounded but managed to survive.