Winsome Winnie and other New Nonsense Novels
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Stephen Leacock >> Winsome Winnie and other New Nonsense Novels
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"Almost," said Eggleston.
Two days later Eggleston reached the headquarters of General Hood, and
flung himself, rather than dismounted, from his jaded horse.
"Take me to the General!" he gasped.
They pointed to the log cabin in which General Hood was quartered.
Eggleston flung himself, rather than stepped, through the door.
Hood looked up from the table.
"Who was that flung himself in?" he asked.
Randolph reached out his hand. "Despatches!" he gasped. "Food, whisky!"
"Poor lad," said the General, "you are exhausted. When did you last have
food?"
"Yesterday morning," gasped Eggleston.
"You're lucky," said Hood bitterly. "And when did you last have a
drink?"
"Two weeks ago," answered Randolph.
"Great Heaven!" said Hood, starting up. "Is it possible? Here, quick,
drink it!"
He reached out a bottle of whisky. Randolph drained it to the last drop.
"Now, General," he said, "I am at your service."
Meanwhile Hood had cast his eye over the despatches.
"Major Randolph," he said, "you have seen General Bragg?"
"I have."
"And Generals Johnston and Smith?"
"Yes."
"You have been through Mississippi and Tennessee and seen all the
battles there?"
"I have," said Randolph.
"Then," said Hood, "there is nothing left except to send you at once to
the army in Virginia under General Lee. Remount your horse at once and
ride to Gettysburg. Lose no time."
CHAPTER IV
It was at Gettysburg in Pennsylvania that Randolph found General Lee.
The famous field is too well known to need description. The armies of
the North and the South lay in and around the peaceful village of
Gettysburg. About it the yellow cornfields basked in the summer sun. The
voices of the teachers and the laughter of merry children rose in the
harvest-fields. But already the shadow of war was falling over the
landscape. As soon as the armies arrived, the shrewder of the farmers
suspected that there would be trouble.
General Lee was seated gravely on his horse, looking gravely over the
ground before him.
"Major Randolph," said the Confederate chieftain gravely, "you are just
in time. We are about to go into action. I need your advice."
Randolph bowed. "Ask me anything you like," he said.
"Do you like the way I have the army placed?" asked Lee.
Our hero directed a searching look over the field. "Frankly, I don't,"
he said.
"What's the matter with it?" questioned Lee eagerly. "I felt there was
something wrong myself. What is it?"
"Your left," said Randolph, "is too far advanced. It sticks out."
"By Heaven!" said Lee, turning to General Longstreet, "the boy is right!
Is there anything else?"
"Yes," said Randolph, "your right is crooked. It is all sideways."
"It is. It is!" said Lee, striking his forehead. "I never noticed it.
I'll have it straightened at once. Major Randolph, if the Confederate
cause is saved, you, and you alone, have saved it."
"One thing more," said Randolph. "Is your artillery loaded?"
"Major Randolph," said Lee, speaking very gravely, "you have saved us
again. I never thought of it."
At this moment a bullet sang past Eggleston's ear. He smiled.
"The battle has begun," he murmured. Another bullet buzzed past his
other ear. He laughed softly to himself. A shell burst close to his
feet. He broke into uncontrolled laughter. This kind of thing always
amused him. Then, turning grave in a moment, "Put General Lee under
cover," he said to those about him, "spread something over him."
In a few moments the battle was raging in all directions. The
Confederate Army was nominally controlled by General Lee, but in reality
by our hero. Eggleston was everywhere. Horses were shot under him. Mules
were shot around him and behind him. Shells exploded all over him; but
with undaunted courage he continued to wave his sword in all directions,
riding wherever the fight was hottest.
The battle raged for three days.
On the third day of the conflict, Randolph, his coat shot to rags, his
hat pierced, his trousers practically useless, still stood at Lee's
side, urging and encouraging him.
Mounted on his charger, he flew to and fro in all parts of the field,
moving the artillery, leading the cavalry, animating and directing the
infantry. In fact, he was the whole battle.
But his efforts were in vain.
He turned sadly to General Lee. "It is bootless," he said.
"What is?" asked Lee.
"The army," said Randolph. "We must withdraw it."
"Major Randolph," said the Confederate chief, "I yield to your superior
knowledge. We must retreat."
A few hours later the Confederate forces, checked but not beaten, were
retiring southward towards Virginia.
Eggleston, his head sunk in thought, rode in the rear.
As he thus slowly neared a farmhouse, a woman--a girl--flew from it
towards him with outstretched arms.
"Eggleston!" she cried.
Randolph flung himself from his horse. "Leonora!" he gasped. "You here!
In all this danger! How comes it? What brings you here?"
"We live here," she said. "This is Pa's house. This is our farm.
Gettysburg is our home. Oh, Egg, it has been dreadful, the noise of the
battle! We couldn't sleep for it. Pa's all upset about it. But come in.
Do come in. Dinner's nearly ready."
Eggleston gazed a moment at the retreating army. Duty and affection
struggled in his heart.
"I will," he said.
CHAPTER V
CONCLUSION
The strife is done. The conflict has ceased. The wounds are healed.
North and South are one. East and West are even less. The Civil War is
over. Lee is dead. Grant is buried in New York. The Union Pacific runs
from Omaha to San Francisco. There is total prohibition in the United
States. The output of dressed beef last year broke all records.
And Eggleston Lee Carey Randolph survives, hale and hearty, bright and
cheery, free and easy--and so forth. There is grey hair upon his temples
(some, not much), and his step has lost something of its elasticity (not
a great deal), and his form is somewhat bowed (though not really
crooked).
But he still lives there in the farmstead at Gettysburg, and Leonora,
now, like himself, an old woman, is still at his side.
You may see him any day. In fact, he is the old man who shows you over
the battlefield for fifty cents and explains how he himself fought and
won the great battle.
VIII
BUGGAM GRANGE
A GOOD OLD GHOST STORY
_VIII.--Buggam Grange: A Good Old Ghost Story._
The evening was already falling as the vehicle in which I was contained
entered upon the long and gloomy avenue that leads to Buggam Grange.
A resounding shriek echoed through the wood as I entered the avenue. I
paid no attention to it at the moment, judging it to be merely one of
those resounding shrieks which one might expect to hear in such a place
at such a time. As my drive continued, however I found myself wondering
in spite of myself why such a shriek should have been uttered at the
very moment of my approach.
I am not by temperament in any degree a nervous man, and yet there was
much in my surroundings to justify a certain feeling of apprehension.
The Grange is situated in the loneliest part of England, the marsh
country of the fens to which civilization has still hardly penetrated.
The inhabitants, of whom there are only one and a half to the square
mile, live here and there among the fens and eke out a miserable
existence by frog-fishing and catching flies. They speak a dialect so
broken as to be practically unintelligible, while the perpetual rain
which falls upon them renders speech itself almost superfluous.
Here and there where the ground rises slightly above the level of the
fens there are dense woods tangled with parasitic creepers and filled
with owls. Bats fly from wood to wood. The air on the lower ground is
charged with the poisonous gases which exude from the marsh, while in
the woods it is heavy with the dank odours of deadly nightshade and
poison ivy.
It had been raining in the afternoon, and as I drove up the avenue the
mournful dripping of the rain from the dark trees accentuated the
cheerlessness of the gloom. The vehicle in which I rode was a fly on
three wheels, the fourth having apparently been broken and taken off,
causing the fly to sag on one side and drag on its axle over the muddy
ground, the fly thus moving only at a foot's pace in a way calculated to
enhance the dreariness of the occasion. The driver on the box in front
of me was so thickly muffled up as to be indistinguishable, while the
horse which drew us was so thickly coated with mist as to be practically
invisible. Seldom, I may say, have I had a drive of so mournful a
character.
The avenue presently opened out upon a lawn with overgrown shrubberies,
and in the half darkness I could see the outline of the Grange itself, a
rambling, dilapidated building. A dim light struggled through the
casement of a window in a tower room. Save for the melancholy cry of a
row of owls sitting on the roof, and croaking of the frogs in the moat
which ran around the grounds, the place was soundless. My driver halted
his horse at the hither side of the moat. I tried in vain to urge him,
by signs, to go further. I could see by the fellow's face that he was
in a paroxysm of fear, and indeed nothing but the extra sixpence which I
had added to his fare would have made him undertake the drive up the
avenue. I had no sooner alighted than he wheeled his cab about and made
off.
Laughing heartily at the fellow's trepidation (I have a way of laughing
heartily in the dark), I made my way to the door and pulled the
bell-handle. I could hear the muffled reverberations of the bell far
within the building. Then all was silent. I bent my ear to listen, but
could hear nothing except, perhaps, the sound of a low moaning as of a
person in pain or in great mental distress. Convinced, however, from
what my friend Sir Jeremy Buggam had told me, that the Grange was not
empty, I raised the ponderous knocker and beat with it loudly against
the door.
But perhaps at this point I may do well to explain to my readers (before
they are too frightened to listen to me) how I came to be beating on the
door of Buggam Grange at nightfall on a gloomy November evening.
A year before I had been sitting with Sir Jeremy Buggam, the present
baronet, on the verandah of his ranch in California.
"So you don't believe in the supernatural?" he was saying.
"Not in the slightest," I answered, lighting a cigar as I spoke. When I
want to speak very positively, I generally light a cigar as I speak.
"Well, at any rate, Digby," said Sir Jeremy, "Buggam Grange is haunted.
If you want to be assured of it go down there any time and spend the
night and you'll see for yourself."
"My dear fellow," I replied, "nothing will give me greater pleasure. I
shall be back in England in six weeks, and I shall be delighted to put
your ideas to the test. Now tell me," I added somewhat cynically, "is
there any particular season or day when your Grange is supposed to be
specially terrible?"
Sir Jeremy looked at me strangely. "Why do you ask that?" he said. "Have
you heard the story of the Grange?"
"Never heard of the place in my life," I answered cheerily. "Till you
mentioned it to-night, my dear fellow, I hadn't the remotest idea that
you still owned property in England."
"The Grange is shut up," said Sir Jeremy, "and has been for twenty
years. But I keep a man there--Horrod--he was butler in my father's time
and before. If you care to go, I'll write him that you're coming. And,
since you are taking your own fate in your hands, the fifteenth of
November is the day."
At that moment Lady Buggam and Clara and the other girls came trooping
out on the verandah, and the whole thing passed clean out of my mind.
Nor did I think of it again until I was back in London. Then, by one of
those strange coincidences or premonitions--call it what you will--it
suddenly occurred to me one morning that it was the fifteenth of
November. Whether Sir Jeremy had written to Horrod or not, I did not
know. But none the less nightfall found me, as I have described,
knocking at the door of Buggam Grange.
The sound of the knocker had scarcely ceased to echo when I heard the
shuffling of feet within, and the sound of chains and bolts being
withdrawn. The door opened. A man stood before me holding a lighted
candle which he shaded with his hand. His faded black clothes, once
apparently a butler's dress, his white hair and advanced age left me in
no doubt that he was Horrod of whom Sir Jeremy had spoken.
Without a word he motioned me to come in, and, still without speech, he
helped me to remove my wet outer garments, and then beckoned me into a
great room, evidently the dining-room of the Grange.
I am not in any degree a nervous man by temperament, as I think I
remarked before, and yet there was something in the vastness of the
wainscoted room, lighted only by a single candle, and in the silence of
the empty house, and still more in the appearance of my speechless
attendant, which gave me a feeling of distinct uneasiness. As Horrod
moved to and fro I took occasion to scrutinize his face more narrowly. I
have seldom seen features more calculated to inspire a nervous dread.
The pallor of his face and the whiteness of his hair (the man was at
least seventy), and still more the peculiar furtiveness of his eyes,
seemed to mark him as one who lived under a great terror. He moved with
a noiseless step and at times he turned his head to glance in the dark
corners of the room.
"Sir Jeremy told me," I said, speaking as loudly and as heartily as I
could, "that he would apprise you of my coming."
I was looking into his face as I spoke.
In answer Horrod laid his finger across his lips and I knew that he was
deaf and dumb. I am not nervous (I think I said that), but the
realization that my sole companion in the empty house was a deaf mute
struck a cold chill to my heart.
Horrod laid in front of me a cold meat pie, a cold goose, a cheese, and
a tall flagon of cider. But my appetite was gone. I ate the goose, but
found that after I had finished the pie I had but little zest for the
cheese, which I finished without enjoyment. The cider had a sour taste,
and after having permitted Horrod to refill the flagon twice I found
that it induced a sense of melancholy and decided to drink no more.
My meal finished, the butler picked up the candle and beckoned me to
follow him. We passed through the empty corridors of the house, a long
line of pictured Buggams looking upon us as we passed, their portraits
in the flickering light of the taper assuming a strange and life-like
appearance, as if leaning forward from their frames to gaze upon the
intruder.
Horrod led me upstairs and I realized that he was taking me to the tower
in the east wing, in which I had observed a light.
The rooms to which the butler conducted me consisted of a sitting-room
with an adjoining bedroom, both of them fitted with antique wainscoting
against which a faded tapestry fluttered. There was a candle burning on
the table in the sitting-room, but its insufficient light only rendered
the surroundings the more dismal. Horrod bent down in front of the
fireplace and endeavoured to light a fire there. But the wood was
evidently damp and the fire flickered feebly on the hearth.
The butler left me, and in the stillness of the house I could hear his
shuffling step echo down the corridor. It may have been fancy, but it
seemed to me that his departure was the signal for a low moan that came
from somewhere behind the wainscot. There was a narrow cupboard door at
one side of the room, and for the moment I wondered whether the moaning
came from within. I am not as a rule lacking in courage (I am sure my
reader will be decent enough to believe this), yet I found myself
entirely unwilling to open the cupboard door and look within. In place
of doing so I seated myself in a great chair in front of the feeble
fire. I must have been seated there for some time when I happened to
lift my eyes to the mantel above and saw, standing upon it, a letter
addressed to myself. I knew the handwriting at once to be that of Sir
Jeremy Buggam.
I opened it, and spreading it out within reach of the feeble
candlelight, I read as follows:
"My dear Digby,
"In our talk that you will remember, I had no time to finish
telling you about the mystery of Buggam Grange. I take for granted,
however, that you will go there and that Horrod will put you in the
tower rooms, which are the only ones that make any pretence of
being habitable. I have, therefore, sent him this letter to deliver
at the Grange itself.
"The story is this:
"On the night of the fifteenth of November, fifty years ago, my
grandfather was murdered in the room in which you are sitting, by
his cousin, Sir Duggam Buggam. He was stabbed from behind while
seated at the little table at which you are probably reading this
letter. The two had been playing cards at the table and my
grandfather's body was found lying in a litter of cards and gold
sovereigns on the floor. Sir Duggam Buggam, insensible from drink,
lay beside him, the fatal knife at his hand, his fingers smeared
with blood. My grandfather, though of the younger branch,
possessed a part of the estates which were to revert to Sir Duggam
on his death. Sir Duggam Buggam was tried at the Assizes and was
hanged. On the day of his execution he was permitted by the
authorities, out of respect for his rank, to wear a mask to the
scaffold. The clothes in which he was executed are hanging at full
length in the little cupboard to your right, and the mask is above
them. It is said that on every fifteenth of November at midnight
the cupboard door opens and Sir Duggam Buggam walks out into the
room. It has been found impossible to get servants to remain at the
Grange, and the place--except for the presence of Horrod--has been
unoccupied for a generation. At the time of the murder Horrod was a
young man of twenty-two, newly entered into the service of the
family. It was he who entered the room and discovered the crime. On
the day of the execution he was stricken with paralysis and has
never spoken since. From that time to this he has never consented
to leave the Grange, where he lives in isolation.
"Wishing you a pleasant night after your tiring journey,
"I remain,
"Very faithfully,
"Jeremy Buggam."
I leave my reader to imagine my state of mind when I completed the
perusal of the letter.
I have as little belief in the supernatural as anyone, yet I must
confess that there was something in the surroundings in which I now
found myself which rendered me at least uncomfortable. My reader may
smile if he will, but I assure him that it was with a very distinct
feeling of uneasiness that I at length managed to rise to my feet, and,
grasping my candle in my hand, to move backward into the bedroom. As I
backed into it something so like a moan seemed to proceed from the
closed cupboard that I accelerated my backward movement to a
considerable degree. I hastily blew out the candle, threw myself upon
the bed and drew the bedclothes over my head, keeping, however, one eye
and one ear still out and available.
How long I lay thus listening to every sound, I cannot tell. The
stillness had become absolute. From time to time I could dimly hear the
distant cry of an owl, and once far away in the building below a sound
as of some one dragging a chain along a floor. More than once I was
certain that I heard the sound of moaning behind the wainscot. Meantime
I realized that the hour must now be drawing close upon the fatal moment
of midnight. My watch I could not see in the darkness, but by reckoning
the time that must have elapsed I knew that midnight could not be far
away. Then presently my ear, alert to every sound, could just
distinguish far away across the fens the striking of a church bell, in
the clock tower of Buggam village church, no doubt, tolling the hour of
twelve.
On the last stroke of twelve, the cupboard door in the next room opened.
There is no need to ask me how I knew it. I couldn't, of course, see it,
but I could hear, or sense in some way, the sound of it. I could feel
my hair, all of it, rising upon my head. I was aware that there was a
_presence_ in the adjoining room, I will not say a person, a living
soul, but a _presence_. Anyone who has been in the next room to a
presence will know just how I felt. I could hear a sound as of some one
groping on the floor and the faint rattle as of coins.
My hair was now perpendicular. My reader can blame it or not, but it
was.
Then at this very moment from somewhere below in the building there came
the sound of a prolonged and piercing cry, a cry as of a soul passing in
agony. My reader may censure me or not, but right at this moment I
decided to beat it. Whether I should have remained to see what was
happening is a question that I will not discuss. My one idea was to get
out, and to get out quickly. The window of the tower room was some
twenty-five feet above the ground. I sprang out through the casement in
one leap and landed on the grass below. I jumped over the shrubbery in
one bound and cleared the moat in one jump. I went down the avenue in
about six strides and ran five miles along the road through the fens in
three minutes. This at least is an accurate transcription of my
sensations. It may have taken longer. I never stopped till I found
myself on the threshold of the _Buggam Arms_ in Little Buggam, beating
on the door for the landlord.
I returned to Buggam Grange on the next day in the bright sunlight of a
frosty November morning, in a seven-cylinder motor car with six local
constables and a physician. It makes all the difference. We carried
revolvers, spades, pickaxes, shotguns and an ouija board.
What we found cleared up for ever the mystery of the Grange. We
discovered Horrod the butler lying on the dining-room floor quite dead.
The physician said that he had died from heart failure. There was
evidence from the marks of his shoes in the dust that he had come in the
night to the tower room. On the table he had placed a paper which
contained a full confession of his having murdered Jeremy Buggam fifty
years before. The circumstances of the murder had rendered it easy for
him to fasten the crime upon Sir Duggam, already insensible from drink.
A few minutes with the ouija board enabled us to get a full
corroboration from Sir Duggam. He promised, moreover, now that his name
was cleared, to go away from the premises for ever.
My friend, the present Sir Jeremy, has rehabilitated Buggam Grange. The
place is rebuilt. The moat is drained. The whole house is lit with
electricity. There are beautiful motor drives in all directions in the
woods. He has had the bats shot and the owls stuffed. His daughter,
Clara Buggam, became my wife. She is looking over my shoulder as I
write. What more do you want?
THE END
* * * * *
BY THE SAME AUTHOR
LITERARY LAPSES
_Twelfth Edition. Crown 8vo. 5s. net_
_Spectator._--"This little book is a happy example of the way in
which the double life can be lived blamelessly and to the great
advantage of the community. The book fairly entitles Mr. Leacock to
be considered not only a humorist but a benefactor. The contents
should appeal to English readers with the double virtue that
attaches to work which is at once new and richly humorous."
_Globe._--"One specimen of Mr. Leacock's humour, 'Boarding-House
Geometry,' has long been treasured on this side."
_The Guardian._--"Much to be welcomed is Professor Stephen Leacock's
'Literary Lapses,'--this charming and humorous work. All the
sketches have a freshness and a new personal touch. Mr. Leacock is,
as the politicians say, 'a national asset,' and Mr. Leacock is a
Canadian to be proud of. One has the comfortable feeling as one
reads that one is in the company of a cultured person capable of
attractive varieties of foolishness."
_Pall Mall Gazette._--"The appearance of 'Literary Lapses' is
practically the English debut of a young Canadian writer who is
turning from medicine to literature with every success. Dr. Stephen
Leacock is at least the equal of many who are likely to be long
remembered for their short comic sketches and essays; he has
already shown that he has the high spirits of 'Max Adeler' and the
fine sense of quick fun. There are many sketches in 'Literary
Lapses' that are worthy of comparison with the best American
humour."
_Morning Post._--"The close connection between imagination, humour,
and the mathematical faculty has never been so delightfully
demonstrated."
_Outlook._--"Mr. John Lane must be credited with the desire of
associating the Bodley Head with the discovery of new humorists.
Mr. Leacock sets out to make people laugh. He succeeds and makes
them laugh at the right thing. He has a wide range of new subjects;
the world will gain in cheerfulness if Mr. Leacock continues to
produce so many excellent jests to the book as there are in the one
under notice."
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