mangaroo by naomi royde-smith, pp. 817-824.pdf

8/10/2019 Mangaroo by Naomi Royde-Smith, pp. 817-824.pdf

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R O Y D E - S M I T H : M A N G A R O O 817

the whole story. The parson listened, and put a question or two,and then asked:

" 'Ha ve you tried to open the lock since that n igh t?'"'I han't dared to touch it, ' says my father." 'T he n co me along and try. ' W he n the parson came to the

cottage here, he took the things oflf the hook and tried the lock.'Did he say Bayonne } T he wo rd has seven letters.'

" 'Not if you spell it with one "n" as he did,' says my father."The parson spelt it outB-A-Y-O-N-E. 'Whew ' says he, for

the lock had fallen open in his hand."He stood considering it a moment, and then he says, 'I tell

you what. I shouldn't blab this all round the parish, if I was you.You won't get no credit for truth-telling, and a miracle's wastedon a set of fools. But if you like, I'll shut down the lock againupon a holy word that no one but me shall know, and neither

drummer nor trumpeter, dead or alive, shall frighten the secretout of me.'" 'I wish to gracious you would, parson,' said my father."The parson chose the holy word there and then, and shut the

lock back upon it , and hung the drum and trumpet back intheir place. He is gone long since, taking the word with him.And till the lock is broken by force, nobody will ever separatethose twain."

Naomi RoydeSmith

MANGAROOFrom The Storyteller, 1026. Us ed by special perm ission of the

author.

"T1 don't know," said the Vicar, "if I've committed a crime,

though I rather think it is criminal to buy a corpse that's already

buried from a man who believes that it 's still alive in the kitchen.But I'm quite sure, that as an ecclesiastic, I've done something soirregular that I shall never be able to tell anyone about it. Anyone but you, that is," he added, putting the heel of one shoe onthe edge of Miss Dillington's low, broad fire-stool and the heelof the other on the toe of the lower shoe so as to warm thesoles of both feet to the greatest advantage.


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81 8 MYSTERY AND HORRO R

Miss Dillington laid aside the jumper she was knitting. It wasa very beautiful, very complicated jumper and she was using everso many small balls of bright coloured wool and one larger oneof the loveliest creamy fawn. She knew that the Vicar wouldrequire an undivided mind to attend to the confession he seemedwill ing to make.

"Well?" she said, as though murder were a fine art and soquite a usual matter for long, calm fireside talks at the end ofan afternoon.

"That's right," said the Vicar. "I'll tell you what I've doneand you shall tell me if I ought not to have done it."

"So I will," said Miss Dillington. "But if you think you oughtnot you wouldn't tell me about it at all. So we'll skip the excuses."

"This isn't one of the usual things. It 's the kind of thing that 'snever happened before and that will not even be useful as a prec

edent. Did you ever see Mangaroo?""O ld M rs. Dishart 's maca w? Yes. A nd hear him . Last time I

stayed with you there was a terrible fuss because he'd bitten themilk-man. Have you ki l led him?"

"Certainly not," said the Vicar. "I 've done something muchworse than that."

"You couldn 't do anything w orse because killing him wo uldn 'thave been a bad action." Miss Dillington, though a perfectdarling, was sometimes rather a prig.

"Mrs . Dishart died last week," said the Vicar. "She'd been illfor a long time but she wouldn't let Lockhart send in a nurse.Said she could manage quite well with Alice. I don't supposeyou ever saw Alice. She was a workhouse child. Mrs. Dishartgot her a couple of years ago, and never succeeded in makingher presentable. She wasn't exacdy a dwarf and she wasn'texactly an idiot, and she was very strong. She was the onlymaid who ever stayed more than three months with the oldlady, so Martha tells me. The ten years Mrs. Dishart has beenin the parish have about exhausted the local supply. The girlswere either restive under Mrs. Dishart 's strong Sabbatarianismand her Scotch economy, or else they were frightened of Man

garoo. Whatever it was, none of them would stay with her. Nonetill Alice came. I didn't know much about it . Mrs. Dishart wasnot one of my communicants. She belonged to some small andvery uppish sect and used at times to entertain its visiting ministers. She'd come to church on Sunday mornings but not onSaints' Days, or at Christmas or on Good Friday. I called on her


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R O V D E - S M I T H : M A N G A R O O 819

sometimes and she always improved the occasion by denouncingme for Popery. I think she meant choral celebration."

"I daresay all those candles upset her," said Miss Dillington,who loved the Vicar because he was her second cousin, and had

been uncle, aunt and best friend to her ever since, a lonely andterrified schoolgirl, she had found him waiting for her at Southam pton w hen she was sent home from Japan after her pa rents'death in an earthquake twenty years ago.

"They might have done if she'd ever seen them, but I've justtold you she wasn't a communicant."

"Perhaps Alice told her?""She may have done. But Mrs. Dishart scolded me about my

ways long before Alice came on the scene. She let Alice come tochurch as often as she wanted, I'm bound to confess," said theVicar, running a finger round his clerical collar and clearing histhroat slightly. "I admit, and I'm ashamed of it, that I got a litdeweary of seeing Alice at almost every service. She breathedthrough her mouth, and she wore her hat so very far back onher head, and she generally arrived late and stamped up the aislein a peculiar rocking and very noisy way. She was square inshape, with her legs and arms put on at the corners and sheliked a front seat, and she always dropped her prayer-book whenshe bobbed to the altar. Genuflexion was a physiological uprooting to Alice. I couldn't help wishing she wouldn't attempt it. Iused to think that all the beauty, the symbolism, the meaning of

the services must be lost on Alice; that she'd be far better suitedat the conventicle her mistress attended on week-nights in thesummer, at St. Albans. There was a Sunday service there, ofcourse, but that meant Sunday travelling, and Mrs. Dishart naturally neither travelled herself nor would she have permitted anyone to travel from her hou se on S unday s. So Alice kept oncoming to church. Being a work house child she'd been baptizedand confirmed, just as she'd been vaccinated. She was, now, oneof my cure of souls and I had to put up with her. I used totry and talk to her sometimes, but all I got out of her was a snort,a giggle and a dreadful twisting of her shoulders and rolling ofher eyes."

"I do hope, Harold," said Miss Dillington, "that you've notbeen murdering poor Alice."

"Who said anything about murder?" said the Vicar rathercrossly. "Let me get on with my tale, child, and stop chattering."

"You've not really begun it yet," said Miss Dillington. "I've


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820 MYSTERY AND HORROR

seen Alice come into church myself and heard about her devotion to Mrs, Dishart and that blue and yellow bird, from Martha.Martha told me that it had been brought home from what shecalls the 'troppings' by Mrs. Dishart's son who was killed at Jutland, and that it would come down from its perch and followAlice all over the house like a cator a dog."

"H ow horrible " said the Vicar."Oh, I don't know," said Miss Dillington. "I think it was

rather sweet. That poor Alice must have loved the creature. Shewas probably the only human being who didn't tease itwhowasn't frightened of it. And it must have been the most miraculous creature in her eyes. All that colour and strangeness . . . "

"You don't understand," said the Vicar, "Look here," he wenton, taking his feet down from the fire-stool and leaning forwardin his chair. "The night after the funeral Alice killed thatmacaw."

"B ut " gasped Miss Dillin gton ."Alice killed Mangaroowith her own hands, killed him in

the kitchen. W ru ng his neck. H e struggled most dreadfully, bitand clawed her hands and face and tore her apron. She'dwrapped him in her apron to do it. But she killed him all rightand buried him too."

"In the garden?" asked Miss Dillington." N o . That's the whole point. She was all alone in the house.

T ha t bru te of a neph ew took himself an d m ada m , his Wife, off

after the funeral, having given Alice a month's notice, and toldher she was to stop on until he could clear out the furniture,next week. They left her quite alone in the house. Alice said shewasn't frightenedshe'd got the macaw. And young Mrs,Dishart, may God forgive her, said she wouldn't have that forlong, as she intended to take it to a taxidermist next day andhave it killed and get its plumage made up into a hat. It seemsthat whole-bird toques are being worn in London this winter."

"I've seen some," said Miss Dillington. "Julia Debenham washere yesterday in one^but it was a quieter bird than Mangarooa pheasant I think. And I don't suppose it had ever been anindoor pet. What brutes some women are "

"Quite," said the Vicar, "And Mrs. Gerald Dishart is amongthem. I 'd forgive her for wanting to wear a blue and orangemacaw on her head, if she'd had any heart. But to leave thattired, simple childAlice is not nineteen yetalone in the housewhere her mistress had just died was devilishdevilish^


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"I agree," said Miss Dillington, "but I'm getting a little anxiousto know where you come in. Did you go down to comfort Aliceand find her killing the macaw so that the she-devil shouldn'thave i t to hat?"

"No , " said the Vicar, "I'm sorry to say that such a thing neveroccurred to m e. I'd burie d M rs. Dis hart, and I'd allowed h erown parson to read part of the service, and I didn't give Alice athought. I had to take a service over at Ainley that evening andthere was only just time to prepare for it and get there afterher funeral. I stayed to supper with Brayton and got back lateafter ten o'clock, and went to bed about eleven. I read for half anhour or so, and, towards m idnig ht, I got out of bed to drawthe curtains away from the window before putting out my lamp.Th ere w as a full mo on on Frida y, as you being a Londo ner wo n'tknow, and the sky was clearing under the wind, so that there

were alternations of light and shadow across that strip of roadbetween the elms, the bit I can see from my bed room. I like tosee it, when there is enough moonlight to show it, emptyresting after all the to and fro of the village. I've never, in all theten years I've been here, known anyone cross that bit of roadafter nightfall. The road leads to the churchyou know that,and then bends back again and runs in to Sharpies End, acrossthe bridge. There's a footway through the marsh that people takeas a short cut, anyway. I think most of the villagers would takesome persuasion to pass the churchyard wall after dark. Theroad's a new one as roads go. The last Squire had it made, fortyyears ago, to save the three miles round to Sharpies End, and itruns over the bit of ground in which they buried suicides and un-christened children in the brave old days.,Their spirits are saidto resent the infringement of their poor half-rights."

"I know," said Miss Dillington. "Martha has told me an awfultale of a ghost with a stake driven through it, and the soulsof little babies floating with blue lights over them at AilHallows."

"She daren't tell me that," said the Vicar."No , " said Miss Dillington, "naturally. Did you see a ghost on

the road?""I thought I saw what your friends at the Psychical Research

call a phantasm of the living," said the Vicar. "The shadow hadcleared off from the piece of road between the elms and what Isaw was hurrying across the brighmess. I should know thatrocking stagger, like the mast of a fishing smack in a choppy


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822 MYSTERY AND HORROR

sea, wherever I saw it, and she'd got her hat well on the backo her head."

"Alice?" breathed Miss Dillington."Even i she'd walked as light an d straight as you do, my dear,

I should have known her when she stumbled over her own feet(the road was clear enough) and dropped something she wascarrying."

"Running away with the macaw, poor thing.""So I thought, though I did not know about Mangaroo then.

I thought, God in His mercy forgive me, I thought she wasmaking off with booty. Taking spoons and things to some confederate,"

"My poor Harold ""I thought Alice was robbing the dead.""I 'm sure you'd never let her do that."

"Naturally. I put on a few clothes and spent some minuteslooking for my overcoat. W he n I got out on to the road she'ddisappeared. I ran on looking for her. There's a dark bit justpast the churchyard wall and I thought she might be aboutthere and that was why I couldn't see her. But when I got tothe bend of the road towards the bridgethere are no trees forhalf a mile after you come out of that copsethere was no onein sight. The moon was clear of cloud and the marsh lay likean empty saucer with the river glittering across it like a polishedspoon. Not a soul stirring. Owls of course^but nothing human.T he re are no cross roads or lanes un til the further side of th ebridge, and she couldn't have got so far in the time. I thoughtI'd just made a sleepy old fool of myself seen one of the ghosts,or just imagined or dreamed it . So I turn ed back, walk ing slowly,as I was out of breath after my pursuit of the criminal. As Icame out of the shade by the church gate I thought the delusion must have become auditory, because from the other sideof the wall, I could hear a fearful thwacking noise accompaniedby just such sniffs and snuffles as I'd come to associate withAlice's presence anywhere within earshot. I am," the Vicar pausedwith a wry smile, "I am obliged to admit that for a moment I

allowed myself to remember those hints which I had not allowedMartha to amplify but which you seem to have encouraged herto expand into narrat ive . . . "

"Harold , dear, you are not writing a letter to the Bishop, you'rejust confessing to me,"

"W ell I thoug ht it was a banshee or something of the ki nd .


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But I pulled myself together and went into the churchyard. Mrs.Dishart's grave is on the slope, in the new part as they call it,and it lay full in the moonlight. Alice was there all right, beatingdown the newly turned soil with a weapon of some kind. Itturned out to be the basting-spoona long, black, iron affair,strong too. She saw me. She couldn't have heard me walking onthe grass through the noise she was making. She took me forthe Devil. It was an unusual experience."

"D id she run aw ay?""No," said the Vicar, "she rose from her knees, sat on the

grave-mound, and waved the spoon round her head and shouted'Go away, Satan' several times."

"She must have been frightened out of her wits.""That is very kind of you, my dear, but she was nothing of the

kind. She had been frightened when she dropped Mangaroo'sbody on the road, in the place where she knew there were ghosts,but, once inside the churchyard, she knew she was on consecrated ground. You are pitying her for quite the wrong things.Alice is a truculent being with a sense of eternal values and analmost impenetrable earthly darkness of mind. She was buryingMangaroo, not to prevent his being made into a fashionable hat,as you imagine, but in order that he might accompany Mrs.Dishart to heaven. She was giving him Christian burial, youunderstan d, in consecrated grou nd, a nd with his mistress. She wasquite as ready to defy me about it when I had made my identity

clear to her, as she had been to drive Satan away from thegrave. It appears that she had consulted Martha in the morningas to the possibility of getting me to allow her to come to thefuneral with the bird, which she then had tho ugh t of bury ingalive in the grave, and that Martha had assured her I would notcountenance such heathen wickedness. When I explained thatthere was no reason why a dead bird should not lie in Mrs.Dishart's grave, she asked me to read the burial-serviceor topronounce the blessing Mangaroo had missed, so as to ensurehis safe passage to glory."

"And did you?" asked Miss Dillington, the tears runningdown her face.

The Vicar ignored the question."Alice had quite intended to appeal to Mrs. Dishart 's own

minister in the matter, but young Mrs. Dishart 's threat had madeher realise that she could not risk any delay. So she was outwitting us all . She must have misunderstood her mistress. When she


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was dying, Mrs. Dishart had said several times that it would notbe heaven if he were not there. I think she meant her son. Shedid, I know, have misgivings about the boy's salvation. He 'd beena little wUd. I tried the comfortable doctrine of purgatory oneday, I remember, and she routed me with great decision, announcing that her own Mr. Stephenson was inclined to hope that,as Jack had died in battle for his country, he was automaticallysaved. But neither of them could be sure."

"Oh dear," sobbed Miss Dillington, "I'm so glad I'm anatheist."

"Alice had a much less complicated outlook," said the Vicar."She knew Mrs. Dishart had gone to heaven, in spite of herNonconformity, but she was quite sure that the best route therewas the one through our own Church. She seemed to feel thatMangaroo might catch Mrs. Dishart up, and that my official

benediction would expedite the journey. 'I'd like the mistress tofind him there in the morning,' she said.""Oh, I do hope . . ." said Miss Dillington."Mrs. Dishart, it seems, has left Alice ^ 50. I daresay that an

noyed the nephew and his wife a little. To Alice it was an evidence of saintliness strong enough to counteract any blemishyDissent in her mistress's soul. 'After that,' she said, 'I was boundto let her have Mangaroo. He was such a pet.' I tok her back tothe vicarage and m ade her a shake-down on the study sofa so asnot to disturb M artha in the small hours, ond the next day I wentover to St. Albans and called on young D ishart. H e is cashier at abank there. I told him exacdy what I thought of him and hiswife for leaving Alice alone in the house to suit their own greedyconvenience, and before he'd time to recover from the shock Ioffered him ten shillings for the macaw. Said Martha'd taken afancy for it to decorate the vicarage kitchen."

"But did . . .""I didn't tell him the creature was dead and buried, of course.

He'd have brought an action against Alice for destroying hisproperty. He took the ten shillings and gave me a receipt for ittoo, and a month's wages for Alice."

"But did you read a prayer over Mangaroo?"Miss Dillington got it out at last."Haven't I been telling you all this time that that's a thing

I cannot tell anybody?" said the Vicar.


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Sahj (H. H. Munro)

SREDNI VASHTARFrom The Short Stories of Sa\i (H . K. Mu nro ), copyright, 1930,

by T h e Vik ing Press, Inc., N . Y.

Lvonradin was ten years old, and the doctor had pronounced hisprofessional opinion that the boy would not live another fiveyears. The doctor was silky and effete, and counted for little, buthis opinion was endorsed by Mrs. de Ropp, who counted fornearly everything. Mrs. de Ropp was Conradin's cousin andguardian, and in his eyes she represented those three-fifths of thworld that are necessary and disagreeable and real; the other two-fifths, in perpetual antagonism to the foregoing, were summed upin himself and his imagination. One of these days Conradin sup

posed he would succumb to the mastering pressure of wearisomenecessary thingssuch as illnesses and coddling restrictions anddrawnout dullness. Without his imagination, which was rampantunder the spur of loneliness, he would have succumbed long ago.

Mrs. de Ropp would never, in her honestest moments, haveconfessed to herself that she disliked Conradin, though she mighthave been dimly aware that thwarting him "for his good" wasa duty which she did not find particularly irksome. Conradinhated her with a desperate sincerity which he was perfectly ableto mask. Such few pleasures as he could contrive for himselfgained an added relish from the likelihood that they would bedispleasing to his guardian, and from the realm of his imagination she was locked outan unclean thing, which should find noentrance.

In the dull, cheerless garden, overlooked by so many windowsthat were ready to open with a message not to do this or that, ora reminder that medicines were due, he found little attraction.The few fruit-trees that it contained were set jealously apart fromhis plucking, as though they were rare specimens of their kindbloo min g in an arid wa ste; it wo uld probably have been difficultto find a market-gardener who would have offered ten shillings

for their entire yearly produce. In a forgotten corner, however,almost hidden behind a dismal shrubbery, was a disused tool-shedof respectable proportions, and within its walls Conradin founda haven, something that took on the varying aspects of a playroom and a cathedral. He had peopled it with a legion of familiarphantoms, evoked pardy from fragments of history and pardy

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mangaroo by naomi royde-smith, pp. 817-824.pdf

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