LAST NIGHT OF THE SEASON.

Mataura Ensign, Issue 856, 21 February 1901, Page 3

LAST NIGHT OF THE SEASON.

(Act, Rights Reserved.)

BY BUItPORD DELANNOY.

" The last night of the season "—so ran the little slips pasted across the theatre bills. And the last night itself was diawing to a close. The villain of the piece was in the " custody of the law." The gallery had howled itself hoarce at his final downfall. The hero had his arm around the heroine'.* waist, and was referring to the Black Clouds of the Past and the Bright future Ahoad, concluding with some touching remarks concerning tin- Policy of Honesty, True Love. Home Sweet Home, and the good Old Union Jack. The final cintain fell, the audience filtered out as the band played the anthem, and we—we, the players—went 8l'»wly and somewhat sadly to our reject ive dressing-rooms, for the curtain had fallen for the last time ; our little company was to be disbanded, our stock season had come to an end. Not as stock seasons, alas! too often do; for with us salaries bad been regular. The engagements had been made for a few weeks, but business continued so good that the season was prolonged. Tin-advent of extiemely warm weathei —which, in connection with a theatre, has closing powers as effectual as those of the I,ondoii County Council—was not warmly welcomed by us. Hob Daller and I dressed together. We had become friends—fnst friends. We shared the same lodgings, the same meals. We had joined the same company in the same stateof bardupishness, with just sufficient money, after paying our fares down, to satisfy the landlady's idea of deposits. Now, at the termination cf our season —for the first time, perhaps, in our theatrical careers —we had bank balances. No, not London and County Post Office Savings Bank. It occurred iu this way : we each had a desire to see " furrin parts.'' a desire we determined to gratify. We had mapped it all out, and estimated its cost, and out of our salaries we put in the bank five shillings each week. With these little nest eggs we should Jbe wealthy travellers, or as Bob remarked, '• bloated capitalists." It is astonishing what you can do when yo'i try ; how much ground you can cover, and how iar sixpence will cake you, when you know how to spend it. We used to arrange our holidays on the " Continong " aftei supper, with the aid of a map, and the (j.E.R. Continental time - table. We so thoroughly threshed the matter out, night aftei night, that every incident likely to occur on our journey was as vivid is if it had really happened ; we knew every station we should pass, each littlf inn we should sleep at as we footed it from village to village. Indeed, our knowledge of the map of that part of the Continent we proposed to traverse was greater than auy |K>rtion of the island of our birth—niiii'li as we had toured the latter.

Yes, our work was for the time over, }ui long-looked-for holiday was near at hand, and that night we sat after supper, smoking our pipes, and dreamily realising the proverbial three-fourths of the pleasures of life—its anticipation. It would bore you to detail the incidents of our journey lrom the local station to London, the bustle of the 8.50 from Liverpool Street, the express to Harwich, and the smart trip over. Yon have heard it all before, or perhaps done the journey yourself—everybody travels nowadays.

Our holiday was drawing to a close. We had footed it well, and been amply rei aid for our labour. We saw things, penetrated to little villages, and discovered ruins oi old castles, descriptions of which never appeared in guide books, and which to the ordinary tourist—wlmsc aim seems to be to cover as much ground as possible in a given space of lime—aie unknown.

ft was a quaint-looking inn we readied at the end of our day's journey, and as we sat down, tired after an unusually long walk, to the splendid little trout supper—a supper which a few hours before had been flashing through the water of the little stream which ran close by—our host told us its history. The place was in reality part of the ruins of an old castle, a portion of which l.ad been sufficiently pieserved to enable an cnlerprised builder to build up to it; the blending of the ancient and modern resuKing in the comfortable little inn in which we were seated, from the exterior of _whieh depended the sign of the " ['online d'Or."

" In the days," said oar host, " when the upper rooms here formed but a wing of the castle, they were occupied by the monk who officiated as chaplain and fuHier confessor to the family then occupying the place. This was in the time of the wars, when no sooner did one- reach man's estate than he pressed, or was pressed, to the front.

- The family here was on the losing ci.lc, and the time came when the old knight was left with but one child, a daughter, to whom all his wealth must go. The maiden, with that perversity lor which women are proveibial. had become attached to a minstrel who hung g!n>ut the place trilling of the old knight's prowess and his daughter's Kaaty. Perhaps it was this flatteryfur where is the woman who is net suscviitible to it ? which first brought them topether. " The love deepened, and it wanted lul the old knight's death to remove fwry haniiT to their union, for she had tin other kith or kin with the right to inti'i U-ie -llianks to the ware winch had blimh bed so many male members of her liitniiy.

'• The knight wa_ .ild. and if decency pn-veiitfil the subject of his death be-«-..ii.iij.' a topic of conversation, their fii! ur» happiness was counted on as beii'j: very near. There were two factors in tin- case, however, which the lovers 1 !■ I 'inittitl in their calculation. The I.!•:•.• iit had by deed.sealed and delivered v-iih all the ceremony and solemnity eh:; met eristic of the age, appointed the monk the gnaidian of his daughter, with the ilii-pciNil of her hand in marriage. •• The Mfond uoint was one which, |i,i I they known the character of the mini irfi'i was iiossessed of it, would have :ii- F : :irtd to them a gi eater barrier even li.au ihe parchment deex}. The monk

haa been father confessor to the pirl from her childhood. Her inmost thoughts were his—for after the fashion of the lime.her religion was of the heart, and she kept nothing from him. " She confessed her love for the minstrel, and the feelings which that love had inspired in her. It is possible to imagine what effect the recital had on the monk, anyway he became, in the laaguage of the story-books. ' devoured of an unholy passion for her.' " In course of time the old knight died, and was buried with his family—the only male member of it, probably, who had died a peaceful death —for these were the days of chivalry. " Then the blow fell—the guardianship one, not the other, for the monk was wise in his generation,and preferred to see one wound healed, before he risked inflicting another. A lawful union wub impossible. .The impossibility was Drobably more patent to the minstrel than to the maid, by reason of the poverty which a runaway match entails —for minstrels even in those days had an eye to the main chance.

" On the death of the knight, many of the old retainers were discharged, and the inhabited portion of the castle was that wherein we now sit. For reasons (which it does not behove us to inquire into too closely) the bedchamber assigned to the ward could be entered by a panel door, the secret of which was known only to the monk. This room was on the first floor. The monk's room was above it.

" It chanced on a certain night that the monk's slumber was a fitful one. Whether he was disturbed by dreams of the fairness and beauty of his ward I know not, anyway, as the moon rose he arose, opened his casement and leaned out. that the ccol night air might, as the poet says,' kiss his heated brow.'

" The sight which met his eyes was not calculated to have a cooling eflect on him. If he watched quietly f lie performance which was going on below it was because he was, as it were, transfixed by astonishment.

"At fir3t sight it appeared aB if a harmless and innocent game of catchball was progressing, for from below someone was throwing what appeared to be a ball up to another someone who was —yes, there was no doubt about itstanding in the open casement of the room beneath the monk's own chamber ! " At last the ball was caught, and it became apparent that a string was attached to it, and this was hauled up. It became equally apparent that semething heavier was attached to that. " What it was the moon made clear—a rope ladder ! As it was fastened in the room below, the rnocn made clear who intended to mount it-the minstiel!— an intention which was very quickly carried into etiect, the incident terminating (so far as the moon revealed) in his disappearance through the first floor window.

" It is as well, perhaps, to pass over the ghastly details of what ensued, and relate only what was discovered, when the repeated hammering at the door next morning failed to elicit any reply, and the lock was forced.

" Pinned to the bed—a long rapier which had been suspended over the mantel run through both their bodieswere the minstrel and the maid.

'• The girdle which had gone round the mcnk's loins waß fastened to a hook in the middle beam of the ceiling, and fiom the other end of it dangled the earthly remains of the monk himself. " His face was not fair to look upon. He had been a powerful man ; his body was a heavy one, the drop lie had given himself from the bed a long one, and as the noose he had placed his neck in was of the description known as a slip-knot, the tightening around his neck heightened the hideous effector the head itself, which hung on one side, the tongue lolling out, and the glassy eyeß apparently fixed on the blood-covered hands, for in his death agony he had wrung and clutched them with such force that the finger-nails of the one was buried in the tiesh of the other, from which death grasp there had dropped to the floor a little drop of blood.

" I can conceive nothing more ghastly than that sight must have been. The moon shining on the hanging form, gradually getting stiff with the stiffness of death, the protruding tongue, the fixed staring eyes, and no sound to break the horrible silence but the drip, drip, drip of the blood as it dropped from the bleeding hands—the hands of the man who had taken his revenge, and then his own life, to avoid the punishment which lie knew must inevitably follow if he lived.

" For months, yeais, the castle remained without a tenant, and gradually fell into a state of decay and ruin, the only solid part left being that portion which forms the main part of the building we are now in.

" My grandfather had saved a little money, and it occurred to him that an inn built here would be on the road of the ever-increasing stream of tourists who come here each year, and that if he could invent a ghost story in connection with it, lie would be on the high road to fortune, for there is nothing your modern tourist more dearly loves than ghostshe scoffs at them outwardly, and shivers iuwardly.

" He built the inn,and, as lie thought, invented the ghost story: but there was a basis of truth in the latter, which had a foundation as sure as the one on winch the inn itself stood.

" The Jame of the ghost spread, and the tourist stream was diverted a little from its coiinse, and came to the inn. The ghost stoiy was told in the room in which the hook was still visible. Home scofled when they heard it, some shivered a little ani. drew closer together ; but the scheme answered, the number of visitors increased, and my grandfather felt himself travelling fast on that road which had retirement for its goal.

" Unfortunately, my grandfather in dispensing the good Kliine wine, contracted a taste for it—a taste which attained such proportions that it became difficult to quench it. "On one occasion—an occasion which Illustrated the truth of the proverb that when the wine is in the wit is out—my grandfather accepted a wager that he wouM not pass a night in the monk's, or what was then known as the haunted, chamber.

" Under the impression that the story was of his own creation, and that consequently he had nothing to fear, be noisily entered the room, and passed the night therein. He left it silently enough —feet foremost. There was no mark on the body, no sign to tell how he came by his death, only an awful look as if of fright on his face and in his glassy, staring eyes.

'• Until this time, the story had been a pretty geneial one as to the ghost of ghosts being the monk, or one or both ol the lovers.but now it took a more clearly defined shape, and it waß rumoured that the monk in cowl and stole had appeared to my drunken grandfather, and as a punishment for )ub temerity, bad in some supernatural manner frightened him to death.

"' By right of succession my father took possession of the inn, and, yielding to persuasion and partly to satisfy my mother's timorous nature, the door of the haunted chamber was nailed up. "Youigas t was. 1 can call to mind the eflect my death had in our district, and the monk's room and the mouk't? ghost afloidecj a topic of qon-

versamurtor many a day. When.my hart behaviour l>ee:ime worse than usual a thieal to put 11 ie in the monk's loom effectually checked it, so great was my terror of it. " Business Tell oft—my mothersaidbecause of the ill favour in which the house was held by travellers since my grandfather's death, an opinion my father, who was a vuy cute man in some things, by no means shared. On the contrary the ghost story—in which, by the way. he had no faith, looking upon his father's death as a pure coincidence—had, he considered, much increased the value of the place in the eyes ofjthe tourist. " My father had his way. The nails which closed the door were drawn. The tourists were admitted again, the hook in the I earn was pointed out with the respect due to such evidence.and the crimson Btain beneath it had its old time effect. Some derided, some trembled, as befoie, but my father had been right in his surmise ; now that it'was a show place again, the business was going up by leaps and bounds.

" For years all went well, and then my father walked in the footsteps of his father, and the flavour of the good Rhine wine became too much for him : he succombed as his father before him had done.

" He was given to boasting in his cups that the finest ghost in the world had no terrors for him, and then, just us his father had done, in an evil moment he laid money on his fearlessness. The stakes were deposited, and despite my mother's entreaties, he staggered into the haunted chamber, and sure enough passed the night there. He left it as his father had done, and was buried in the same grave with him. The circumstances were precisely the same, no scar, no mark on the body, nothing but. the awful look of fear on the face which plainly indicated a death from fright.

" I had by this lime reached man's estate, and by the same right of succession acquired and am now owner of the inn."

'' And," said Daller, who had just finished his supper and interrupted for the first time," of course, you have the same unbelief in the ghost of the monk that your ancestors had, and are equally willing to pass a night in the same room, when the stakes are heavy enough to tempt you."

"On the contrary, - ' replied our host, " so great is my belief in the story, that if it were possible to heap up all the wealth in the world on that table, it would not tempt me, so confident am I that in the morning 1 should be found a dead man."

" I see, you limit your visits to the broad daylight. Suppose now," looking at me with a merry twinkle in his eyes, "suppose now I was to say that your story has so interested me that 1 intend to test it myself—to spend the night in the monk's room—what should you say to that ? "

" That I should never forgive myself for having told you the story if it has had the effect you, I hope jokingly, say it has."

" What do you say ? " said Bob, turning to me, " are you game to beard this ghostly monk in his den ?—to sleep with me in the haunted chamber, and get all 3orts of sensations and emotions which you can work out in the next play you write."

I shook my head. The landlord's tale had affected me nore than I cared to express. I was not altogether the mocker my friend was, and although I would not have admitted it to him—f should have been mercilessly eharled for it ever after —t should have, been better x>leased had the subject been changed. " What ? " said Ualler. " You don't jump at the idea! You, who aspire to dramatic authorship! Look at the chance it gives you of a departure from the beaten track of double-dyed villains and innocent village maidens. In the woids of the song, 'never let a chance go by.' Here you have a situation to your hand. Romantic sense. The inn on'tlie mountain pass. Airival of the travellers. The haunted chamber. The ber-lud-stained floor, and every dramatic luxury you can aspire to." I still shook my head. " Well, in your interest, I insist on it. Landlord, our minds are made up. Up we RO. You shall tuck us in our little beds, and when your chaiming little chambermaid—who. by the way, is perky and pretty enough to be a success, as a stage chambermaid - comes up with the matutinal allowance of hot water, she will find my friend here with a head full of situations for a new play, and me with a head full of aches at the thought of the ordeal 1 must go through in listening to his reading of them." When Daller made up his mind, lemonstrance was useless. The landloid at last assented to the arrangement, ai d ottered us the use of a couple of huge pistols he had hanging in his snuggeiy, but Daller would have nothing to do with them.

"No," he said; "I am quite convinced that [ run no more danger from a ghost at midnight than 1 doat noon, but I will have no weapons. If there is such a thing as a spectre—which I very much doubt—l call it tempting Providence to try to fight it." J was sorry to hear him say this. I should have felt safer if he had been armed. Personally. I was armed, although Bob had no idea of it. Travellers meet strange things when they haven't a gun, and since the commencement of our holiday I had carried a tiny revolver which, small as it was, held six lives in its mouth. I wouldn't hav» had Bob know of this for the world. He had an utter contempt for what he called nervousness. I couldn't help it. I was a bundle of nerves. Although I had never had occasion to use i». I felt safer, and slept the sounder (as we passed each night in a strange bedroom), from the fact that I had placed beneath my pillow the little pistol.

The monk's room was spacious, well ■ ventilated, well aired. Fresh linen was placed on the beds by the still unwilling landlord, and we prepared for sleep. Bob insisted on occupying the bed near the window, through which streamed the rays of the bright harvest moon, as it had done perhaps long.long ago. when —but there, J determined to dismiss all ideas of the long ago from my mind, or I should get no sleep. " You are a playwright, and it is only right you should have a reserved seat, and get a good view of the performance," said Bob, " Besides, if monkey intends paying us a visit to-night, in the shadow, you won't be seen, whilst 1, in the moonlight, shall doubtless attract his ghostsXiip's attention first, for ghosts have a proverbial love of the moon. I am doing this," he added more.soberly, " to try to cure your confounded nervousness. Jf you give way to it as vou do, your life won't be worth the living. You must know that this trumped-up story about the ghost has its origin either in a trick or a lie. as most ghost stories have, and I am inclined to think, when you wake in the morning, you'll be the first to admit that you feel all the better for having conquered your fears and passed the night here. He put the candle out as he spoke.and with a cheery ." Good night," wrapped himself in the bedclothes. His heavy breathing soon convinced me that thoughts of a Rhost were not likely to disturb his sleep. I lay awake for some little time, but nothing uncanny occurred, and I, too, gradually fell asleep, with my face towards that portion of the r<jojm. ig

wincn my iriena tay, everyrnmg u, n n direction being clearly defined in 11,<bright moonlight. llow long I Blept I know not; I was awakened by a deep, hollow 'groan. I was wide awake in a second, and. Ciod i shall I ever forget tli** Might which met mine ? Beneath the bedclo.—es [ could see the shape of my friend's body, as I had seen it when I closed my eyes to sleep. By its side towered the awful form of the spectral monk, his cowl drawn over his head, an arm uplifted, in the 'hand of which gleamed a knife. Before I could do or say anything, the arm descended, the knife was plunged into the form on the bed, and again came that horrible cry, I recognised Bob's voice, tin- moan of a. man in mortal agony. Great God ! the man was being murdered before my very eyes'. The aim was uplifted to strike again, but 1 was quick enough to prevent ita descent this time. My hand slipped beneath the. pillow, the wapon was pointed with unerring aim, I pulled the trigger, s«nd then the scream which followed, the clatter of the knife on the floor as it dropped from the nerveh-ss lingers, the swaying to and fro for'a moment, und then the dull heavy thud as the monk's body fell to the ground, convinced nit that I had effectually stopped its power of mischief.

" Oh, what have you done ! " It was Bob's voice, weak and faint, doubtless from the wounds inflicted with that horrible knife.

" Hone ! " i said, cheerily, for all my fears had vanished now that I knew the ghost was amenable to the reason of cold lead, " done, my boy ! Saved your life. Thank God, you are able to talk, met that I was not too lale," and I spiang out of bed and crossed the room.

" Where did you put, the matches ? " I said, for I wanted a light. I had nil the nervous man's horror of darkness, nnd the Thing I had shot lay there silhouetted on the floor in the light of the moon. " Come," I said, approaching the bed, '• pull yourself together, old fellow, and let's see where, you are hurt." deceiving no reply, 1 placed my hand on-and then all my nervous horror returned. I broke into a cold sweat, my hair seemed to stiffen, and I felt a tingling sensation as if all the blood in my body was trying to force its way through my skin, for my hand touched only the bolster and pillow, which I had taken to be my friend's body. The bed was empty ! I stood for a moment too frightened to scream, too frightened to move, ami then the monk on the floor groaned, There was something which seemed fumiliar in the sound. A horrible suspicion of tl'ie truth dawned on me. All fear left me. I turned the body over, and—yes, God help me ! 1 had rhot Bob Paller !

There he lay, his head enveloped in the hood of his waterproof—the cloak which had so many times piolccted him from foul weather, and which now, alas ! seemed likely to form his shioud.

I was on my knees in a moment witli liis head in my lap, and, as tlie tears streamed down my face, 1 besought him, for God's Bake, to speak, to let me know lie lived, that I wan not his murderer. My earnestness seemed to have the effect of bringing him from the brink of death. He slowly opened his eyes, and, still more slowly, his pallid face! was wreathed with a smile—the same pent If. affectionate smile he always had lor me. " It was my fault," he said, faintly, " den't grieve, old man. You always told me my practical jokes would have a bad ending. I wanted to show you the ghost's reality, and I had no idea you were armed. No," he continued, rending what 1 wanted to say in the aponit-ed entreaty of my eyes, " there is nothing to forgive, it was my own fault. All my own fault. Don't try to staunch it, laddie, it's hopeless; 1 am bleeding internal 1} "as well. No," reading the look in my face again, " there's no pain, only a feeling of numbness gradually extending all over, a feeling which tells me that in a few moments it will all be over, Put your arm round me closer—draw me up a bit —now my arm round your neeic —I haven't strength to do it myself. I want to die in your arms, old man. to let this—tell you that I am—going into the other world with no feeling for you but one of affection. There is one favour 1 want to ask of you. You know my little Hess, at school at Dulwieh—we walked over one Sunday together and saw her. 1 want you to see that the policy-money —1 am insured for £2oo—is spent all for her. All—for—her. To give her my watch and chain and ring, and—br«-ak it to her gently—old fellow—for she's a tender-heaited, loving little soul, break it to her—gently—that she'll nevei see flic dad she—loved so much -again. It's good to feel your arm round me, old man, and your face close to mine, but I'd like, God only knows how much, to ki.-s her good-bye—to feel her little lips piested to mine just for the last -la;-it time. The curtain's falling—now, old chap. They're —they're putting the Vghts out. Don't take it to heait like that. God bless you —we were good old pals for many a day, weren't we ? Good—old —" and then his lips were sihsnt -for ever.

i still held him close to me. The face still wore the same gentle lo;k, hut gradually the jaw dropped, the body stidened, and I Knew that ;ill hope was over, that Bob Daller was dead.

How long f knelt half douching or the floor I don't know. My body and mj brain both seemed numbed. I was awakened from the lethargy into which 1 had fallen by the crowing of acock, and raising my eyes I saw the approach of dawn clearly indicated in the eastern sky. I began to think in that nervous foolish manner of mine, what would happt-n when it was bright. 1 pictured how I should be airested for my friend's murder. The horror of the trial, and, last, my own death at the hands of the public executioner.

And then, half mad at the picture my frenzy had conjured up, I seized my clothes and dressed with feverish haste, arguing to myself that Bob knew my innocent intention and would not wish me to suffer for what f had done, and so I reconciled it to my conscience to conceal the body.

I cautiously opened the door, and looked down the long conidor which separated us from the other eeeapied rooms, and listened. Not a sound in the house, nothing but the twittering of birds in the trees outsit, preparing for the breaking day. I was far from being a strong man, but fear lent me strength, ami I liflul the dead man over my shoulderand steathily walking along the passage, reached the "head of the stairs. As I put my foot on the top one—creak ! —surely the noise must have disturbed the house, I paused, No. Then the next stepcreak again. I would stop this by getting close to the wall. 1 stretched out to feel it, when I grasped the dead man's limp and lifeless hand which was hanging over my shoulder. The touch did not frighten me, it seemed to give me courage—even as in his lifetime his strong manly grasp had given me hope when at times I had been despondent. To Be CoNttfUEP.