WE GO MASQUERADING.

Otago Witness, Issue 4048, 13 October 1931, Page 73

WE GO MASQUERADING.

By

Edwin L. Arnold.

There were a dozen of us—the chauffeur made thirteen. That was unlucky, and possibly the cause of the singular happenings which followed. The most fantastic dozen who ever set out to enjoy themselves—every one of us was in picturesque costume. A devil, a pirate, a King Henry VIII with 1 rotundity, partly natural, partly feather pillow; a friar, an outlaw in Lincoln green, and a headsman with mask and axe slung at his back. As for the women who crowded into the car waiting at the door of the old Border Manor House that foggy evening to take us to a fancy dress ball in a town ten miles away, they were equally diverse. Queen Elizabeth, in starched ruffles, sat next to her unhappy sister, a Mary all black velvet and pearls; a very nice little hospital nurse in uniform sat by bulky Henry’s knee, a Watteau shepherdess squeezed in with the devil, who obligingly carried her crook and basket of roses on his lap, while a stern abbess and a patched and powdered beauty of the Georgian courts shared another corner.

“ It is much better to go like that ali ready to begin,” said our genial host as he stood bareheaded in the porch to sec us off, his breath like steam in the frosty fog, “ much better than dressing up in a hurry when you get there, in crowded rooms and no time to spare Now you will step right into the fun. And don’t lose your way. The fog looks as it was going to thicken.” It did indeed prove thick, thicker even than the head of our town-bred chauffeur, a stranger to the neighbourhood. Still, it was only ten miles; we should be there in no time. We laughed as we waved adieu to our entertainer, and started with a jerk which nearly upset the abbess and made the hospital nurse throw both her arms round King Henry’s neck.

Now that the cheerful front door with its lights was closed upon us, it was much darker outside than we had ex pected. The fog was a pall through which little showed. We had not crept fifty yards up the carriage drive when the car pulled up just in time, with its lights gleaming on an artificial lake, into which we should have plunged in another second. Back to the drive, the shock of regaining it over, the lawn edge mixing us badly and throwing Queen Mary into the headsman’s lap. He took care of her for the rest of the evening, waiting for the moment, as Elizabeth said grimly “ when that nice white neck of hers comes under his chopper.” Narrowly missing collision with the carriage entrance, ®we were just able to make out the main road between its spectral trees and half-seen hedges all powdered with snow. “ Looks like a house there.” said the pirate, smudging his sleeve over the frosted window glass. “ Yes,” replied the outlaw, who had been at the Hall longer than any of us, “ that’s the manse; nice old gabled Elizabethan mansion; looks right down our drive; owner a friend of our host’s; not a bad sort of chap for a bachelor padre.” Then we jolted out into the open country, a region of moorland and sheep farms, almost uninhabited, and now, as far as we were concerned, a void, blank and soundless in the impenetrable gloom which soon closed in so completely that our world was limited to the few yards of macadam under the glare of the car lamps.

If it had not been for all that whisky the chauffeur had taken to himself before we started we should have turned back, and this story would never have been written. But full of Dutch courage he vowed he knew the way, so we put our trust in him and groped along. Down mysterious dips we slipped and up unseen rises, getting in a bit of pace where the road looked level, dropping a wheel into a ditch now and then, and backing out cheerfully. We got into an old quarry once, and into a field of turnips through a wide open gate under the impression that it was a continuation of the highway. It got colder and colder after an hour or two of this sort of thing, and we, more and more hungry, for we had relied on supper at our destination; joke and laughter died aw-ay from amongst us. Eight, nine, ten o’clock came, net only no ballroom, not even the town in sight. We knew we had not been making record time, but we ought to have got somewhere by then. “ Fog, fog, everywhere, and not a living soul anywhere ” groaned the monk in the recesses of his cowl. Near 11 o’clock,” said King Hal, still later on, glancing at his wrist watch, “ they will just be going down to supper, and I could eat a church hassock.”

Another spell of bumping along an unseen road, and we came to a sudden stop while the chauffeur knocked on the frosted glass and pointed excitedly to his right. There, through the yellow haze was shining a very small beam of light, set in a shadow that to our eager eyes took the form of a way side cottage. We gave a shout of joy that would have been startling in honest daylight, but in that murk midnight was ghostly enough. “ Get down, you outlaw, you are nearest the door, and run and ask them in heaven’s name where we are? ” shouted the king. It was an unwise choice. The outlaw had on a three-cornered cap with a broken red feather in it. He had plaster patches across his nose, a blood-stained leather doublet on his back, his legs in long sea boots, and a rusty cutlass by his side, as ruffianly looking a customer as ever shocked an honest countryman ig-

norant of fancy dress. Nevertheless, this ferocious personage tumbled out into the snow. We heard his feet crunch on the gravel pathway, his fist bang on the door. There was a pause—then the door opened a little, and the shaggy head of a Highland shepherd thrusting out, came nose to nose with the plastered .probosis of our ambassador. It was enough to startle anyone. For a moment more the yellow cottage light shone dimly through the reck, then the door w T as shut with a bang, and all was darkness. We heard the indignant pirate kick and thump on the portal with the handle of his ru=ty sword; there was a pause; a window opened cautiously on the upper floor; another pause; the pirate was just in the middle of saying something profane when a streak of lurid fire flashed from the window, the resounding crash of a gun in the silence of the ipght, and the snow beyond us smoked to heaven in a white haze, as a charge of No. 6 shot hurtled through the hedgerow foliage. The shot may have been intended more to scare the intruder than actually to slay him. Anyhow, our messenger did not wait for the second barrel. Back he came flying down the path, plunging snow, sword and all into the ear; the chauffeur, whose Dutch courage was beginning to ebb, stepped on the accelerator sending us all in a heap on the floor, and away we went into the darkness again. “ A mighty inhospitable country,” quoth the outlaw, as he disentangled himself from the friar’s legs. “ They will not even give a civil answer to benighted travellers,” and he sat up and rubbed a damaged knee. Away we went into the gloom; the chauffeur’s nerves had apparently quite given way by now. Up hill and down dale, flitting in a nightmare drcam between pale walls of fog whereon the lamp shine threw our shadows like dancing demons on either side, jumping strange things on the road, grazing milestones and gateways, escaping death by a dozen miracles until, cold when we were cold, hungry, dishevelled, jolted almost to pieces, the brake suddenly screeches, and pulled up with the bonnet of the catjammed into a grassy bank. “ What’s the matter ? ” we asked the man in front, and he answered that the bank was the matter; he could not see any more road.

So all got out and with lamps and electric torches, a shivering crowd of bedraggled revellers, we set to work to look for the highway. We were long past caring for any particular highway; we had giy«n up any hope of getting anywhere in particular, but we clung desperately to going on, leaving the rest to chance, and chance had not done with us yet. Round in a wide circle the lights wandered, dimly appearing and disappearing as though a lot of disembodied spirits were performing a Morris dance; then we heard the king and outlaw abusing each other across 20yds of frosty night; they had each found the road, while the devil, 50yds away in another direction, told them to shut ’up. as he had found it. So the company formed

itself into a shivering committee and examined the finds, with the result that they were pronounced all, more or less, good tracks with not a ha’penny to choose between them. We were at crossroads. Thereat, the shepherdess sat down on a stone and cried helplessly, and the king, looking at his watch again, observed, “Nearly twelve; they are just coming up from supper. Wish I was!” “ Why not have a dance here,” suggested the headsman. “ Nice open space, and we well die dancing as anv other way.” “Shut up!” said the" devil angrily, his india-rubber tail trailing in the snow.

But it was no good quarrelling. The ways branched off, as far as we could make out, to the four points of the compass; none was better than another, so we decided to toss for it, and the chauffeur, now very sulky, was the only man who had a penny in his pocket. The choice falling on the devil’s thoroughfare, we w-ere once more off, feeling our way slowly between half seen hedges or stone walls in an unknown wilderness of hopeless night. “ How far have w’e come?” asked the friar. It was impossible to .say, but the general impression was about 40 miles.

“Forty miles! Good gracious!” said the questioner, “ and it was only ten miles from where we started to the ball! We must have gone through the town without seeing it.” “Or more probably round it,” suggested the headsman. “ I fancy we are making for the Welsh coast exactly in the wrong direction for home.” “ Something in the stone walls we have seen,” the outlaw gloomily observed, “ reminds me more of Leicestershire. We must have crossed a couple of counties, forty or fifty miles from our beds at least,” and he relapsed into melancholy silence. “ What a picturesque incident it will be,” he added, after a few moments’ silence, “ when they find a car full of dead revellers in fancy dress on some lonely fell, all frozen solid; no food, no petrol, nothing to show who they were or how’ they died.” “Please don’t,” said the court lady, (i you give me the creeps. Surely we must get somewhere sooner or later.” “ I don’t see why we should,” growled the king. “We have not got anywhere yet, and there is no sign of getting anywhere.” This was so incontestable that the company relapsed into stony silence once more as we bumped and jolted at a walking pace through formless space. But the king was wrong. We were all beginning to sink into a state of drowsy unconsciousness, dying of frost-bite and starvation, as his majesty suggested from his corner, when the chauffeur tapped excitedly on the glass again and stopped with a jerk that threw the abbess into the devil’s arms and woke the rest of us. The man was pointing into the gloom on the left and there, when we had rubbed a space on the frozen windows, close to the road, showed the form of an old-world house, roof-ridge, chimney piles, gables all shadow’y but complete and, best of all, at the road level a thin beam of radiance from a front door just ajar.

No shipwrecked mariners seeing a light j>n shore could have been more delighted than we were. We tumbled out into the snow, and would have rushed to the light at once but for the restraining wisdom of the king. “No mistakes this time —we will get help here if we have to fight for it, but we will send a peaceful messenger to begin with—no, not you, you broken-nosed gallows bird,” he said as the pirate pressed forward. “ You spoiled the other chance. Your ugly face would scare a saint out of his wits. Queen Mary, you are a woman and the most amiable looking of us, take the priest and thff headsman, knock gently at the door and ask of whoever comes where we are and if we can have shelter until the morning. If they won’t shelter us by favour, by thunder, we will shelter by force; I am dying of cold and starvation.”

So on tip-toe, the queerest looking gang that ever stole to a respectable domicile at midnight, we kicked a way up the path and crowded into the porch of what loojced like an ancient and considerable dwelling place. The door from which the light had come was open,- and as we could not find a bell Queen Mary, followed by the two men, pushed it gently and entered. Within was a very comfortable square hall, rush mats on the floor, antlers on the walls, a lit oil lamp hanging from the ceiling. Mary, all in tight-fitting black velvet, pearls in her cap and about her neck, a silver rosary at her waist, very pale and cold, floated stately into this place, fog wreaths embracing her knees, her two companions behind, and there hesitated. It was all very weird. No sound came for a moment, but apparently her footsteps had been heard, for while we held our breath a kitchen door somewhere far in the rear opened, a smell of mashed potatoes and fried bacon caught our nostrils, the patter of feet in a dark passage and a shock-headed servant maid of about 20, in down-at-heel slippers, her cap strings flying, and a grin of welcome for a returning employer on her simple country face, rushed to her fate. She ran right into that ghostly midnight group under the lamp shine and became rigid on the spot. She glared at them, speechlessly for a moment, as well she might. She looked from one to the other of those spectral forms standing knee deep in fog, uncomprehending for a space, then abject horror seemed to seize her as an idea flashed into her stupid mind. All the colour went from her face, her hair bristled under her mob-cap, she put hands over eyes, —gave a piercing scream which echoed through the empty house and down she went on her knees, swaying to and fro in a frenzy of alarm. “My dear girl,” said the queen, gently laying a hand on her shoulder; “don't be frightened. We won’t hurt you. We only wanted to ask ” But the young woman swept the hand from her shoulder, and, trembling like

an aspen, locked fingers together, and with staring eyes and shivering body, screamed again; then, unlocking her fingers, pointed hysterically to a large framed engraving hanging on the wall only a few feet away. It was a popular print; you may see copies of it any day in the city shops. It represented Queen Mary in black velvet and pearls standing on the scaffold, the headsman at her side, a priest behind her, the exact reproduction of the group in the lamp light, faithful in every detail. It was so singularly accurate and suggestive that even we turning our eyes where the girl pointed, started and felt a cold shiver run down our backs. As for the girl, she saw ghosts. A horrible story she knew by heart had suddenly taken material form before her rustic eyes; she could not bear it. She leapt to her feet and with one wild despairing cry fled back into the passages. “ Our embassies do not prosper,” said stately Mary, turning to the king and wiping her nose with a small cambric handkerchief. “ After her! ” shouted the king. “ Stop her at any cost, she is our only chance.” There were two silver candlesticks on the hall table; these we lit hurriedly, and with them and electric torches in hand, started in pursuit. “ Elsie. Elsie, come back! ” yelled the devil; it doubtless was not her name, but it did as well as anything else. “ Conic back, Elsie,” she. implored, and as he started for the staircase someone trod on his tail so that it came away entire from its moorings, and its owner had to carry it round in his hand for the Test of the time. “ Elsie! Elsie! ” echoed far and near through that darksome mansion. Lights bobbed here and there, and appeared at unexpected corners. We stumbled upstairs and downstairs. The shepherdess ran into the arms of the gloomy monk as he came out of a linen cupboard and screaming nearly set herself on fire. We chased a .glimmer of light down a corridor only to run the pirate to earth, cutlass in hand, in a remote attic. The devil stood at the head of the kitchen stairs and called “Elsie! ” as though he were paid to do it, and we found the headsman’s legs sticking out from under a bed in the best guest room, whither he had crept, he said, “ Because he heard something rustle.” “Elsie! Elsie! ” we called as we ran, stumbling over mats, losing ourselves in unknown labyrinths coming out unexpectedly in places we had hunted before, colliding with each other in doorways, tripping over chairs, hut never a sight of the truant maid could we get. “ After all,” said the demon, as wo all met again in the hall, blowing out his candle and laying his tail iii the

visitor’s card tray on a table, “ What do we want with Elsie? She gone—we have found nothing.” —. “ Oh, but X I have,” said the king, who had spread-eagled ■ himself against a closed door on the right of the hall. “ Ladies and gentlemen, providence has taken compassion on us at last—look! ” and he threw the door wide open. There within was the comfortable dining room of the house, oak panelled, big chairs and settees all about, a cheerful log lire in a wide hearth at the far end, a hanging lamp only waiting to be turned up, pendant from the ceiling, and under it, best of all, a long black oak table, a cloth at the end nearest the fire spread with a .single laid place, a mighty cold turkey from which nothing but a slice or two had been, taken, a great York ham, a vast cottage loaf, a big Cheshire cheese, decanters of port and whisky fruit on a china dish, gleaming glass and silver. We crowded down and glowered over these good things in the silent ad miring hunger of semi-starvation. “ This is all very well,” said the outlaw, who had once been in a solicitor’s office. “ but we have already committed burglary by entering a man’s house un-' bidden between sunset and sunrise; to help ourselves to his provisions is rank felony—six months hard at least. I do not see the ethics of the position.” “ All the ethics I want,” said the king, “is a carving knife and a fork. I don’t mind going to jail afterwards, but I am going to have supper first. Coma on; there are plenty of plates there on the sideboard, unless,” he added maliciously, “ you prefer to stand and see me eat.”

“Now by the splendour of my throne,” said the Virgin Queen, pulling off and throwing down jewelled gloves and tossing her red head in the lamplight, “ it shall never be said that Elizabeth stood, like a lackey at the tableside, while any’ mortal man was set to meat. You pillow-stuffed abomination, you shocking mockery of my sainted father, cut me some ham, and cut it thick.”

With such royal examples before us what could we do but acquiesce? Places were quickly laid, chairs drawn up, and we fell to ravenously. The ladies found a steaming kettle in the kitchen, where the chauffeur was already hard at work, and made a glorious brew of tea. The men emptied the whisky decanter into a bowl and prepared a punch that made the previous hours seem like a halfforgotten nightmare; the turkey disappeared. the ham shrunk. We ate and ate, all our sorrows were forgotten, a grateful silence fell upon us, an hour fled, morning began to come, we were dreaming happily over our empty plates, when there was the sound of a dogcart on the gravel drive outside, of a voice ordering a groom to take the horse to the stables, a step in the hall, the dining room door opened wide, and a good-look-ing man in clerical attire stood in the portal.

He stared round at us in speechless amazement, as well he might, and an awkward silence followed. It was the king who spoke first. He got up, and, going to the newcomer, said, “If you are the owner of this house, I have' to offer you for myself and my friends sincere apologies for the liberty we have taken. But we were lost travellers, hopelessly lost in the fog. We had been travelling all night, without an idea of where we were, when we saw a light from your door. We came only to ask guidance, hut the one maid in the house fled from us, and. cold and very hungry ” —here the king glanced guiltily at the few fragments of turkey on the’dish”— we stayed. For the intrusion we can but throw ourselves on your courtesy, and for the provisions we will make ample restitution.” The parson, who was a very good fellow, smiled and replied, “It has°not been a night to turn a tramp from one’s doorstep, much less such very* distinguished company, and distressed travellers may always claim hospitality Where Have you come from?”

“ We set out last night on a ten-niile drive and became hopelessly fogged. Not only could we not find the ball we were going to. but we could not even find the town where it was to be held. We must have travelled quite forty or fifty miles, and are now, I imagine, somewhere in the Midlands or on the Welsh coast.”, “In the Midlands,” gasped the parson. “Travelling fifty miles, all night! Where did you start from?” “Me left Muirfoot Hall at eight o'clock last night, and have been motoring up hill and down dale ever since.” “ Muirfooti Hall!” cried_J.be reverend gentleman, more astounded than ever. He mentally summarised the situation for a minute, then burst into au uncontrollable fit of laughter. “Muirfoot Hall, ‘fifty miles’! .Why, look here.” He went over to the window and threw the shutters open. Dawn was breaking grey and gold in the east, a morning breeze had blown the fog away, and there before our astonished eyes was the road, a well-known gateway, and not 100 yards off the Muirfoot Hall itself, shining wanly in the Bedrooms were being lit up above and below; they were laying breakfast behind the red glimmer of dining room curtains, for an early meet of hounds was to be held on the lawn that morning. We had travelled in a great circle all night, and unknowingly come back to the very place we had started from!

Loud and long laughed the delighted vicar, and while we gaped and stared, hardly able to believe our senses, -the dining room door opened timidly behind us, and there was “ Elsie,” her face smudged with tears and dust from the

coal-hole where she had spent the evening. The kindly Mary went over to the kitchenmaid, and, placing both hands on her shoulders, said, “My dear, I fear J frightened you very much.” “Lor’, yes, mum,” sobbed the girl, sniffing through her tears and wiping her eyes with an apron corner. “ I thought you was ghosts, mum (sniff) ; I thought you was going to have, your head cut off in the hall (sniff, sniff), and it would have made such a mess!”—Weekly Scotsman.