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CHINA MAIL CHRISTMAS SUPPLEMENT, 1930.
"HOCK OR SHERRY?"
By G. B. STERN AND GEOFFREY HOLDSWORTH.
25
IT was quite a pleasant house-party that the very soul of all butlers made concrete, of munkey you see on a barrel organ, shiver- Little Chantreys quite a pleasant party, quiet scornful countenance which are the dreds of little wrinkles round them. He was and quite an ordinary one. It was in the birthbright of all really good butlers. The rather like a monkey altogether a little neighbourhood of eleven o'clock in the even- Author would never have accepted this in-brown wizened creature, he must have been. ing, and a tearing wind howled round the vitation if he had known beforehand about house. They were all feeling rather flat and the butler. What he feared now was having out of tune-like the end of a gramophone to stay at Little Chantreys on and on, for record when the machine has been insuf- fever, in never-ending procrastination of the ficiently wound up. It was two days after fatal hour of leave-taking and tipping. The Christmas, and there was an atmosphere of butler spoilt his meals-he would start and litter about everything: like caps from tremble like a girl, and avert his eyes, when crackers, Christmas cards, and cold mince a caressing voice murmured in his ear:
"'Ock or sherry, sir?" pies.
I was a in the square hall of with just that roundness of form and that ing in the rain-awfully and eyes, with her
"Well, as I said, he was a bricklayer's labourer, and he was employed on this place from start to finish. When you heard those slow footsteps coming up a ladder, Miss Spencer, it must have been just as he did it, lots of times, carrying a hodful of brieks on his shoulder. It's not. half so easy as it looks, carrying a hod. And I expect he had to break up bricks with a trowel for the the chimneys--you bricklayers building heard the sound of a trowel, didn't you?"
Mr. and Mrs. Spencer were the host and
Just then Aunt Agatha spoke. She was hostess; he was a little_City_man, lately re- the aged "legacy aunt" to be found cherish tired, inclined to be plump, and with shrewded and cosseted in every family at Yule Tide Aunt Agatha was growing uneasy. She blue eyes, and grey hair that was going bald She was withered and angular; and eternally looked up at the window. Was that the in patches. Molly, his flapper daughter, sat she knitted, like one of the pleasant ladies monotonous clink of a trowel she heard on the floor, hands clasping her hunched-up who watched the guillotining of the best again? No, it couldn't be. A door banged knees; and Reggie, down from Cambridge blood of France during the Revolution. But somewhere, and she stifled a sharp exclama- for the Christmas vacation, sprawled at ease now she laid down her knitting, and said, tion. Mr. Spencer was wondering whether in a big armchair.
turning to her brother: "I believe this house is haunted, George."
Then there was Mr. Stanton, who lived down the valley in a hideous red house which looked as if it had been deliberately placed so as to spoil the view from Little Chantreys -which it did very effectively. No one quite knew how he got his living; he always seemed to have plenty of money, and was fond of driving powerful motor-cars, and of having noisy week-end parties; he was the sort of man of whom people said vaguely: "Oh, Stanton! Quite a good chap; sporting sort of cove, you know!"
Delia Carey, a pretty girl of about twenty, sat on a low stool, her flushed face lit by the leaping flames. There were two or three cousins of the Stantons, and, lastly, the Author. Everybody called him the Author, though his name was Jimmy Ferris. He was a poor and struggling author, and nobody quite knew what he wrote: Reggie asked him once, and he replied that he did hack work; and Reggie did not pursue the subject because he didn't quite know what "hack work" was-it sounded like riding broken-down horses in Rotten Row! As a matter of fact, the Author, in the more sor- rowful moments of the aforesaid hack work, had written the verses on most of the Christ- mas cards that lay everywhere about the room. But he did not own to this-he was afraid they might respect him too much.
The Author was a man of about thirty two-and decidedly ugly. He was very tall and gaunt, and moved rather stiffly, and his dark hair was going grey at the temples. His upper lip was much too long, and his mouth was rather large, but his eyes were brown and Puck-like-queer, half merry, half wistful eyes.
He stared into the fire without saying a word, a pipe--long cold-clenched in his teeth. He was thinking about the Spencer's butler. He was always thinking about the butler. He dreamt about him at night, till that portly form of majesty, grandeur, and serene aloofness, become an obsession.
For he would have to tip the butler when he left--and, as before mentioned, he was a poor and struggling author, and he couldn't possibly afford more than ten shillings. One could not very well reward that sort of butler with less than a guinea, for he was
he ought to stop the Author, and suggest a round game. He didn't want the old lady upset while she was in his house. There was that legacy to be thought of. But Molly and Reggie were listening intently; it would be a pity to spoil the fun for them. So he said nothing.
"My dear Agatha, what makes you think that?"
"Well, every night since I've been here there's been a queer noise that seemed to come from outside my room-a chipping,
"He watched it grow from its founda scraping noise; and sometimes a sound like a bricklayer knocking a brick in two with lions till they put the roof on, and the plas his trowel; and often it sounds like some- terers were in, nailing up the laths, and one coming slowly up a ladder. Perhaps a beating the hair for the plaster, and the workman was killed by a fall when this house carpenters were putting in the floor-boards. was built."
And he grew to love it fiercely, passionate- "I've not heard of anyone being killedly, so that he couldn't bear to be away from it. He used to come back in the evenings here."
when his work was done, and climb on to the highest scaffolding, and look all round him at the hills, with their rugged pines up The Author got up and knocked out his against the sky and the white road, rising and dipping, southwards. How he wished pipe into the fire; he sat down again, and that it was his, and that he was a gentle. seemed to be studying the faces round him. man, settled in the country, and not just Then he said, turning to Aunt. Agatha: "little Joey, the bricklayer's labourer, and expect you've been hearing little Joey, Miss Spencer. Haven't you heard the story?"
“Do you mean to say you've never been awakened by noises at night?"
"No, never.".
"No," she answered. "Do tell us!" came the chorus.
"Is it a ghost story? How topping!" This from Molly.
a
"I don't think I will somehow. It's not particularly pleasant story."
the butt of all the men! It was so different in his own home. He lived in an ugly four- roomed house of staring yellow brick, in the middle of a block. His wife was a great raw- boned, slatternly woman, always untidy, and always grumbling at their poverty, and be- cause her man didn't get on, and earn more money. And then there were the children- four of them, unhealthy brats, always dirty, and usually crying noisily. It was a dingy, comfortless home. Most men would have gone and drowned their troubles at the near est public-house, but Joey didn't, somehow, "Oh, never mind what it's like; we want He hadn't got the spirit to drink. But he hear about our ghost!" said Reggie, roused slipped away to his house whenever he could.
"Oh, come on, Ferris, be a good fellow It's a rotten dull evening: we want some thing to buck us up."
"Well, it's as you please; but I warn you it's rather a sordid tale."
to
from his studied air of ennui,
J
The Author refilled his pipe and lit it. It was the only pleasure in his life. and smoked reflectively for a while. Then and there was a big "To be Let or Sold' board "And at last the house was finished, he began.
"It was about thirty or forty years ago put up outside. Joey hoped fervently that that this house was built; a rotten architec- no one would take it. He wanted it always tural period, but the man who designed the to be empty, so that he could go there when- place was in front of his time, and really ever he pleased, and imagine it really belong- had an eye for beauty. And this fellow Joey ed to him. It was so restful, after his dreary was employed on the job as a bricklayer's noisy home-and so beautiful. For Joey had labourer. Little Joey, they always called the soul of an artist; he realised that this him. He was a thin wisp of a man, with a was no ordinary house-just a structure of straggling untidy moustache, and rather sad bricks and mortar, with a roof, doors, and brown eyes, like an Irish terrier's. No, I'm windows. There was something magic and wrong; they weren't a dog's eyes; they were fairy about the place. He loved every nook
(Continued on Pago 27.) like a wistful monkey's--you know, the sort