The Mammoth Book of Modern Ghost Stories

“I like that Baxter,” said M’Leod. “He’s a sharp man. The death wasn’t in the house, but he ran it pretty close, ain’t it?”

“And the joke of it is that he supposes I want to buy the place from you,” I said. “Are you selling?”

“Not for twice what I paid for it – now,” said M’Leod. “I’ll keep you in furs all your life, but not our Holmescroft.”

“No – never our Holmescroft,” said Miss M’Leod. “We’ll ask him here on Tuesday, mamma.” They squeezed each other’s hands.

“Now tell me,” said Mrs M’Leod – “that tall one I saw out of the scullery window – did she tell you she was always here in the spirit? I hate her. She made all this trouble. It was not her house after she had sold it. What do you think?”

“I suppose,” I answered, “she brooded over what she believed was her sister’s suicide night and day – she confessed she did – and her thoughts being concentrated on this place, they felt like a – like a burning glass.”

“Burning glass is good,” said M’Leod.

“I said it was like a light of blackness turned on us,” cried the girl, twiddling her ring. “That must have been when the tall one thought worst about her sister and the house.”

“Ah, the poor Aggie!” said Mrs M’Leod. “The poor Aggie, trying to tell every one it was not so! No wonder we felt Something wished to say Something. Thea, Max, do you remember that night –”

“We need not remember any more,” M’Leod interrupted. “It is not our trouble. They have told each other now.”

“Do you think, then,” said Miss M’Leod, “that those two, the living ones, were actually told something – upstairs – in your – in the room?”

“I can’t say. At any rate they were made happy, and they ate a big tea afterwards. As your father says, it is not our trouble any longer – thank God!”

“Amen!” said M’Leod. “Now, Thea, let us have some music after all these months. ‘With mirth, thou pretty bird,’ ain’t it? You ought to hear that.”

And in the half-lighted hall, Thea sang an old English song that I had never heard before.

With mirth, thou pretty bird, rejoice

Thy Maker’s praise enhanced;

Lift up thy shrill and pleasant voice,

Thy God is high advanced!

Thy food before He did provide,

And gives it in a fitting side,

Wherewith be thou sufficed!

Why shouldst thou now unpleasant be,

Thy wrath against God venting,

That He a little bird made thee,

Thy silly head tormenting,

Because He made thee not a man?

Oh, Peace! He hath well thought thereon,

Therewith be thou sufficed!

The Grove of Ashtaroth

John Buchan

Location:  Welgevonden, South Africa.

Time:  June, 1910.

Eyewitness Description:  “And then I honestly began to be afraid. I, a prosaic modern Christian gentleman, a half-believer in casual faiths, was in the presence of some hoary mystery of sin far older than creeds or Christendom. There was fear in my heart.”

Author:  John Buchan (1875–1940) was another man for whom the start of the 20th century would mean a significant shift in his fortunes from “half barrister and half writer”, to quote his own words. The early years of the new century were spent in South Africa, which would provide the raw material for some of his later books, notably the fantasy adventure Prester John (1910), and the spur five years later for his immortal spy thriller, The 39 Steps. “The Grove of Ashtaroth” draws on his knowledge of South African supernaturalism to tell the story of a young man who falls under the spell of an old temple dedicated to the worship of an ancient goddess. It is a significant story among Buchan’s work in that critics have in the past used the part-Jewish hero as an example of his anti-Semitism. In fact, although Buchan did make the occasional tasteless remark about Jews in his fiction – as did many other leading writers of the period – he numbered several among his friends and was one of the first important literary figures to denounce Hitler’s persecution of the race during his rise to power.

We were sitting around the camp fire, some thirty miles north of a place called Taqui, when Lawson announced his intention of finding a home. He had spoken little the last day or two, and I had guessed that he had struck a vein of private reflection. I thought it might be a new mine or irrigation scheme, and I was surprised to find that it was a country house.

“I don’t think I shall go back to England,” he said, kicking a sputtering log into place. “I don’t see why I should. For business purposes I am far more useful to the firm in South Africa than in Throgmorton Street. I have no relations left except a third cousin, and I have never cared a rush for living in town. That beastly house of mine in Hill Street will fetch what I gave for it, – Isaacson cabled about it the other day, offering for furniture and all. I don’t want to go into Parliament, and I hate shooting little birds and tame deer. I am one of those fellows who are born Colonial at heart, and I don’t see why I shouldn’t arrange my life as I please. Besides, for ten years I have been falling in love with this country, and now I am up to the neck.”

He flung himself back in the camp-chair till the canvas creaked, and looked at me below his eyelids. I remember glancing at the lines of him, and thinking what a fine make of a man he was. In his untanned field-boots, breeches, and grey shirt he looked the born wilderness-hunter, though less than two months before he had been driving down to the City every morning in the sombre regimentals of his class. Being a fair man, he was gloriously tanned, and there was a clear line at his shirt-collar to mark the limits of his sunburn. I had first known him years ago, when he was a broker’s clerk working on half commission. Then he had gone to South Africa, and soon I heard he was a partner in a mining house which was doing wonders with some gold areas in the North. The next step was his return to London as the new millionaire – young, good-looking, wholesome in mind and body, and much sought after by the mothers of marriageable girls. We played polo together, and hunted a little in the season, but there were signs that he did not propose to become the conventional English gentleman. He refused to buy a place in the country, though half the Homes of England were at his disposal. He was a very busy man, he declared, and had not time to be a squire. Besides, every few months he used to rush out to South Africa. I saw that he was restless, for he was always badgering me to go big-game hunting with him in some remote part of the earth. There was that in his eyes, too, which marked him out from the ordinary blonde type of our countrymen. They were large and brown and mysterious, and the light of another race was in their odd depths.

To hint such a thing would have meant a breach of friendship, for Lawson was very proud of his birth. When he first made his fortune he had gone to the Heralds to discover his family, and those obliging gentlemen had provided a pedigree. It appeared that he was a scion of the house of Lowson or Lowieson, an ancient and rather disreputable clan on the Scottish side of the Border. He took a shooting in Teviotdale on the strength of it, and used to commit lengthy Border ballads to memory. But I had known his father, a financial journalist who never quite succeeded, and I had heard of a grandfather who sold antiques in a back street at Brighton. The latter, I think, had not changed his name, and still frequented the synagogue. The father was a progressive Christian, and the mother had been a blonde Saxon from the Midlands. In my mind there was no doubt, as I caught Lawson’s heavy-lidded