WHEN THE NIGHT FALLS by Bond & Ruskin

Author:Bond & Ruskin
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Rupa Publications
Published: 2017-10-01T00:00:00+00:00

THE STORY OF YAND MANOR HOUSE

E. and H. Heron

Looking through the notes of Mr Flaxman Low, one sometimes catches through the steel-blue hardness of facts, the pink flush of romance, or more often the black corner of a horror unnameable. The following story may serve as an instance of the latter. Mr Low not only unravelled the mystery at Yand, but at the same time justified his life-work to M. Thierry, the well-known French critic and philosopher.

At the end of a long conversation, M. Thierry, arguing from his own standpoint as a materialist, had said:

‘The factor in the human economy which you call “soul” cannot be placed.’

‘I admit that,’ replied Low. ‘Yet, when a man dies, is there not one factor unaccounted for in the change that comes upon him? Yes? For though his body still exists, it rapidly falls to pieces, which proves that that has gone which held it together.’

The Frenchman laughed, and shifted his ground.

‘Well, for my part, I don’t believe in ghosts. Spirit manifestations, occult phenomena—is not this the ashbin into which a certain clique shoot everything they cannot understand, or for which they fail to account?’

‘Then what should you say to me, Monsieur, if I told you that I have passed a good portion of my life in investigating this particular ashbin, and have been lucky enough to sort a small part of its contents with tolerable success?’ replied Flaxman Low.

‘The subject is doubtlessly interesting—but I should like to have some personal experience in the matter,’ said Thierry dubiously.

‘I am at present investigating a most singular case,’ said Low. ‘Have you a day or two to spare?’

Thierry thought for a minute or more.

‘I am grateful,’ he replied. ‘But, forgive me, is it a convincing ghost?’

‘Come with me to Yand and see. I have been there once already, and came away for the purpose of procuring information from MSS, to which I have the privilege of access, for I confess that the phenomena at Yand lie altogether outside any former experience of mine.’

Low sank back into his chair with his hands clasped behind his head—a favourite position of his—and the smoke of his long pipe curled up lazily into the golden face of an Isis, which stood behind him on a bracket. Thierry, glancing across, was struck by the strange likeness between the faces of the Egyptian goddess and this scientist of the nineteenth century. On both rested the calm, mysterious abstraction of some unfathomable thought. As he looked, he decided.

‘I have three days to place at your disposal.’

‘I thank you heartily,’ replied Low. ‘To be associated with so brilliant a logician as yourself in an inquiry of this nature is more than I could have hoped for! The material with which I have to deal is so elusive, the whole subject is wrapped in such obscurity and hampered by so much prejudice, that I can find few really qualified persons who care to approach these investigations seriously. I go down to Yand this evening, and hope not to leave without clearing up the mystery.

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