THE DEVIL’S OWN by Lilian Quiller Couch

We all wondered why Octavius Nottage married at seventeen. Octavius Nottage is the youth who drives his father’s wagon to fetch and carry linen from our town to the laundry in his own village. An ordinary boy was Octavius until a year or so ago; just ruddy, and grubby, and scented with the boyish scent of brimstone marbles. His name had been bestowed on him by his parents out of compliment to a young gentleman of that family in which Mrs. Nottage had been a nursemaid—the eighth young gentleman in a family of eleven. True it so happened that Octavius Nottage was a first and only child, but there be still some persons living who stride over trifles, and level all difficulties with the besom of disregard; and John and Jane Nottage were of this class.

When first we knew Octavius he was sturdy and mischievous, travelling to and from town and village in the wagon as a sort of unpleasant consequence of John Nottage’s rheumatism, fidgetting among the bundles and baskets throughout the journeys for the sole purpose of loading and unloading at the terminus. Then came a time when John Nottage devoted his entire attention to his pain and sat home to give the fiend no cause for jealousy; then were the horse and wagon entrusted to Octavius, who rejoiced thereat, for Octavius was now sixteen, and much preferred the handling of the reins and the breaking of his own record to that forced repose on the uneven surface of somebody’s week’s washing, to which he had hitherto been doomed. He enjoyed himself, the grinning young ruffian, and we could not find it in our hearts to reproach him for his heartlessness.

But there came a year, a whole twelve months, in which Octavius changed utterly; he grew tall—that, to be sure, was only what one might expect, or at least hope—but in addition to this his face grew white to ghastliness; his eyes stared with a hunted, haunted expression from out his pallor, and he became gloomy as the veriest pessimist. We all noted the change; we all deplored it. Then at the end of twelve months Octavius married, and our regrets turned to prudent disapproval of the imprudence of his act.

“Love” and “ghosts” are superstitions which gain but little credence in these days of science and health exhibitions; but in the story of Octavius Nottage we have to face a strong similitude to both these superstitions; and as yet there is no explanation ready.

On the first morning of that enervating year Octavius drove into town with his baskets as usual, delivered them with a grin and a joke of equal breadth at their respective area doors, remounted his seat on the knify edge of the wagon, and started for home, whistling “Primo” of a duet with the rattle of wheels as he went.

This was pleasant and commonplace enough in its way: but when Octavius reached the margin of the town a strange thing happened. With the wagon still rumbling on, with the rattle of the wheels still in his ears, with the whistle still on his lips, his eyes chanced to glance down at the shafts, and there he saw, clambering up the step even as the wagon went at its full speed, a grimy little child of hideous features, with blazing yellow eyes, and a few tawny rags wrapped round about it.

“Hullo, there,” shouted Octavius cheerfully, above the clatter of his own advancing, “get down, you young brat.”

But the child neither looked at him nor answered him; it just climbed on persistently, regardless of the wagoner’s rights as of its own danger.

“Little beggar, you!” shouted Octavius again, “d’ye hear what I say; get down.”

Still the child gave no answering sign.

“Oh, all right; we’ll soon see about that,” quoth Octavius; and slackening speed a trifle he leaned forward to take the young trespasser by the shoulder that he might drop him over the side of the wagon, with care as with determination; but—there was no shoulder! his hand went grasping air!

Octavius drew back in horror, and the blood ebbed out of his face, while the clutching hand went shaking as with palsy. But even as he looked, there sat the child, grimy and hideous on the foot-board beside his very feet, gazing with those blazing yellow eyes from out its evil countenance at the horse as it ambled on its way.

Then did the heart of Octavius turn to water behind his ribs; then did his tune trail off inelegantly in mid-bar as his mouth drew lax with horror; then did the taut reins slacken in his hands, as his face stiffened coldly. For here in broad daylight, before this ruddy, healthy youth, clothed in corduroy, on a commonplace wagon lacking paint, and hung about with gaudy signs of modern soaps and matchless cleansers, sat a ghost; a grimy, pallid, evil-featured ghost, who asked no permission and heeded no remonstrance.

For a mile or more the horse jogged on unguided, while Octavius stood wide-eyed and horror-struck on the foot-board beside that—thing! and took no count of time or place. It was awful! As the moments went by it seemed to Octavius as if things must always have been in this wise—just he, and it, and the rattling wagon, with no part for him to play but to endure.

Then as the wagon neared the village, from the thing beside him came a short, hellish shriek; and then there was empty space where the thing had sat, and nothing remained but the echo of that shriek in his ears. The sound roused him into some sort of action; he leaned forward, he shouted “Whoa!” to the horse, from his dry throat, though he had no strength to pull the reins, and he staggered down from the shaft to the ground that he might witness the departure of the creature. He looked before him and behind him, but it was not to be seen; then did he stare at the common stretching away on either side of him, at the sky, at the pools; but there was no trace of the hideous thing who had claimed conveyance from him; no echo of footfall, no footprint in the dust.

When Octavius reached his home that afternoon the shock of his journey had already left its mark upon him. His heart cowered within him in childish shame and fear of ridicule, and he said nothing of the horror he had gone through; he, whose communicativeness had driven his father not infrequently to quote copiously from proverbs bearing upon “the speech of fools,” and his mother to suggest kindly but daily that it was always as well to eat a dinner while it was hot, and talk afterwards; he, I say, spoke no word of what he had seen, and even unconsciously rubbed his cheeks with his fists to soften that grey rigidity which had fallen upon them. But the terror which Octavius suffered that night when he went to his lonely little bedroom was such as no rubbing of cheeks could destroy the effect of next morning, and it brought upon him Jane Nottage’s traditional cure for pallor, a decoction which smelt of many powerful herbs, but was calculated to prove more efficacious in cases of gormandising than of ghosts.

But that terror was as nothing to the terror which followed; for day after day, week after week, did that child-sprite haunt Octavius Nottage; as surely as the wagon reached that spot at the margin of the town on its homeward way, so surely did that hideous ghost child climb to its place on the foot-board, and sit there, ghastly and untouchable, until on nearing the village it vanished with its hellish shriek of woe.

Octavius, erst so impudently satisfied with his fate, grew daily more white and miserable, more nervous and short-tempered; his cheeks fell long and thin, his eyes gazed wide and scared at all things; and by-and-bye old wives of the village shook their heads as he passed by and murmured that “Nottage’s boy had been touched by death.”

For weeks did Octavius despairingly cast about in his mind for some other road by which he could escape that dreadful spot, or some time at which the spectre would not appear; but there was no other road to lead him to his home, and all times were the same. He might have told of his trouble, one would argue; but there was some fiendish spell, some strange power which sent the trembling words choking back in his throat as he strove to utter them. For eleven months he fought against that power, and then he seemed to conquer; he conquered inasmuch as he forced himself to go to his companions one by one, and bid them meet him by the churchyard wall on a certain evening, for that he had something of importance to tell them. When it so happened that they obeyed him, with curiosity raised and tempers untrammelled by respect of mood or mania, their force did the rest. They questioned him jovially—brutally it seemed—of his “matter of importance”; they twitted him cheerfully on his lady-like complexion, and inquired of his cosmetics; and at last he told them what he had bidden them there to hear. By that churchyard wall in the dim light of a fading summer’s evening, with a voice low-pitched and tremulous with the import of his words, he told them his ghastly tale. There was a minute of complete silence as the words ceased, and the heart of Octavius thumped riotously inside him with the fresh pangs of suffering which he endured as his terror sounded on his ears in spoken syllables. Then came the voice of Sam Underdown, the village wag, in tone somewhat muffled, but perfectly solemn and sympathetic in inflection.

“Ocky Nottage,” he declared, slowly, “I ’ave ’eard of that there sort of thing before; ’tis commonly called the ‘Jumps.’ ”

Then followed a full-voiced chorus of laughter, and a general scramble from the hedge, and Octavius stood alone in the greyness, with his cheeks throbbing hot at the insult.

From that hour the trouble of Octavius Nottage was bruited about the village with much gusto and little mercy. In the sand-strewn bar parlour of the “Seven Stars,” at the gossips’ corner by the three cross-roads, at the forge, at the bakehouse, at the post-office; in all of these spots was the tale of “Ocky’s ghost” jeered at, while great whole-lunged guffaws went forth at his expense. Even at the laundry, in whose service the poor youth fetched and carried so regularly, Sam Underdown lounged over the window-sill as he passed, and told his humorous tale. There, indeed, it was received with an interest tempered with awe, for the maidens felt more reverence for the unknown than did the men; and they craved more details from the flippant Sam as they bent over their tubs and wrung the snowy linen with their strong red arms. And Sam gave them a sufficiency, elaborated by his own lively imagination, and the maidens shuddered and giggled, turn in, turn out, as they listened, and exclaimed, “Law, now! Sam Underdown, go along with you, talking such stuff,” even as they yearned to delay him in their midst.

But down at the end of the row of maidens in the wash-house stood one before her tub who listened to Sam Underdown’s repet­itions and inventions with straining ears, and spoke no word in return. A large, slow-moving girl she was, with a wealth of shining red hair and a serious face; a girl who joined but seldom in the ordinary frivolous gossip of the laundry, and who had acquired the character of being “a bit pious.” Admonition Ellery was her name, and deep down in her heart lay a great simmering love for this youth, at whom they all scoffed in their wicked, careless way.

Up to that day Octavius Nottage and Admonition Ellery had exchanged little more than a few words; for the girl’s tub stood at the far end of the wash-house, and her eyes were wont to be sealed upon her work when Octavius or any other village youth lounged near to gossip; for her nature was charged with an overwhelming bashfulness and a shamed consciousness of her fiery hair. But there had been one day, one showery morning, nearly a year ago, when she had broken through her silence somewhat; she had been standing at the doorway with a bucket in her hand, hesitating to run through the heavy drops to the well; and Octavius, chancing to pass by at the moment, and taking in the situation, held out his hand for the bucket.

“Here, hand it over to me, I’ll fetch the water,” he said in his cheery, off-handed way. So he fetched it, and brought it, and stood for a moment telling of a cow belonging to Farmer Laskey which had fallen over a hurdle; then he jerked a smiling “Good morning” to her, and went on his way, to give many a thought to Farmer Laskey’s cow, but never one to Admonition Ellery; while she went back to her tub again and thought of him all day. That had been the birthday of her love, and for almost a year had it grown and chafed in her heart, this mighty young power, this turbulent offspring of a phlegmatic nature.

“The brutes,” raged Admonition, inwardly, as she listened now to Sam Underdown’s romancing and the comments it provoked, “the lyin’, ignorant brutes,” and her heart grew fiery as her hair; but still she spoke no word, for habits are not lightly broken; but she bided her time, and she bit her lips as she wrung out her tubful of steaming clothes and rinsed them in the cold blueing water; and then Sam Underdown went on his way, and she grew calmer, and thought and thought again of Octavius and his trouble.

So it happened that same afternoon that soon after Octavius had reached the dreadful spot at which his ghastly passenger climbed to its usual seat, and as he stood there beside it on the foot-board with a wild hopelessness filling his heart, he heard a voice calling his name, and turning his head quickly, always expectant of some new horror, saw a girl standing on the pathway waving her hand to him to stop. It was Admonition Ellery in her holiday clothes.

“I thought maybe you’d give me a lift back,” she said, smiling up at him with bashful, deprecating eyes and the blushes flaming in her cheeks. “I’m feelin’ dretful tired somehow.”

Octavius strove to bend his rigid features into an answering smile as he looked down at her. “Course I will,” he answered slowly, his horror still stamped upon his face, “get up here if you don’t mind a poor seat; wagons ain’t built altogether for comfort, be ’em?”

“The seat’s plenty good enough,” she answered, “if you’ve no objection to the company—”

“Ah!” he exclaimed sharply, as she began to climb the shaft and brushed the very shoulders of the terrible child which sat there still gazing intently, with its blazing eyes, into space; then he stopped suddenly, but her yearning heart seemed to divine his pain, for when she reached the narrow seat beside him, she said, falteringly, but with a great sympathy in her voice, “you’m in trouble, I’ve heard tell; terrible trouble—I’m—I’m mortal sorry for ’ee.”

He looked into her face suddenly and longingly, for his own heart ached to give confidence and accept comfort, and his brain grew wilder and less controllable as each day passed; and as he looked he saw great tears welling up in Admonition’s eyes.

“How came you to know of my trouble?’ he asked breathlessly.

“I’m from the laundry,” she said, “and I heard tell of it there to-day.”

“And what do they say of me there? Say I’m a mazed-headed fool, I s’pose; and what story do they tell?”

“They say,” faltered Admonition, “they say as how—as how—you think you see—”

“ ‘Think I see,’ ” he interrupted, “ ‘think,’ do they say, when I see the thing before my eyes this very minute, a horrible, devil-­faced brat, sitting there at your very feet—taking all the blood from my body day after day; there I see it—” his voice rose to a cry as he pointed to the foot-board, and his eyes blazed with wild fear.

Then did Admonition rise from the narrow seat, and clutching the side of the wagon with one hand, raised the other almost tragically to the sky.

“So do I,” she declared, “so do I. All that you see I see too.”

For moments there was silence, as the boy and girl faced each other, each flushed, each wild-eyed, each trembling with a great earnestness. Then Octavius spoke, pointing to the fearful thing at their feet.

“You see that thing there?” he questioned.

“I see it,” she answered; looking at the spot to which he pointed.

“You see its ghastly face and yellow eyes?”

“A face hideous as a devil, an’ eyes yellow as burning jealousy.”

“You see its dirty rags an’ its white body?”

“Rags fit to breed a plague, and body bloodless as a dead thing.”

“You see how it sits an’ stares, an’ now—how my foot goes through it an’ never touches it?”

“Starin’ like the very congers, an’ no solider than a puff of smoke.”

“Oh, my God!” he cried, pressing his hands, reins and all, over his eyes, “then I b’aint mazed! I b’aint mazed after all.”

“You b’aint mazed no more’n I’m mazed,” she cried, with all her shyness wiped out by her great love, and this her great wicked­ness.

And then he turned to her and caught her hands. “Tell it all again,” he cried, “tell of what you see.”

And Admonition, the sober, the pious, the bashful, leaned against the ledge of the wagon there as the horse ambled on and the sun went down, and lied to the lad beside her without scruple; and the terrible thing which was in truth invisible to her eyes as the mountains of the moon, sat on in Octavius Nottage’s sight as if it listened to her words.

“But what can I do?” he cried, when the torrent of her falsehoods which had flowed so unfalteringly ceased at last. “I can’t live on like this always. I’d rather be dead than live like this.”

Admonition mused awhile. “Perhaps I can help ’ee,” she remarked, slowly. “My grandmother—well, I know my grandmother knows a whole lot of charms—she’s done wonderful things sometimes—an’ somehow I’ve felt sometimes as if—as if I could do ’em too.”

“I’d give the world, if ’twas mine, to be rid of the devilish thing,” he raved.

Admonition looked at him straightly. “There’s some as don’t want all the world,” she answered, quietly. Then as his eyes questioned her meaning, her blushes came back to her. “I’d like to get down here, please,” she added hastily, and in another moment she was walking quickly on her way.

For almost a month Octavius Nottage had no word with Admonition Ellery. Day after day he haunted the laundry, or strove to waylay her as she went to and from her home, but she always hurried past him with some shy, murmured word of greeting, and that was all. Then as she grew more distant he became more ardent. She was the one human soul in the village who appreciated his tragedy, and he felt that he could not live without her sympathy; and this was what she longed for, for dearly did she love this lad who heretofore had given her no thought. So all through those days she held herself from him, and went gravely and slowly on her way, to all outward eyes, while his heart swelled within him as the belief was forced upon him that she had fooled with him, and yet—and yet when he remembered her face as it had been that afternoon on the wagon he found it hard to doubt her—he longed so earnestly to believe her, and his eyes grew wilder and his face more white with the suspense, and John Nottage and Jane, his wife, bowed their heads in grief, and sighed with the heaviness of premonition, for, to all appearances their boy, their only child, had truly been picked out by the hand of Death. He was dying before their eyes.

The one evening as Octavius strolled languidly along the lanes he met Admonition, and she stopped before him. She gave him no greeting in answer to his words, and he saw that her face was very white.

“There’s a charm—” she began at once without more prelude, “I’ve learnt it all by myself and nobody knows I’ve found it out—but you’d never do it. Her voice sank to a tone of helpless conviction.

Octavius clenched his hands. “I swear I’ll do anything,” he cried. “There’s nothing in my power as I wouldn’t do to be rid of that ugly child-devil. Tell me the charm,” he commanded.

Admonition shook from head to foot as she looked into his face, but she did not blush even now. “An’ I must tell of it?” she asked, slowly.

“Yes, yes, be quick, whatever it is.”

“This is what ’tis, then, and don’t blame me for it when ’tis told.”

“Go on, go on.”

Then she began with hard, even tones, “You must get your horse an’ wagon ready on the night of the full moon, an’ you must go the same way where you always see the spirit, an’—an’—”

“Go on,” urged Octavius again.

Admonition caught her breath as if in pain, but she continued in the same even tones. “An’ your promised wife must be beside you—an’—”

“My promised wife!” exclaimed Octavius.

“——an’—” went on Admonition, heedless of his interruption, “you must hold hands with her when you come to the spot where the spirit appears, an’ you must say—

‘Spirit, I defy thee.

Spirit, I deny thee,

In the name of all that’s holy.’

—an’ the spirit goes for ever.”

Admonition ceased speaking and clutched her throat as if the words had scorched her. Neither spoke, and Octavius looked at Admonition, and Admonition looked steadily upon the ground.

“But I haven’t got a promised wife,” he protested, slowly.

Then Admonition raised her eyes to his, and a great hot blush spread over her face and neck till for very shame she raised her hands to hide it and turned to lean forward against a gate for support.

“Admonition! Admonition” he cried, the whole world seeming to open and lighten before him. Then he made a stride to her again and pulled the shaking hands from her blazing face in the wildness of his mood, “what do ’ee mean? Oh, Admonition, will ’ee, will ’ee for my sake!”

And Admonition consented.

On the night that the moon was at its full, Octavius Nottage took his horse and his wagon, and his promised wife, and drove towards the town. Not a word did they two utter, not a sound did they hear, for the wild throbbing of their own hearts deafened them. Then when they had reached the outlying streets of the town Octavius Nottage turned his horse’s head towards the village again. In his heart there surged a wild hope of release from his terrible burden; but in the heart of the girl beside him there was nothing but a sickening terror; she knew that she was but juggling with the superstitions which lay so strong within them both, for the sake of her selfish love, she knew that this solemn charm was but of her own manufacture, that by this night’s work she must either stand or fall; and for the first time the full sense of her lying crept coldly over her; she realised the sin of it all, but she could only stand there numb and passive, unable to do aught but go through with that which she had undertaken.

As they neared the direful spot the face of Octavius became as a model of ghastly death, and his eyes held in them a feverishness akin to madness; while the great full-faced moon, placid as ever, looked coldly down to witness his defeat or victory, and Admonition still leaned against the side of the wagon, her hands limp with a chilled faintness which had fallen upon her, realising that those daily, routine prayers of hers had been but so much mockery, and waiting for her fate.

“Quick, quick; your hands!” whispered Octavius hoarsely; but she had no power to stretch them to him. The wagon had almost reached the spot, but she made no move to fulfil her share of the rite. So he clutched her damp, chilly fingers, unconscious of their lifelessness, and gasped with a voice almost soundless by reason of the extremity of his excitement.

“Spirit, I defy thee,

Spirit, I deny thee

In the name of all that’s holy.”

There was a shock, a crash, a confusion of dancing lights, and the boy and girl were hurled from their insecure foothold, the white road leaped to meet the moonlit sky, a roar as of raging oceans filled the air, and for some moments it seemed as if these two defiers had sailed from the petty waters of Life over the great bar to Eternity.

“Is anyone injured?” asked a kindly voice.

There came a faint groan from Admonition in answer.

“There’s a girl here,” panted Octavius, as he raised himself slowly and painfully from the ground, “come round to this side.”

So the stranger went to him, and together they raised Admonition from the ground, and then she lay awhile in Octavius’s arms.

“Something frightened the horses; some child or something,” said the stranger, “it ran across the road suddenly, and sent my animal swerving into yours. If you will hold the girl I will go now and see what damage is done.”

After a few moments Admonition opened her eyes. “I’m all right,” she murmured unsteadily. “I’m quite well. I can stand and walk if you’ll let me go,” and she raised herself and stood trembling upon her feet.

“Come here!” shouted the stranger, and Octavius went to him.

“Ah!” he cried aloud as he bent over the man, and saw what lay in his arms. “Can you hold it? Can you touch it? Oh, my God!” There in the white dust lay the semblance of the spirit which he had defied, the child who had been such a hideous burden in his life, who had changed him from a ruddy, sturdy boy to a picture of living death, who had haunted him night and day, in sight and out of sight, who had drained the courage from his heart and bade fair to steal the reason from his brain; there it lay with its head on the stranger’s arm, its grimy rags displaced, its bloodless limbs limp and lifeless, its hideous features distorted, its yellow eyes half-closed—dead.

“Hold it?” cried the stranger, looking up in wonder, “there is no difficulty in holding the poor little fellow now, he is dead. It was quite an accident, I must say; the child seemed to spring from nowhere, and my horse was upon it in an instant.”

Octavius made no answer; he stood stunned by the force of circumstances, while Admonition crept slowly to the spot, and stood beside him. Octavius stretched his hand towards her, and she held it fast in hers; and still he gazed down upon the stranger’s burden and marvelled, for if he might believe his eyes, the spirit-­child was but a creature of flesh and blood, and moreover it was killed. But Admonition did not give so much as a single glance to the dead child at her feet; her eyes were fixed with feverish intensity upon the stranger who held it.

“Well,” said the stranger, looking up at them with some appearance of surprise at their strange silence, “there is nothing more to be done for the poor little fellow now. My cart is rather damaged, but I think it will hold together until I reach the town, and I think it will be better for me to take the child’s body with me and explain matters when I get there. There is but small harm done to your wagon. Just tell me your name that I may be able to communicate with you.”

And Octavius told his name as in a dream, and as they stood, he and Admonition, and watched with wide, hunted eyes as the stranger laid the little corpse in his cart, examining the damage done to that vehicle, bade them “Good-night,” and then drove swiftly from them along the moon-lit road.

The “Good-night” echoed in their ears unanswered, and still these two lovers stood there watching. At last Octavius turned to Admonition, and there was an awful look stamped upon his face.

“What does it all mean?” he asked hoarsely.

“ ’Tis the devil carrying off his own,” she answered solemnly.

Then the horror of it all came rushing over her, she turned and clung to Octavius, and there came such a storm of tears as her calm eyes had never known before.

“Let us go home,” she sobbed, “let us go home.”

So he kissed her and comforted her, and the doing of it steadied his own reason as nothing else could have done; and with the moon still flooding the world, and shining on their white and horrified faces, they journeyed home.

From that night no sight nor sound of the stranger, nor of the spirit-child, ever reached Octavius or Admonition.

The marriage took place a few weeks later; and since hearing the story of their wooing, the imprudence of the alliance appears less inexcusable.