I recently read and wrote about Croker's sublime short story "The Red Bungalow" here. To say I found it to be a compelling tale would be an understatement.
Gutenberg Australia carries two more Croker stories here.
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To Let
The unmarried nineteen year old narrator of "To Let" goes out to India, to Lucknow, to live with her brother Tom and his wife Aggie. Croker's style here is masterful, and I wonder if her description of Aggie is not perhaps a self-portrait?
....My sister-in-law is a pretty little brunette, rather pale, with dark hair, brilliant black eyes, a resolute mouth and a bright, intelligent expression. She is orderly, trim and feverishly energetic, and seems to live every moment of her life. Her children, her wardrobe, her house, her servants, and last, not least, her husband, are all models in their way; and yet she has plenty of time for tennis and dancing, and talking and walking. She is, undoubtedly, a remarkably talented little creature, and especially prides herself on her nerve and her power of will, or will power. I suppose they are the same thing? and I am sure they are all the same to Tom, who worships the sole of her small slipper. Strictly between ourselves she is the ruling member of the family, and turns her lord and master round her little finger. Tom is big and fair, of course, the opposite to his wife, quiet, rather easy-going and inclined to be indolent, but Aggie rouses him up, and pushes him to the front, and keeps him there. She knows all about his department, his prospects of promotion, his prospects of furlough, of getting acting appointments, and so on, even better than he does himself. The chief of Tom's department--have I said that Tom is in the Irritation Office?--has placed it solemnly on record that he considers little Mrs Shandon a surprisingly clever woman.
Life in Lucknow is a fine social whirl until April, when the thermometer approaches 100°. Aggie at first refuses to relocate to the hills, but ultimately acknowledges the need to retreat.
At first it seems all accommodations are taken, until a letter arrives from from Aggie's friend Mrs. Chalmers in Kantia.
Dear Mrs Shandon--she said---I received your letter, and went at once to Cursitjee, the agent. Every hole and corner up here seems hill, and he had not a single house to let. Today I had a note from him, saving that Briarwood is vacant; the people who took it are not coming up, they have gone to Naini Tal. You are in luck. I have just been out to see the house, and have secured it for you. It is a mile and a half from the club, but I know that you and your sister are capital walkers. I envy you. Such a charming place--two sitting-rooms, four bedrooms, four bathrooms, a hall, servants' go-downs, stabling, and a splendid view from a very pretty garden, and only Rs. 800 for the season!
The journey commences, a situation Croker must have been familiar with in her own life:
....A long Journey in India is a serious business when the party comprises two ladies, two children, two ayahs and five other servants, three fox terriers, a mongoose and a Persian cat--all these animals going to the hills for the benefit of their health--not to speak of a ton of luggage, including crockery and lamps, a cottage piano, a goat and a pony.
They find Briarwood almost too good to be true.
....The bungalow is as solidly built of stone, two storied, and ample in size. It stood on a kind of shelf, cut out of the hillside, and was surrounded by a pretty flower garden, full of roses, fuchsias, carnations. The high road passed the gate, from which the avenue descended direct to the entrance door, which was at the end of the house, and from whence ran a long passage. Off this passage three rooms opened to the right, all looking south, and all looking into a deep, delightful, flagged verandah. The stairs were very steep. At the head of them, the passage and rooms were repeated. There were small nooks, and dressing-rooms, and convenient out-houses, and plenty of good water; but the glory of Briarwood was undoubtedly its verandah: it was fully twelve feet wide, roofed with zinc, and overhung a precipice of a thousand feet--not a startlingly sheer khud, but a tolerably straight descent of grey-blue shale rocks and low jungle. From it there was a glorious view, across a valley, far away, to the snowy range. It opened at one end into the avenue, and was not inclosed; but at the side next the precipice there was a stout wooden railing, with netting at the bottom, for the safety of too enterprising dogs or children. A charming spot, despite its rather bold situation; and as Aggie and I sat in it, surveying the scenery and inhaling the pure hill air, and watching Bob and Tor tearing up and down playing horses, we said to one another that 'the verandah alone was worth half the rent'.
'It's absurdly cheap,' exclaimed my sister-in-law complacently. 'I wish you saw the hovel I had, at Simla, for the same rent. I wonder if it is feverish, or badly drained, or what?'
'Perhaps it has a ghost,' I suggested facetiously; and at such an absurd idea we both went into peals of laughter.
Alas. At first the only thing unsettling is a parrot left by the late former owners; it cries out mournfully a single name: 'Lucy, where are you, pretty Lucy--Lucy--Lu--cy?'
Mrs Starkey, a formidable local social dragon, adds more to the picture:
.... 'And so you have taken Briarwood?'
'Yes, we have been most lucky to get it.'
'I hope you will think so at the end of three months,' observed Mrs Starkey with a significant pursing of her lips. 'Mrs Chalmers is a stranger up here, or she would not have been in such a hurry to jump at it.'
'Why, what is the matter with it?' enquired Aggie. 'It is well built, well furnished, well situated, and very cheap.'
'That's just it--suspiciously cheap. Why, my dear Mrs Shandon, if there was not something against it, it would let for two hundred rupees a month.'
'And what is against it?'
'It's haunted! There you have the reason in two words.'
'Is that all? I was afraid it was the drains. I don't believe in ghosts and haunted houses. What are we supposed to see?'
'Nothing,' retorted Mrs Starkey, who seemed a good deal nettled at our smiling incredulity.
'Nothing!' with an exasperating laugh.
'No, but you will make up for it in hearing. Not now--you are all right for the next six weeks--but after the monsoon breaks I give you a week at Briarwood. No one would stand it longer, and indeed you might as well bespeak your rooms at Cooper's Hotel now. There is always a rush up here in July by the two month's leave people, and you will be poked into some wretched go-down.'
Aggie laughed rather a careless ironical little laugh and said, 'Thank you, Mrs Starkey; but I think we will stay on where we are; at any rate for the present.'
As the reader may imagine, "To Let" ends in tears. Not the tears of unmitigated, monstrous tragedy Croker gave us in her peerless "The Red Bungalow," happily. But still, financial loss and living arrangements reduced to chaos offer a horror all their own.
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Number Ninety
"Number Ninety" is a story very different in tone, setting, and point of view. Its delivery is staccato, its location is Charleston in the U.S., and the narrator and his protagonist friend are both male.
"Number Ninety" is a night-spent-in-a-haunted-house story. The narrator reports on John Hollyoak's experiences over two consecutive nights.
The first night is almost farcical: Hollyoak is invited to dine with assorted 18th century guests at midnight. They quickly disperse when he says grace before joining them. He then returns unharmed and perhaps bemused to his room.
Still:
"....I met with no obstacle en route. I saw no one, but as I closed and double-locked my door I distinctly heard a low laugh outside the keyhole-a sort of suppressed, malicious titter, that made me furious.
The next evening Hollyoak returns to the house. The narrator, at his own home, reports:
....More than once I was certain that I heard John Hollyoak distractedly calling me; and I sat up in bed and listened intently. Of course it was fancy, for the instant I did so, there was no sound.
The next morning:
....I was not disposed to wait for eight o'clock. I was too uneasy, and too impatient for further particulars of the Christmas dinner-party. So I rang with all my might, and knocked with all my strength.
No sound within--no answer! But John was always a heavy steeper. I was resolved to arouse him all the same, and knocked and rang, and rang and knocked, incessantly for fully ten minutes.
I then stooped down and applied my eye to the keyhole; I looked steadily into the aperture, till I became accustomed to the darkness, and then it seemed to me that another eye--a very strange, fiery eye--was glaring into mine from the other side of the door!
....The echo of "Hollyoak" had hardly died away when I swear that distinctly heard a low, sniggering, mocking laugh-that was my only answer-that; and a vast unresponsive silence.
"Number Ninety" offers no answers or hints of answers to its uncanny phenomena. Croker is not writing "The Haunters and the Haunted" or "Number 17." Croker gives us the strange and terrible, but recalled in tranquility.
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Jay
2 February 2021
Swan River Press, Ireland, 2019
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