Readers unfamiliar with the tales in The Fourth Macabre Megapack may prefer to read these notes only after reading the stories.
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"Mine Host the Cardinal" (1894) by Howard Pease (1863-1928) was one of the stories mentioned by Montague Summers in his introduction to The Supernatural Omnibus (1931). Summers reported that the story was originally published in the August 1894 issue of The Pall Mall Magazine, and was "an excellent ghost story." I found it in The Fourth Macabre MEGAPACK® (Wildside Press, 2017), along with two other stories from Pall Mall Magazine mentioned by Summers: "The Devil Stone" by Beatrice Heron-Maxwell and "The Story of a Tusk" by H. A. Bryden.
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"Mine Host the Cardinal" is a traveler's tale. Our narrator arrives at dusk in a Breton village and discovers no remittance waiting at the 1894 equivalent of American Express.
Squatting upon the sill of an ancient warehouse, I lit a cigarette and commenced to take stock of my position.
'Twas not so desperate after all, I reflected. The weather was superlative; for a night's lodging I could lie in the orchard hard by the river; and as for sustenance I had a sufficiency of tobacco, a stick or two of chocolate, and a franc in pocket. Forty centimes for coffee and a roll tonight, forty centimes for the like tomorrow, with the remainder laid out upon a fresh supply of chocolate for the journey, and I could surely make shift to win home on the morrow without mishap to my person. Upon further reflection I even grew to perceive (for I was but two-and-twenty) that my predicament was not only romantic, but enjoyable, and at the close of my cigarette I would not have changed places with the best-housed traveller on the Continent.
Observing the line of houses opposite, he notes a familiar coat of arms in stonework.
A charge was borne upon the shield, and to my exceeding surprise it was clearly nothing less than a demilion gorged with a collar of France. Now, I was no great antiquary, but to one who was not wholly unacquainted with ancient heraldry the matter was strange enough, for my own family bore upon their shield, and above all, as an augmentation of honour, a like escutcheon charged with a precisely similar emblem.
The narrator recalls stories told by his heraldry-obsessed father.
When Francois I was king, and fruitlessly wooed our Henry's friendship at the Field of the Cloth of Gold, it so happened that amongst countless other amusements a tourney was held, in which an ancestor of mine greatly distinguished himself. He, indeed, after having held the field in all encounters, ran a final tilt against a Monsieur de Beauclerc (an accomplished young cavalier of the King's household), whom in the second shock he bore headlong to the ground, so strong had been his arm, so unerring his aim. When they lifted his vizor the young cavalier was dead: it appeared his neck had been broken either in the shock of the encounter or in his fall; and though it was but the mischance of the melee, some of his relatives, 'twas said, had taken it so much to heart that my ancestor had but narrowly escaped assassination shortly afterwards.
At this point in "Mine Host the Cardinal" I checked to make sure I still had my wallet. What kind of coincidence was Pease peddling to the reader? A tourist on foot in France enters the one village with a residence connected to a singular chapter in said tourist's family history?
....The habitation seemed now to serve the turn of a dealer in antiquities, for sundry ancient brocades appeared in the window, accompanied by the usual assortment of rusty pistols and damaged clocks.
No one was about, the shop was empty, so I determined to step within and investigate somewhat further.
The narrator finds no staff in the shop. He makes his way through the ground floor rooms, then heads upstairs.
Above again was a garret in which dilapidated furniture was stored, awaiting, doubtless, the hand of the restorer. There was a genuine look about the promiscuous articles here strewn about that tempted to a closer inspection; and, feeling now quite secure in the uninterrupted solitude of the mansion, I boldly stepped within and commenced a research into this shipwreck of antiquity.
I was down on my knees before an ancient deed-chest, which seemed to bear a like coat-of-arms upon the central panel to that upon the house-front, when, to my intense astonishment, I heard a rustle as of silk apparently just behind me. Facing round with a start, I perceived, sitting close beside me, but somewhat concealed by a tattered brocaded screen, an extraordinarily pale, yet stately-looking individual, clad in the magnificent robe of a cardinal.
From this moment, when the narrator and the cardinal begin to interact, a mood of menace accumulates. What force has shaped events to ensure our young protagonist willingly enters the house of ancestral enemies?
* * *
The narrator suspects the old man is wearing a costume for some local event. But the man's demeanor suggests he is a cardinal of the church.
"Stay," interposed the Cardinal, and he waved his hand with an authoritative gesture,—"stay awhile; you are hot and dusty with your journey, and a draught of wine might be agreeable to you: I have some Tokay which emperors before now have found to be not indifferent."
I stood dumfounded. My first impression, that he was but a shrewd and motley fool, had already had a shock; and now his talk of Tokay and of emperors, and the flash of the magnificent sapphire ring I had just espied on his forefinger, staggered it altogether, so that I had fallen into a complete bewilderment and an absolute incapacity for playing my part in the encounter with any credit....
I confess I did not altogether like my situation. I was certainly a prisoner, and my host was surely the strangest figure in the world for a decayed French town in the year of grace 1890. Apart from his magnificent scarlet robes, and the dignity, not to say haughtiness, of his carriage, there was something extraordinary about the man himself: his face was entirely destitute of colour, his figure spare and spent to the last degree, his lips bloodless, and his eyes, of a naturally cold colour, had grown hard and brilliant as diamonds in our recent conversation together. Altogether he had the most distinct personality of any one I had ever come across. The impression I now received, as I watched him at my leisure, was as of an extraordinarily haughty and ambitious nature, that had failed of its purpose, but would not yet brook defeat; for, notwithstanding that arrogant bearing, I thought I had never seen a mournfuller aspect than mine host's. How to reconcile this, however, with the idea that he was but the mummer of a country fete, was altogether beyond my power, so I sat silent and watched the operations of my mysterious entertainer.
* * *
A moral of "Mine Host the Cardinal" is perhaps: "If I'm not careful, something like that may happen to me." Ancestral affronts and the spite they breed, Pease seems to suggest, make even everyday surroundings shoulder a freight of menace.
For all it's brevity, "Mine Host the Cardinal" is free of melodrama; the reader will not have to face a love-at-first-sight thunderbolt between narrator and maid.
I hoped, since "Mine Host the Cardinal" was endorsed by Montague Summers, that the story might be slightly more outre. But there is no hint of the yellow decade here, just a young Englishman put in a tight spot by a worldly adversary, and struggling to survive on wits alone.
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"The Devil Stone" by Beatrice Heron-Maxwell (1859-1927) was published in the January 1895 issue of The Pall Mall Magazine.
Another British tourist has an increasingly disturbing series of experiences in France. But the story begins in a mood of complacent ease:
It was in the dusky, tepid twilight of a particularly hot, vaporous, drowsy day at Aix-les-bains, in Savoy, that I passed through the hotel garden, and prepared to take a languid stroll through the streets of the little town. I was tired of having nothing to do and no one to talk to; the other people staying at the Hotel de l'Europe were mostly foreigners, and, apart from that, entirely uninteresting; and as to my father, he was almost a nonentity to me at present, till his "course" was completed. From early morn to dewy eve he was immersed in the waters, either outwardly or inwardly, or both; and beyond occasional glimpses of him, arrayed in a costume resembling that of an Arab sheikh, being conveyed in pomp and a sedan chair to or from the baths, I was, figuratively speaking, an orphan until table d'hôte....
Uncanny events commence. Miss Theo Durant, at loose ends while her father takes the waters, goes window shopping with his old acquaintance, Colonel Lionel Haughton.
....my attention was attracted by some quaint spoons half hidden amongst other old dull silver things in a forsaken-looking little shop to which our wanderings had led us through narrow, dingy byways.
"I wonder how much they are," I said; and, asking me to wait outside, Colonel Haughton disappeared into the obscure interior. I remained gazing through the window for a moment, then, impelled by what idle impulse I know not, I walked slowly on.
The sound of a casement opening just over my head and a feminine laugh arrested me, and I looked up. It was a curious laugh, low and controlled, but with a malicious mockery in it that seemed a fit ending to some scathing speech; and just inside the open lattice, her arms resting on the sill and chin dropped lightly on her clasped hands, leant the most beautiful woman I have ever seen. It was but a glimpse of auburn hair on a white forehead, of eyes like brown pansies, and parted lips that looked like scarlet petals against the perfect pallor of her rounded cheeks, but it is photographed forever on my brain. For, as I looked, a man's hand and arm, brown, lean, and supple, with the nervous fingers, on one of which a green stone flashed, clutching a poniard, came round her neck, and plunged the dagger, slanting-wise, deep down into her heart. The smile on the beautiful lips quivered and fixed, but no sound came from them, and the eyes turned up and closed; and as she swayed towards the open window, the spell that was upon me broke, and with a shuddering cry I fled. On, on—blindly, madly, desperately—with no sense or thought or feeling save an overwhelming horror. A red mist seemed to close round me and wall me in, and as I fought against it I felt my strength fail, and all was dark and still.
Theo later realizes, when studying her own reflection, that the beautiful woman with the mirthless laugh she saw murdered was herself. Shortly after this realization, she again meets Colonel Haughton.
"....Tell me, where did you get that ring?"
On his finger shone a curious green stone, that seemed the counterpart of the one I had noticed on the hand that held the dagger.
"That is exactly what I want to tell you," he said. "After getting your spoons for you, I noticed, resting on a carved bracket, this ring. It is a very curious stone. You see it looks quite dull now, yet it can sparkle with all the brilliancy of a diamond. And on the back of it is cut part of the head of a snake. I have only seen a ring like this once before, and that was long ago in a hill temple in India. They called it the Devil Stone, and worshipped it, and they told me the tradition of it. Centuries before, this stone had been discovered by a holy man, embedded in a sacred relic, and he made a shrine for it, whence it was stolen by robbers. The next stage in its history was its division into two equal parts by a Maharajah, who had them set into rings, one of which he wore always himself, and the other he bestowed on his Maharanee, whom he loved greatly. One day he found it missing from her finger, and in a fit of jealousy he killed her, afterwards destroying himself. His ring passed into the possession of the Brahmins, but hers could never be traced. They say that eventually the two will be reunited, and that until this happens the lost ring will fulfill its mission. It is supposed to impel its wearer to deeds of violence, and to his own destruction; and when the evil spirit within it is gratified, it flashes and sparkles. They say, too, that if you cast it from you, you throw away with it the greatest happiness of your life and lose the chance of it for ever. Yet, if you wear it, it dominates your fate. The instant I saw it, I recognized the lost ring, and asked the man his price for it. He refused to tell me—said it was not for sale; and I left the shop, because I did not wish to keep you waiting longer; but I returned next day, and succeeded in obtaining it. The old man, a curious old Italian, was very reticent about it, but he seemed to have gathered some knowledge of the tradition, and said it had the "evil eye," and was neither good to sell nor to wear. It had been sold to him by a compatriot, he said, who had a dark history—a man who was ever too ready with his knife, and who had come to a bad end. I told him I would steal it, and he might charge me what he liked for some other purchases, so we settled it that way."
"Are you not afraid to wear it?" I asked. "It makes me shudder to look at it. There is some deadly fascination about it, I am sure."
The ring displays its power again when Haughton escorts Theo to the casino. She wins a fortune, while Lionel appears to lose one.
The next day the pair climb a local mountain, Dent du Chat. Near the top the Devil's Stone again plays its part, dispensing equal allowances of good and bad fortune.
And when my father told me gently, some days after, that they had found him and he was to be buried that day in the little cemetery, I laughed outright.
* * *
I have done such a lengthy synopsis of "The Devil Stone" because its intensity demands rereading. This is a similar experience to the one I had after finishing stories like "A Double Return" and "N." by Arthur Machen.
Heron-Maxwell is not a faultless stylist. At several points, like the opening paragraph, prose infelicities cut against her flair for concocting strange melodrama. Infelicities aside, once Theo realizes the woman she saw murdered was herself, a admirably orchestrated series of events begins. These intensify the story's well-drawn atmosphere of thickening dread and inevitability.
....I have never smiled since—and I am quite sane now—only I think I have done with laughter for the rest of my life. And I sometimes wonder why these things should have been; and if there is any explanation of them, save one.
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"The Story of a Tusk" (The Pall Mall Magazine, June 1896) by H. A. Bryden (1854-1937) has little in common with "Mine Host the Cardinal" or "The Devil Stone." There are no young things running into weird experiences and strange threats in France. The emotion of horror here is bound up instead with consequences of the African trade in ivory.
It was a fine spring morning in the City: even in the great dingy warehouse, where Cecil Kensley was engaged in cataloguing a vast store of ivory in preparation for the periodical sales, the sun beamed pleasantly. It lit up the dark corners of the building, and played everywhere upon hundreds of smooth, rounded elephants' teeth, varying in colour from a rich creamy yellow to darkest brown—from the gleaming tusk, fresh chopped within the last year from the head of a young bull, to the huge, dark, discoloured, almost black-skinned tooth, that for a hundred years had lain unnoticed in some mud swamp, or for generations had decorated the grave or kraal-fence of some native chief. There they lay, those precious pillars of ivory—solid scrivelloes, Egyptian soft teeth, Ambriz hard irregulars, billiard and bagatelle scrivelloes, bangle teeth, Siam, Niger, Abyssinian, Bombay, West Coast, Cape, and all the rest of them—upon which the world sets so great a store, and for which mankind is so rapidly exterminating a species.
Those wonderful teeth, dumb memorials so many of them, of dark tales of blood and suffering, of slave raids, plundered villages, murders, floggings, terrible journeys to the coast, unutterable scenes of horror and woe—what histories could they not unfold? But the tusks lay there, hugging their grim secrets, silent and mute enough.
Cecil Kensley, the person cataloguing these treasures of ivory in a purely matter-of-fact way, was a good-looking, fair-bearded man of thirty, partner in a wealthy firm, a bachelor, somewhat of a man of pleasure out of office hours, but in business smart, shrewd, and hard-working. The cataloguing of such an accumulation of ivory as that great warehouse held was a lengthy business; and all day, until four o'clock, Kensley was engaged, with the help of the warehousemen, sorting, turning over, and writing down. Before taking a short rest for luncheon, his eye fell upon one magnificent tusk—long, perfectly shaped and balanced, massive, highly polished, and, in colour, of the richest chrome yellow. It lay somewhat apart, and appeared to have no fellow; a careful inspection of the rest of the warehouse, and a single glance at that peerless tooth, showed that even out of all that vast collection no possible match for it could be found.
Kensley had been working all the morning at the far end of the warehouse; he now stood by the tusk which had so taken his eye.
"Hallo, Thomas!" he said, interrogating the man who stood by him, "what have you got here? What a grand tooth! Where's the fellow to it? Is it an odd one?"
"Yes, sir," replied the man, "it's an odd tooth, and a rare beauty. It's years since I saw the like of it. It's a grand tusk, as you say: I ran the measure over it, and it went 9 ft. 2 in., and it weighs just on 170 lb. It's as nigh perfect as can be, but there's just one little bit of a flaw down there by the base—an old wound, or something of the kind. There's a sight of good ivory in that tooth, and it must be as old as the hills a'most."
Kensley had seen in the fourteen years of his experience thousands of fine teeth; yet, connoisseur though he was, he thought, as his eye ran lovingly over that magnificent nine feet of ivory, splendid in colour, curve, and solidity, that he had never seen such another. He stooped to look at the flaw the man spoke of. Within a foot of the darker portion at the base, just beyond where the ivory had manifestly emerged from the flesh of the gum, there appeared a curious fault in the graining of the tooth, elsewhere perfect. The growth had been disturbed by some foreign substance, and the graining, instead of being as regular and even as a pattern woven by machinery, swept in irregular curves round the centre of the flaw.
Kensley rose to his feet again. "It's not much of a fault," he said, "and the tooth's a real beauty. I've been meaning this long time past to have such a tusk at my rooms, to decorate a corner or hang upon the wall. I think I'll take that fellow, Thomas, and pay for it; it will be a long time before I come across a better. See that it goes up to my flat tomorrow, will you? And take care how it's carried. I don't want it spoiled."
"All right, sir," replied the man, "I'll see to it myself. I'll give it a bit of a clean up and take it up for you tomorrow morning."
Once the tusk is installed in his flat, Kensley looks forward to showing off the treasure to friends. On the evening of the first such dinner gathering, he falls asleep in a chair near the tusk. In dreams he sees a tragedy unfold in Portugal's Mozambique colony several hundred years earlier. A local Portuguese administrator has caused the son of Mosusa, an old witch-doctor, to be whipped to death. Mosusa calls upon his old friend, an enormous one-tusked elephant, to exact revenge on the administrator.
The dream fades as Kensley's guests arrive.
Since The Pall Mall Magazine -- based on my reading of this trio of tales -- permitted wide latitude in use of coincidence, it is only to be expected that one of Kensley's dinner guest is a descendent of the Portuguese administrator: the tusk, the hour, and the man are quickly so-to-speak interpenetrated.
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Montague Summers tells readers that "there was no richer storehouse than the Pall Mall Magazine" when it came to 1890s horror tales. All three of the stories above, queer in an old-fashioned and oddly decorous way I find very appealing, were not masterpieces. They were compelling ephemera for a mass readership.
Jay
25 June 2022
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