Widdershins

Widdershins, by Oliver Onions

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Title: Widdershins
Author: Oliver Onions
Release Date: November 26, 2004 [eBook #14168] [Most recently
updated: October 24, 2006]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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WIDDERSHINS***
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WIDDERSHINS
by

OLIVER ONIONS
1911

"From Ghaisttes, Ghoulies and long-leggity Beasties and Things that go
Bump in the night--
"Good Lord, deliver us!"

NOTE
I have pleasure in acknowledging the courtesy of the proprietors of
"Shurey's Publications" by whose permission "The Cigarette Case" is
included in the present volume. Also it has been suggested that a
definition should be given of the word that forms the volume's title.
That word means "contrary to the course of the Sun."
O.O.

CONTENTS
I. THE BECKONING FAIR ONE II. PHANTAS III. ROOUM IV.
BENLIAN V. IO VI. THE ACCIDENT VII. THE CIGARETTE CASE
VIII. THE ROCKER IX. HIC JACET

THE BECKONING FAIR ONE

I
The three or four "To Let" boards had stood within the low paling as
long as the inhabitants of the little triangular "Square" could remember,

and if they had ever been vertical it was a very long time ago. They
now overhung the palings each at its own angle, and resembled nothing
so much as a row of wooden choppers, ever in the act of falling upon
some passer-by, yet never cutting off a tenant for the old house from
the stream of his fellows. Not that there was ever any great "stream"
through the square; the stream passed a furlong and more away, beyond
the intricacy of tenements and alleys and byways that had sprung up
since the old house had been built, hemming it in completely; and
probably the house itself was only suffered to stand pending the
falling-in of a lease or two, when doubtless a clearance would be made
of the whole neighbourhood.
It was of bloomy old red brick, and built into its walls were the crowns
and clasped hands and other insignia of insurance companies long since
defunct. The children of the secluded square had swung upon the low
gate at the end of the entrance-alley until little more than the solid top
bar of it remained, and the alley itself ran past boarded basement
windows on which tramps had chalked their cryptic marks. The path
was washed and worn uneven by the spilling of water from the eaves of
the encroaching next house, and cats and dogs had made the approach
their own. The chances of a tenant did not seem such as to warrant the
keeping of the "To Let" boards in a state of legibility and repair, and as
a matter of fact they were not so kept.
For six months Oleron had passed the old place twice a day or oftener,
on his way from his lodgings to the room, ten minutes' walk away, he
had taken to work in; and for six months no hatchet-like notice-board
had fallen across his path. This might have been due to the fact that he
usually took the other side of the square. But he chanced one morning
to take the side that ran past the broken gate and the rain-worn entrance
alley, and to pause before one of the inclined boards. The board bore,
besides the agent's name, the announcement, written apparently about
the time of Oleron's own early youth, that the key was to be had at
Number Six.
Now Oleron was already paying, for his separate bedroom and
workroom, more than an author who, without private means, habitually

disregards his public, can afford; and he was paying in addition a small
rent for the storage of the greater part of his grandmother's furniture.
Moreover, it invariably happened that the book he wished to read in
bed was at his working-quarters half a mile and more away, while the
note or letter he had sudden need of during the day was as likely as not
to be in the pocket of another coat hanging behind his bedroom door.
And there were other inconveniences in having a divided domicile.
Therefore Oleron, brought suddenly up by the hatchet-like notice-board,
looked first down through some scanty privet-bushes at the boarded
basement windows, then up at the blank and grimy windows of the first
floor, and so up to the second floor and the flat stone coping of the
leads. He stood for a minute thumbing his