It was a little before sunset on that day that Mr. James Morton turned
down on to the Embankment to walk up to the Westminster underground to
take him home. He was a great man on physical exercise, and it was a
matter of principle with him to live far from his work. As he came
down the little passage he found his friend waiting for him, and
together they turned up towards where in the distance the Westminster
towers rose high and blue against the evening sky.
"Well?" said the old man.
Mr. Morton looked at him with a humorous eye.
"You are a hopeless case," he said.
"Kindly tell me what you noticed."
"My dear man," he said, "there's absolutely nothing to say. I did
exactly what you said: I hardly spoke to him at all: I watched him
very carefully indeed. I really can't go on doing that day after day.
I've got my own work to do. It's the most utter bunkum I ever--"
"Tell me anything odd that you saw."
"There was nothing odd at all, except that the boy looked tired, as
you saw for yourself this morning."
"Did he behave exactly as usual?"
"Exactly, except that he was quieter. He fidgeted a little with his
fingers."
"Yes?"
"And he seemed very hard at work. I caught him looking at me once or
twice."
"Yes? How did he look?"
"He just looked at me--that was all. Good Lord! what do you want--"
"And there was nothing else--absolutely nothing else?"
"Absolutely nothing else."
"He didn't complain of ... of anything?"
"Lord...! Oh, yes; he did say something about a headache."
"Ah!" The old man leaned forward. "A headache? What kind?"
"Back of his head."
The old man sat back with pursed lips.
"Did he talk about last night?" he went on again suddenly.
"Not a word."
"Ah!"
Mr. Morton burst into a rude uproarious laugh.
"Upon my word!" he said. "I think, Cathcart, you're the most
amazingly--"
The other held up a gloved hand in deprecation; but he did not seem at
all ruffled.
"Yes, yes; we can take all that as said.... I'm accustomed to it, my
dear fellow. Well, I saw Miss Deronnais, as I told you I should in my
note.... You're quite right about her."
"Pleased to hear it, I'm sure," said Mr. Morton solemnly.
"She's one in a thousand. I told her right out, you know, that I
feared insanity."
"Oh! you did! That's tactful! How did she--"
"She took it admirably."
"And did you tell her your delightful theories?"
"I did not. She will see all that for herself, I expect. Meantime--"
"Oh, you didn't tell me about your interview with Lady Laura."
The old face grew a little grim.
"Ah! that's not finished yet," he said. "I'm on my way to her now. I
don't think she'll play with the thing again just yet."
"And the others--the medium, and so on?"
"They will have to take their chance. It's absolutely useless going to
them."
"They're as bad as I am, I expect."
The old man turned a sharp face to him.
"Oh! you know nothing whatever about it," he said. "You don't
count. But they do know quite enough."
In the underground the two talked no more; but Mr. Morton, affecting
to read his paper, glanced up once or twice at the old shrewd face
opposite that stared so steadily out of the window into the roaring
darkness. And once more he reflected how astonishing it was that
anyone in these days--anyone, at least, possessing common sense--and
common sense was written all over that old bearded face--could believe
such fantastic rubbish as that which had been lately discussed. It
was not only the particular points that regarded Laurie Baxter--all
these absurd, though disquieting hints about insanity and suicide and
the rest of it--but the principles that old Cathcart declared to be
beneath--those principles which he had, apparently, not confided to
Miss Deronnais. Here was the twentieth century; here was an electric
railway, padded seats, and the _Pall Mall_...! Was further comment
required?
The train began to slow up at Gloucester Road; and old Cathcart
gathered up his umbrella and gloves.
"Then tomorrow," he said, "at the same time?"
Mr. Morton made a resigned gesture.
"But why don't you go and have it out with him yourself?" he asked.
"He would not listen to me--less than ever now. Good night!"
* * * * *
The train slid on again into the darkness; and the lawyer sat for a
moment with pursed lips. Yes, of course the boy was overwrought:
anyone could see that: he had stammered a little--a sure sign. But why
make all this fuss? A week in the country would set him right.
Then he opened the _Pall Mall_ again resolutely.
_Chapter XV_
I
Mr. and Mrs. Nugent were enjoying their holiday exceedingly. On Good
Friday they had driven laboriously in a waggonette to Royston, where
they had visited the hermit's cave in company with other grandees of
their village, and held a stately picnic on the downs. They had
returned, the gentlemen of the party slightly flushed with brandy and
water from the various hostelries on the home journey, and the ladies
severe, with watercress on their laps. Accordingly, on the Saturday,
Mrs. Nugent had thought it better to stay indoors and dispatch her
husband to the scene of the first cricket match of the season, a
couple of miles away.
At about five o'clock she made herself a cup of tea, and did not wake
up from the sleep which followed until the evening was closing in. She
awoke with a start, remembering that she had intended to give a good
look between the spare bedroom that had been her daughter's, and
possibly make a change or two of the furniture. There was a mahogany
wardrobe ... and so forth.
She had not entered this room very often since the death. It had come
to resemble to her mind a sort of melancholy sanctuary, symbolical of
glories that might have been; for she and her husband were full of the
glorious day that had begun to dawn when Laurie, very constrained
though very ardent, had called upon them in state to disclose his
intentions. Well, it had been a false dawn; but at least it could be,
and was, still talked about in sad and suggestive whispers.
It seemed full then of a mysterious splendor when she entered it this
evening, candle in hand, and stood regarding it from the threshold. To
the outward eye it was nothing very startling. A shrouded bed
protruded from the wall opposite with the words "The Lord preserve
thee from all evil" illuminated in pink and gold by the girl's own
hand. An oleograph of Queen Victoria in coronation robes hung on one
side and the painted photograph of a Nonconformist divine, Bible in
hand, whiskered and cravatted, upon the other. There was a small
cloth-covered table at the foot of the bed, adorned with an almost
continuous line of brass-headed nails as a kind of beading round the
edge, in the center of which rested the plaster image of a young
person clasping a cross. A hymn-book and a Bible stood before this,
and a small jar of wilted flowers. Against the opposite wall, flanked
by dejected-looking wedding-groups, and another text or two, stood the
great mahogany wardrobe, whose removal was vaguely in contemplation.
Mrs. Nugent regarded the whole with a tender kind of severity, shaking
her head slowly from side to side, with the tin candlestick slightly
tilted. She was a full-bodied lady, in clothes rather too tight for
her, and she panted a little after the ascent of the stairs. It seemed
to her once more a strangely and inexplicably perverse act of
Providence, to whom she had always paid deference, by which so
incalculable a rise in the social scale had been denied to her.
Then she advanced a step, her eyes straying from the shrouded bed to
the wardrobe and back again. Then she set the candlestick upon the
table and turned round.
It must now be premised that Mrs. Nugent was utterly without a trace
of what is known as superstition; for the whole evidential value of
what follows, such as it is, depends upon that fact. She would not, by
preference, sleep in a room immediately after a death had taken place
in it, but solely for the reason of certain ill-defined physical
theories which she would have summed up under the expression that "it
was but right that the air should be changed." Her views on human
nature and its component parts were undoubtedly practical and
common-sense. To put it brutally, Amy's body was in the churchyard and
Amy's soul, crowned and robed, in heaven; so there was no more to
account for. She knew nothing of modern theories, nothing of the
revival of ancient beliefs; she would have regarded with kindly
compassion, and met with practical comments, that unwilling shrinking
from scenes of death occasionally manifested by certain kind of
temperaments.
She turned, then, and looked at the wardrobe, still full of Amy's
belongings, with her back to the bed in which Amy had died, without
even the faintest premonitory symptom of the unreasoning terror that
presently seized upon her.
It came about in this way.
She kneeled down, after a careful scrutiny of the polished surface of
the mahogany, pulled out a drawer filled to brimming over with linen
of various kinds and uses, and began to dive among these with careful
housewifely hands to discover their tale. Simultaneously, as she
remembered afterwards, there came from the hill leading down from the
direction of the station, the sound of a trotting horse.
She paused to listen, her mind full of that faint gossipy surmise that
surges so quickly up in the thoughts of village dwellers, her hands
for an instant motionless among the linen. It might be the doctor, or
Mr. Paton, or Mr. Grove. Those names flashed upon her; but an instant
later were drowned again in a kind of fear of which she could give
afterwards no account.
It seemed to her, she said, that there was something coming towards
her that set her a-tremble; and when, a moment later, the trotting
hoofs rang out sharp and near, she positively relapsed into a kind of
sitting position on the floor, helpless and paralyzed by a furious
up-rush of terror.
For it appeared, so far as Mrs. Nugent could afterwards make it out,
as if a sort of double process went on. It was not merely that Fear,
full-armed, rushed upon with the approaching wheels, outside and
therefore harmless; but that the room itself in which she crouched,
itself filled with some atmosphere, swift as water in a rising lock,
that held her there motionless, blind and dumb with horror, unable to
move, even to lift her hands or turn her head. As one approached, the
other rose.
Again sounded the hoofs and wheels, near now and imminent. Again they
hushed as the corner was approached. Then once more, as they broke
out, clear and distinct, not twenty yards away at the turning into the
village, Mrs. Nugent, no longer able even to keep that rigid position
of fear, sank gently backwards and relapsed in a huddle on the floor.