Produced by An Anonymous Volunteer
THE GREY ROOM
by Eden Phillpotts
CONTENTS
CHAPTER
I. THE HOUSE PARTY
II. AN EXPERIMENT
III. AT THE ORIEL
IV. "BY THE HAND OF GOD"
V. THE UNSEEN MOVES
VI. THE ORDER FROM LONDON
VII. THE FANATIC
VIII. THE LABORS OF THE FOUR
IX. THE NIGHT WATCH
X. SIGNOR VERGILIO MANNETTI
XI. PRINCE DJEM
XII. THE GOLDEN BULL
XIII. TWO NOTES
CHAPTER I. THE HOUSE PARTY
The piers of the main entrance of Chadlands were of red brick, and upon
each reposed a mighty sphere of grey granite. Behind them stretched away
the park, where forest trees, nearly shorn of their leaves at the
edge of winter, still answered the setting sun with fires of thinning
foliage. They sank away through stretches of brake fern, and already
amid their trunks arose a thin, blue haze--breath of earth made visible
by coming cold. There was frost in the air, and the sickle of a new moon
hung where dusk of evening dimmed the green of the western sky.
The guns were returning, and eight men with three women arrived at the
lofty gates. One of the party rode a grey pony, and a woman walked on
each side of him. They chattered together, and the little company of
tweed-clad people passed into Chadlands Park and trudged forward, where
the manor house rose half a mile ahead.
Then an old man emerged from a lodge, hidden behind a grove of laurel
and bay within the entrance, and shut the great gates of scroll iron.
They were of a flamboyant Italian period, and more arrestive than
distinguished. Panelled upon them, and belonging to a later day than
they, had been imposed two iron coats of arms, with crest above and
motto beneath--the heraldic bearings of the present owner of Chadlands.
He set store upon such things, but was not responsible for the work. A
survival himself, and steeped in ancient opinions, his coat, won in a
forgotten age, interested him only less than his Mutiny medal--his sole
personal claim to public honor. He had served in youth as a soldier, but
was still a subaltern when his father died and he came into his kingdom.
Now, Sir Walter Lennox, fifth baronet, had grown old, and his invincible
kindness of heart, his archaic principles, his great wealth, and the
limited experiences of reality, for which such wealth was responsible,
left him a popular and respected man. Yet he aroused much exasperation
in local landowners from his generosity and scorn of all economic
principles; and while his tenants held him the very exemplar of a
landlord, and his servants worshipped him for the best possible reasons,
his friends, weary of remonstrance, were forced to forgive his bad
precedents and a mistaken liberality quite beyond the power of the
average unfortunate who lives by his land. But he managed his great
manor in his own lavish way, and marvelled that other men declared
difficulties with problems he so readily solved. That night, after a
little music, the Chadlands' house party drifted to the billiard-room,
and while most of the men, after a heavy day far afield, were content to
lounge by a great open hearth where a wood fire burned, Sir Walter, who
had been on a pony most of the time, declared himself unwearied, and
demanded a game.
"No excuses, Henry," he said; and turned to a young man lounging in an
easy-chair outside the fireside circle.
The youth started. His eyes had been fixed on a woman sitting beside the
fire, with her hand in a man's. It was such an attitude as sophisticated
lovers would only assume in private but the pair were not sophisticated
and lovers still, though married. They lacked self-consciousness, and
the husband liked to feel his wife's hand in his. After all, a thing
impossible until you are married may be quite seemly afterwards, and
none of their amiable elders regarded their devotion with cynicism.
"All right, uncle!" said Henry Lennox.
He rose--a big fellow with heavy shoulders, a clean-shaven, youthful
face, and flaxen hair. He had been handsome, save for a nose with a
broken bridge, but his pale brown eyes were fine, and his firm mouth and
chin well modelled. Imagination and reflection marked his countenance.
Sir Walter claimed thirty points on his scoring board, and gave a miss
with the spot ball.
"I win to-night," he said.
He was a small, very upright man, with a face that seemed to belong to
his generation, and an expression seldom to be seen on a man younger
than seventy. Life had not puzzled him; his moderate intellect had taken
it as he found it, and, through the magic glasses of good health, good
temper, and great wealth, judged existence a desirable thing and quite
easy to conduct with credit. "You only want patience and a brain," he
always declared. Sir Walter wore an eyeglass. He was growing bald, but
preserved a pair of grey whiskers still of respectable size. His face,
indeed, belied him, for it was moulded in a stern pattern. One had
guessed him a martinet until his amiable opinions and easy-going
personality were manifested. The old man was not vain; he knew that a
world very different from his own extended round about him. But he was
puzzle-headed, and had never been shaken from his life-long complacency
by circumstances. He had been disappointed in love as a young man, and
only married late in life. He had no son, and was a widower--facts that,
to his mind, quite dwarfed his good fortune in every other respect. He
held the comfortable doctrine that things are always levelled up, and he
honestly believed that he had suffered as much sorrow and disappointment
as any Lennox in the history of the race.
His only child and her cousin, Henry Lennox, had been brought up
together and were of an age--both now twenty-six. The lad was his
uncle's heir, and would succeed to Chadlands and the title; and it had
been Sir Walter's hope that he and Mary might marry. Nor had the youth
any objection to such a plan. Indeed, he loved Mary well enough; there
was even thought to be a tacit understanding between them, and they
grew up in a friendship which gradually became ardent on the man's part,
though it never ripened upon hers. But she knew that her father keenly
desired this marriage, and supposed that it would happen some day.
They were, however, not betrothed when the war burst upon Europe, and
Henry, then one-and-twenty, went from the Officers' Training Corps to
the Fifth Devons, while his cousin became attached to the Red Cross and
nursed at Plymouth. The accident terminated their shadowy romance and
brought real love into the woman's life, while the man found his
hopes at an end. He was drafted to Mesopotamia, speedily fell sick of
jaundice, was invalided to India, and, on returning to the front, saw
service against the Turks. But chance willed that he won no distinction.
He did his duty under dreary circumstances, while to his hatred of war
was added the weight of his loss when he heard that Mary had fallen
in love. He was an ingenuous, kindly youth--a typical Lennox, who had
developed an accomplishment at Harrow and suffered for it by getting
his nose broken when winning the heavy-weight championship of the public
schools in his nineteenth year. In the East he still boxed, and after
his love story was ended, the epidemic of poetry-making took Henry also,
and he wrote a volume of harmless verse, to the undying amazement of his
family.
For Mary Lennox the war had brought a sailor husband. Captain Thomas
May, wounded rather severely at Jutland, lost his heart to the plain
but attractive young woman with a fine figure who nursed him back to
strength, and, as he vowed, had saved his life. He was an impulsive man
of thirty, brown-bearded, black-eyed, and hot-tempered. He came from a
little Somerset vicarage and was the only son of a clergyman, the
Rev. Septimus May. Knowing the lady as "Nurse Mary" only, and falling
passionately in love for the first time in his life, he proposed on the
day he was allowed to sit up, and since Mary Lennox shared his emotions,
also for the first time, he was accepted before he even knew her name.
It is impossible to describe the force of love's advent for Mary Lennox.
She had come to believe herself as vaguely committed to her cousin, and
imagined that her affection for Henry amounted to as much as she was
ever likely to feel for a man. But reality awakened her, and its glory
did not make her selfish, since her nature was not constructed so to
be; it only taught her what love meant, and convinced her that she could
never marry anybody on earth but the stricken sailor. And this she knew
long before he was well enough to give a sign that he even appreciated
her ministry. The very whisper of his voice sent a thrill through her
before he had gained strength to speak aloud. And his deep tones, when
she heard them, were like no voice that had fallen on her ear till then.
The first thing that indicated restoring health was his request that his
beard might be trimmed; and he was making love to her three days after
he had been declared out of danger. Then did Mary begin to live, and
looking back, she marvelled how horses and dogs and a fishing-rod had
been her life till now. The revelation bewildered her and she wrote her
emotions in many long pages to her cousin. The causes of such changes
she did not indeed specify, but he read between the lines, and knew it
was a man and not the war that had so altered and deepened her outlook.
He had never done it, and he could not be angry with her now, for she
had pretended no ardor of emotion to him. Young though he was, he always
feared that she liked him not after the way of a lover. He had hoped to
open her eyes some day, but it was given to another to do so.
He felt no surprise, therefore, when news of her engagement reached him
from herself. He wrote the letter of his life in reply, and was at pains
to laugh at their boy-and-girl attachment, and lessen any regret she
might feel on his account. Her father took it somewhat hardly at first,
for he held that more than sufficient misfortunes, to correct the
balance of prosperity in his favor, had already befallen him. But he was
deeply attached to his daughter, and her magical change under the new
and radiant revelation convinced him that she had now awakened to an
emotional fulness of life which could only be the outward sign of love.
That she was in love for the first time also seemed clear; but he would
not give his consent until he had seen her lover and heard all there was
to know about him. That, however, did not alarm Mary, for she believed
that Thomas May must prove a spirit after Sir Walter's heart. And so he
did. The sailor was a gentleman; he had proposed without the faintest
notion to whom he offered his penniless hand, and when he did find out,
was so bewildered that Mary assured her father she thought he would
change his mind.
"If I had not threatened him with disgrace and breach of promise, I do
think he would have thrown me over," she said.
And now they had been wedded for six months, and Mary sat by the great
log fire with her hand in Tom's. The sailor was on leave, but
expected to return to his ship at Plymouth in a day or two. Then his
father-in-law had promised to visit the great cruiser, for the Navy was
a service of which he knew little. Lennoxes had all been soldiers or
clergymen since a great lawyer founded the race.
The game of billiards proceeded, and Henry caught his uncle in the
eighties and ran out with an unfinished fifteen. Then Ernest Travers and
his wife--old and dear friends of Sir Walter--played a hundred up, the
lady receiving half the game. Mr. Travers was a Suffolk man, and had
fagged for Sir Walter at Eton. Their comradeship had lasted a lifetime,
and no year passed without reciprocal visits. Travers also looked at
life with the eyes of a wealthy man. He was sixty-five, pompous, large,
and rubicund--a "backwoodsman" of a pattern obsolescent. His wife, ten
years younger than himself, loved pleasure, but she had done more than
her duty, in her opinion, and borne him two sons and a daughter. They
were colorless, kind-hearted people who lived in a circle of others like
themselves. The war had sobered them, and at an early stage robbed them
of their younger boy.
Nelly Travers won her game amid congratulations, and Tom May challenged
another woman, a Diana, who lived for sport and had joined the
house party with her uncle, Mr. Felix Fayre-Michell. But Millicent
Fayre-Michell refused.
"I've shot six partridges, a hare, and two pheasants to-day," said the
girl, "and I'm half asleep."
Other men were present also of a type not dissimilar. It was a
conventional gathering of rich nobodies, each a big frog in his own
little puddle, none known far beyond it and none with sufficient
intellect or ability to create for himself any position in the world
save that won by the accident of money made by their progenitors.
Had it been necessary for any of them to earn his living, only in some
very modest capacity and on a very modest plane might they have done
so. Of the entire company only one--the youngest--could claim even the
celebrity that attached to his little volume of war verses.
And now upon the lives of these every-day folk was destined to break an
event unique and extraordinary. Existence, that had meandered without
personal incident save of a description common to them all, was, within
twelve hours, to confront men and women alike with reality. They were
destined to endure at close quarters an occurrence so astounding and
unparalleled that, for once in their lives, they would find themselves
interesting to the wider world beyond their own limited circuit, and,
for their friends and acquaintance, the centre of a nine days' wonder.
Most of them, indeed, merely touched the hem of the mystery and were not
involved therein, but even for them a reflected glory shone. They were
at least objects of attraction elsewhere, and for many months furnished
conversation of a more interesting and exciting character than any could
ever claim to have provided before.
The attitude to such an event, and the opinions concerning it, of such
people might have been pretty accurately predicted; nor would it be fair
to laugh at their terror and bewilderment, their confusion of tongues
and the fatuous theories they adventured by way of explanation. For
wiser than they--men experienced in the problems of humanity and trained
to solve its enigmas--were presently in no better case.
A very trivial and innocent remark was prelude to the disaster; and had
the speaker guessed what his jest must presently mean in terms of human
misery, grief, and horror, it is certain enough that he would not have
spoken.
The women were gone to bed and the men sat around the fire smoking and
admiring Sir Walter's ancient blend of whisky. He himself had just flung
away the stump of his cigar and was admonishing his son-in-law. "Church
to-morrow, Tom. None of your larks. When first you came to see me,
remember, you went to church twice on Sunday like a lamb. I'll have no
backsliding."
"Mary will see to that, governor."
"And you, Henry."
Sir Walter, disappointed of his hopes respecting his nephew and
daughter, had none the less treated the young man with tact and
tenderness. He felt for Henry; he was also fond of him and doubted not
that the youth would prove a worthy successor. Thomas May was one with
whom none could quarrel, and he and his wife's old flame were now, after
the acquaintance of a week, on friendly terms.
"I shan't fail, uncle."
"Will anybody have another whisky?" asked Sir Walter, rising.
It was the signal for departure and invariably followed the stroke of
a deep-mouthed, grandfather clock in the hall. When eleven sounded, the
master rose; but to-night he was delayed. Tom May spoke.
"Fayre-Michell has never heard the ghost story, governor," he said, "and
Mr. Travers badly wants another drink. If he doesn't have one, he won't
sleep all night. He's done ten men's work to-day."
Mr. Fayre-Michell spoke.
"I didn't know you had a ghost, Sir Walter. I'm tremendously interested
in psychical research and so on. If it's not bothering you and keeping
you up--."
"A ghost at Chadlands, Walter?" asked Ernest Travers. "You never told
me."
"Ghosts are all humbug," declared another speaker--a youthful "colonel"
of the war.
"I deprecate that attitude, Vane. It may certainly be that our ghost is
a humbug, or, rather, that we have no such thing as a ghost at all.
And that is my own impression. But an idle generality is always
futile--indeed, any generality usually is. You have, at least, no right
to say, 'Ghosts are all humbug.' Because you cannot prove they are. The
weight of evidence is very much on the other side."
"Sorry," said Colonel Vane, a man without pride. "I didn't know you
believed in 'em, Sir Walter."
"Most emphatically I believe in them."
"So do I," declared Ernest Travers. "Nay, so does my wife--for the best
possible reason. A friend of hers actually saw one."
Mr. Fayre-Michell spoke.
"Spiritualism and spirits are two quite different things," he said. "One
may discredit the whole business of spiritualism and yet firmly believe
in spirits."
He was a narrow-headed, clean-shaven man with grey hair and moustache.
He had a small body on very long legs, and though a veteran now, was
still one of the best game shots in the West of England.
Ernest Travers agreed with him. Indeed, they all agreed. Sir Walter
himself summed up.
"If you're a Christian, you must believe in the spirits of the dead,"
he declared; "but to go out of your way to summon these spirits, to call
them from the next world back to ours, and to consult people who profess
to be able to do so--extremely doubtful characters, as a rule--that I
think is much to be condemned. I deny that there are any living mediums
of communication between the spirit world and this one, and I should
always judge the man or woman who claimed such power to be a charlatan.
But that spirits of the departed have appeared and been recognized by
the living, who shall deny?
"My son-in-law has a striking case in his own recent experience. He
actually knows a man who was going to sail on the Lusitania, and his
greatest friend on earth, a soldier who fell on the Maine, appeared to
him and advised him not to do so. Tom's acquaintance could not say that
he heard words uttered, but he certainly recognized his dead friend as
he stood by his bedside, and he received into his mind a clear warning
before the vision disappeared. Is that so, Tom?"
"Exactly so, sir. And Jack Thwaites--that was the name of the man in New
York--told four others about it, and three took his tip and didn't sail.
The fourth went; but he wasn't drowned. He came out all right."
"The departed are certainly proved to appear in their own ghostly
persons--nay, they often have been seen to do so," admitted Travers.
"But I will never believe they are at our beck and call, to bang
tambourines or move furniture. We cannot ring up the dead as we ring
up the living on a telephone. The idea is insufferable and indecent.
Neither can anybody be used as a mouth-piece in that way, or tell us the
present position or occupation and interests of a dead man--or what he
smokes, or how his liquor tastes. Such ideas degrade our impressions
of life beyond the grave. They are, if I may say so, disgustingly
anthropomorphic. How can we even take it for granted that our spirits
will retain a human form and human attributes after death?"
"It would be both weak-minded and irreligious to attempt to get at these
things, no doubt," declared Colonel Vane.
"And they make confusion worse confounded by saying that evil spirits
pretend sometimes to hoodwink us by posing as good spirits. Now, that's
going too far," said Henry Lennox.
"But your own ghost, Sir Walter?" asked Fayre-Michell. "It is a curious
fact that most really ancient houses have some such addition. Is it
a family spectre? Is it fairly well authenticated? Does it reign in a
particular spot of house or garden? I ask from no idle curiosity. It
is a very interesting subject if approached in a proper spirit, as the
Psychical Research Society, of which I am a member, does approach it."
"I am unprepared to admit that we have a ghost at all," repeated Sir
Walter. "Ancient houses, as you say, often get some legend tacked on to
them, and here a garden walk, or there a room, or passage, is associated
with something uncanny and contrary to experience. This is an old Tudor
place, and has been tinkered and altered in successive generations.
We have one room at the eastern end of the great corridor which always
suffered from a bad reputation. Nobody has ever seen anything in our
time, and neither my father nor grandfather ever handed down any story
of a personal experience. It is a bedroom, which you shall see, if you
care to do so. One very unfortunate and melancholy thing happened in it.
That was some twelve years ago, when Mary was still a child--two years
after my dear wife died."
"Tell us nothing that can cause you any pain, Walter," said Ernest
Travers.
"It caused me very acute pain at the time. Now it is old history and
mercifully one can look back with nothing but regret. One must, however,
mention an incident in my father's time, though it has nothing to do
with my own painful experience. However, that is part of the story--if
story it can be called. A death occurred in the Grey Room when I was
a child. Owing to the general vague feeling entertained against it,
we never put guests there, and so long ago as my father's day it was
relegated to a store place and lumber-store. But one Christmas, when we
were very full, there came quite unexpectedly on Christmas Eve an aunt
of my father--an extraordinary old character who never did anything that
might be foreseen. She had never come to the family reunion before, yet
appeared on this occasion, and declared that, as this was going to be
her last Christmas on earth, she had felt it right to join the clan--my
father being the head of the family. Her sudden advent strained our
resources, I suppose, but she herself reminded us of the Grey Room, and,
on hearing that it was empty, insisted on occupying it. The place is a
bedroom, and my father, who personally entertained no dislike or dread
of it, raised not the least objection to the strong-minded old lady's
proposal. She retired, and was found dead on Christmas morning. She had
not gone to bed, but was just about to do so, apparently, when she had
fallen down and died. She was eighty-eight, had undergone a lengthy
coach journey from Exeter, and had eaten a remarkably good dinner before
going to bed. Her maid was not suspected, and the doctor held her end
in no way unusual. It was certainly never associated with anything but
natural causes. Indeed, only events of much later date served to remind
me of the matter. Then one remembered the spoiled Christmas festivities
and the callous and selfish anger of myself and various other young
people that our rejoicings should be spoiled and Christmas shorn of all
its usual delights.
"But twelve years ago Mary fell ill of pneumonia--dangerously--and a
nurse had to be summoned in haste, since her own faithful attendant,
Jane Bond, who is still with us, could not attend her both day and
night. A telegram to the Nurses' Institute brought Mrs. Gilbert
Forrester--'Nurse Forrester,' as she preferred to be called. She was a
little bit of a thing, but most attractive and capable. She had been a
nurse before she married a young medical man, and upon his unfortunate
death she returned to her profession. She desired her bedroom to be as
near the patient as possible, and objected, when she found it arranged
at the other end of the corridor. 'Why not the next room?' she inquired;
and I had to tell her that the next room suffered from a bad name
and was not used. 'A bad name--is it unwholesome?' she asked; and I
explained that traditions credited it with a sinister influence. 'In
fact,' I said, 'it is supposed to be haunted. Not,' I added, 'that
anything has ever been seen, or heard in my lifetime; but nervous
people do not like that sort of room, and I should never take the
responsibility of putting anybody into it without telling them.' She
laughed. 'I'm not in the least afraid of ghosts, Sir Walter,' she said,
'and that must obviously be my room, if you please. It is necessary I
should be as near my patient as possible, so that I can be called at
once if her own nurse is anxious when I am not on duty.'
"Well, we saw, of course, that she was perfectly right. She was a
fearless little woman, and chaffed Masters and the maids while they
lighted a fire and made the room comfortable. As a matter of fact, it
is an exceedingly pleasant room in every respect. Yet I hesitated, and
could not say that I was easy about it. I felt conscious of a discomfort
which even her indifference did not entirely banish. I attributed it to
my acute anxiety over Mary--also to a shadow of--what? It may have
been irritation at Nurse Forrester's unconcealed contempt for my
superstition. The Grey Room is large and commodious with a rather fine
oriel window above our eastern porch. She was delighted, and rated me
very amusingly for my doubts. 'I hope you'll never call such a lovely
room haunted again after I have gone,' said she.
"Mary took to her, and really seemed easier after she had been in the
sick-room an hour. She loved young people, and had an art to win them.
She was also a most accomplished and quick-witted nurse. There seemed
to be quite a touch of genius about her. Her voice was melodious and her
touch gentle. I could appreciate her skill, for I was never far from
my daughter's side during that anxious day. Mrs. Forrester came at the
critical hours, but declared herself very sanguine from the first.
"Night fell; the child was sleeping and Jane Bond arrived to relieve the
other about ten o'clock. Then the lady retired, directed that she should
be called at seven o'clock, or at any moment sooner, if Jane wanted her.
I sat with Jane I remember until two, and then turned in myself. Before
I did so, Mary drank some milk and seemed to be holding her strength
well. I was worn out, and despite my anxiety fell into deep sleep, and
did not wake until my man called me half an hour earlier than usual.
What he told me brought me quickly to my senses and out of bed. Nurse
Forrester had been called at seven o'clock, but had not responded. Nor
could the maid open the door, for it was locked. A quarter of an hour
later the housekeeper and Jane Bond had loudly summoned her without
receiving any reply. Then they called me.
"I could only direct that the door should be forced open as speedily as
possible, and we were engaged in this task when Mannering, my medical
man, who shot with us to-day, arrived to see Mary. I told him what had
happened. He went in to look at my girl, and felt satisfied that she was
holding her own well--indeed, he thought her stronger; and just as
he told me so the door into the Grey Room yielded. Mannering and my
housekeeper, Mrs. Forbes, entered the room, while Masters, Fred Caunter,
my footman, who had broken down the lock, and I remained outside.
"The doctor presently called me, and I went in. Nurse Forrester was
apparently lying awake in bed, but she was not awake. She slept the
sleep of death. Her eyes were open, but glazed, and she was already
cold. Mannering declared that she had been dead for a good many hours.
Yet, save for a slight but hardly unnatural pallor, not a trace of death
marked the poor little creature. An expression of wonder seemed to sit
on her features, but otherwise she was looking much as I had last seen
her, when she said 'Good-night.' Everything appeared to be orderly in
the room. It was now flooded with the first light of a sunny morning,
for she had drawn her blind up and thrown her window wide open. The poor
lady passed out of life without a sound or signal to indicate trouble,
for in the silence of night Jane Bond must have heard any alarm had she
raised one. To me it seemed impossible to believe that we gazed upon
a corpse. But so it was, though, as a matter of form, the doctor took
certain measures to restore her. But animation was not suspended; it had
passed beyond recall.
"There was held a post-mortem examination, and an inquest, of course;
and Mannering, who felt deep professional interest, asked a friend
from Plymouth to conduct the examination. Their report astounded all
concerned and crowned the mystery, for not a trace of any physical
trouble could be discovered to explain Nurse Forrester's death. She was
thin, but organically sound in every particular, nor could the slightest
trace of poison be reported. Life had simply left her without any
physical reason. Search proved that she had brought no drugs or any sort
of physic with her, and no information to cast the least light came from
the institution for which she worked. She was a favorite there, and the
news of her sudden death brought sorrow to her many personal friends.
"The physicians felt their failure to find a natural and scientific
cause for her death. Indeed, Dr. Mordred, from Plymouth, an eminent
pathologist, trembled not a little about it, as Mannering afterwards
told me. The finite mind of science hates, apparently, to be faced with
any mystery beyond its power to explain. It regards such an incident
as a challenge to human intellect, and does not remember that we are
encompassed with mystery as with a garment, and that every day and every
night are laden with phenomena for which man cannot account, and never
will.
"Nurse Forrester's relations--a sister and an old mother--came to the
funeral. Also her dearest woman friend, another professional nurse,
whose name I do not recollect. She was buried at Chadlands, and her
grave lies near our graves. Mary loves to tend it still, though to her
the dead woman is but a name. Yet to this day she declares that she can
remember Nurse Forrester's voice through her fever--gentle, yet musical
and cheerful. As for me, I never mourned so brief an acquaintance
so heartily. To part with the bright creature, so full of life and
kindliness, and to stand beside her corpse but eight or nine hours
afterwards, was a chastening and sad experience."
Sir Walter became pensive, and did not proceed for the space of a
minute. None, however, spoke until he had again done so:
"That is the story of what is called our haunted room, so far as this
generation is concerned. What grounds for its sinister reputation
existed in the far past I know not--only a vague, oral tradition came to
my father from his, and it is certain that neither of them attached any
personal importance to it. But after such a peculiar and unfortunate
tragedy, you will not be surprised that I regarded the chamber as ruled
out from my domiciliary scheme, and denied it to any future guests."
"Do you really associate the lady's death with the room, Walter?" asked
Mr. Travers.
"Honestly I do not, Ernest. And for this reason: I deny that any
malignant, spiritual personality would ever be permitted by the Creator
to exercise physical powers over the living, or destroy human beings
without reason or justice. The horror of such a possibility to the
normal mind is sufficient argument against it. Causes beyond our
apparent knowledge were responsible for the death of Nurse Forrester;
but who shall presume to say that was really so? Why imagine anything so
irregular? I prefer to think that had the post-mortem been conducted by
somebody else, subtle reasons for her death might have appeared. Science
is fallible, and even specialists make outrageous mistakes."
"You believe she died from natural causes beyond the skill of those
particular surgeons to discover?" asked Colonel Vane.
"That is my opinion. Needless to say, I should not tell Mannering so.
But to what other conclusion can a reasonable man come? I do not, of
course, deny the supernatural, but it is weak-minded to fall back upon
it as the line of least resistance."
Then Fayre-Michell repeated his question. He had listened with intense
interest to the story.
"Would you deny that ghosts, so to call them, can be associated with one
particular spot, to the discomfort and even loss of reason, or life, of
those that may be in that spot at the psychological moment, Sir Walter?"
"Emphatically I would deny it," declared the elder. "However tragic the
circumstances that might have befallen an unfortunate being in life at
any particular place, it is, in my opinion, monstrous to suppose his
disembodied spirit will hereafter be associated with the place. We
must be reasonable, Felix. Shall the God Who gave us reason be Himself
unreasonable?"
"And yet there are authentic--However, I admit the weight of your
argument."
"At the same time," ventured Mr. Travers, "none can deny that many
strange and terrible things happen, from hidden causes quite beyond
human power to explain."
"They do, Ernest; and so I lock up my Grey Room and rule it out of our
scheme of existence. At present it is full of lumber--old furniture and
a pack of rubbishy family portraits that only deserve to be burned, but
will some day be restored, I suppose."
"Not on my account, Uncle Walter," said Henry Lennox. "I have no more
respect for them than yourself. They are hopeless as art."
"No, no one must restore them. The art is I believe very bad, as you
say, but they were most worthy people, and this is the sole memorial
remaining of them."
"Do let us see the room, governor," urged Tom May. "Mary showed it to me
the first time I came here, and I thought it about the jolliest spot in
the house."
"So it is, Tom," said Henry. "Mary says it should be called the Rose
Room, not the grey one."
"All who care to do so can see it," answered Sir Walter, rising. "We
will look in on our way to bed. Get the key from my key-cabinet in the
study, Henry. It's labelled 'Grey Room.'"