[Illustration: CLAIRVOYANCE]
In the darkest corner, where the firelight could not reach him, he
sat listening to the stories. His young hostess occupied the corner
on the other side; she was also screened by shadows; and between them
stretched the horseshoe of eager, frightened faces that seemed all
eyes. Behind yawned the blackness of the big room, running as it were
without a break into the night.
Some one crossed on tiptoe and drew a blind up with a rattle, and at
the sound all started: through the window, opened at the top, came a
rustle of the poplar leaves that stirred like footsteps in the wind.
‘There’s a strange man walking past the shrubberies,’ whispered a
nervous girl; ‘I saw him crouch and hide. I saw his eyes!’ ‘Nonsense!’
came sharply from a male member of the group; ‘it’s far too dark to
see. You heard the wind.’ For mist had risen from the river just
below the lawn, pressing close against the windows of the old house
like a soft grey hand, and through it the stir of leaves was faintly
audible.... Then, while several called for lights, others remembered
that the hop-pickers were still about in the lanes, and the tramps
this autumn overbold and insolent. All, perhaps, wished secretly for
the sun. Only the elderly man in the corner sat quiet and unmoved,
contributing nothing. He had told no fearsome story. He had evaded,
indeed, many openings expressly made for him, though fully aware that
to his well-known interest in psychical things was partly due his
presence in the week-end party. ‘I never have experiences--that way,’
he said shortly when some one asked him point blank for a tale; ‘I
have no unusual powers.’ There was perhaps the merest hint of contempt
in his tone, but the hostess from her darkened corner quickly and
tactfully covered his retreat. And he wondered. For he knew why she
invited him. The haunted room, he was well aware, had been specially
allotted to him.
And then, most opportunely, the door opened noisily and the host came
in. He sniffed at the darkness, rang at once for lamps, puffed at
his big curved pipe, and generally, by his mere presence, made the
group feel rather foolish. Light streamed past him from the corridor.
His white hair shone like silver. And with him came the atmosphere
of common sense, of shooting, agriculture, motors, and the rest. Age
entered at that door. And his young wife sprang up instantly to greet
him, as though his disapproval of this kind of entertainment might need
humouring.
It may have been the light--that witchery of half-lights from the
fire and the corridor, or it may have been the abrupt entrance of
the Practical upon the soft Imaginative that traced the outline with
such pitiless, sharp conviction. At any rate, the contrast--for those
who had this inner clairvoyant sight all had been prating of so
glibly!--was unmistakably revealed. It was poignantly dramatic, pain
somewhere in it--naked pain. For, as she paused a moment there beside
him in the light, this childless wife of three years’ standing, picture
of youth and beauty, there stood upon the threshold of that room the
presence of a true ghost story.
And most marvellously she changed--her lineaments, her very figure, her
whole presentment. Etched against the gloom, the delicate, unmarked
face shone suddenly keen and anguished, and a rich maturity, deeper
than any mere age, flushed all her little person with its secret
grandeur. Lines started into being upon the pale skin of the girlish
face, lines of pleading, pity, and love the daylight did not show,
and with them an air of magic tenderness that betrayed, though for a
second only, the full soft glory of a motherhood denied, yet somehow
mysteriously enjoyed. About her slenderness rose all the deepbosomed
sweetness of maternity, a potential mother of the world, and a mother,
though she might know no dear fulfilment, who yet yearned to sweep into
her immense embrace all the little helpless things that ever lived.
Light, like emotion, can play strangest tricks. The change pressed
almost upon the edge of revelation.... Yet, when a moment later lamps
were brought, it is doubtful if any but the silent guest who had told
no marvellous tale, knew no psychical experience, and disclaimed the
smallest clairvoyant faculty, had received and registered the vivid,
poignant picture. For an instant it had flashed there, mercilessly
clear for all to see who were not blind to subtle spiritual wonder
thick with pain. And it was not so much mere picture of youth and age
ill-matched, as of youth that yearned with the oldest craving in the
world, and of age that had slipped beyond the power of sympathetically
divining it.... It passed, and all was as before.
The husband laughed with genial good-nature, not one whit annoyed.
‘They’ve been frightening you with stories, child,’ he said in his
jolly way, and put a protective arm about her. ‘Haven’t they now?
Tell me the truth. Much better,’ he added, ‘have joined me instead at
billiards, or for a game of Patience, eh?’ She looked up shyly into his
face, and he kissed her on the forehead. ‘Perhaps they have--a little,
dear,’ she said, ‘but now that you’ve come, I feel all right again.’
‘Another night of this,’ he added in a graver tone, ‘and you’d be at
your old trick of putting guests to sleep in the haunted room. I was
right after all, you see, to make it out of bounds.’ He glanced fondly,
paternally down upon her. Then he went over and poked the fire into a
blaze. Some one struck up a waltz on the piano, and couples danced.
All trace of nervousness vanished, and the butler presently brought
in the tray with drinks and biscuits. And slowly the group dispersed.
Candles were lit. They passed down the passage into the big hall,
talking in lowered voices of to-morrow’s plans. The laughter died away
as they went up the stairs to bed, the silent guest and the young wife
lingering a moment over the embers.
‘You have not, after all then, put me in your haunted room?’ he asked
quietly. ‘You mentioned, you remember, in your letter----’
‘I admit,’ she replied at once, her manner gracious beyond her years,
her voice quite different, ‘that I wanted you to sleep there--some one,
I mean, who really knows, and is not merely curious. But--forgive my
saying so--when I _saw_ you’--she laughed very slowly--‘and when you
told no marvellous story like the others, I somehow felt----’
‘But I never _see_ anything----’ he put in hurriedly.
‘You _feel_, though,’ she interrupted swiftly, the passionate
tenderness in her voice but half suppressed. ‘I can tell it from
your----’
‘Others, then,’ he interrupted abruptly, almost bluntly, ‘have slept
there--sat up, rather?’
‘Not recently. My husband stopped it.’ She paused a second, then added,
‘I had that room--for a year--when first we married.’
The other’s anguished look flew back upon her little face like a shadow
and was gone, while at the sight of it there rose in himself a sudden
deep rush of wonderful amazement beckoning almost towards worship. He
did not speak, for his voice would tremble.
‘I had to give it up,’ she finished, very low.
‘Was it so terrible?’ after a pause he ventured.
She bowed her head. ‘I had to change,’ she repeated softly.
‘And since then--_now_--you see nothing?’ he asked.
Her reply was singular. ‘Because I will not, not because it’s gone.’
... He followed her in silence to the door, and as they passed along
the passage, again that curious great pain of emptiness, of loneliness,
of yearning rose upon him, as of a sea that never, never can swim
beyond the shore to reach the flowers that it loves....
‘Hurry up, child, or a ghost will catch you,’ cried her husband,
leaning over the banisters, as the pair moved slowly up the stairs
towards him. There was a moment’s silence when they met. The guest took
his lighted candle and went down the corridor. Good-nights were said
again. They moved away, she to her loneliness, he to his un-haunted
room. And at his door he turned. At the far end of the passage,
silhouetted against the candle-light, he watched them--the fine old man
with his silvered hair and heavy shoulders, and the slim young wife
with that amazing air as of some great bountiful mother of the world
for whom the years yet passed hungry and unharvested. They turned the
corner, and he went in and closed his door.
Sleep took him very quickly, and while the mist rose up and veiled the
countryside, something else, veiled equally for all other sleepers in
that house but two, drew on towards its climax.... Some hours later he
awoke; the world was still, and it seemed the whole house listened; for
with that clear vision which some bring out of sleep, he remembered
that there had been no direct denial, and of a sudden realised that
this big, gaunt chamber where he lay was after all the haunted room.
For him, however, the entire world, not merely separate rooms in it,
was ever haunted; and he knew no terror to find the space about him
charged with thronging life quite other than his own.... He rose and
lit the candle, crossed over to the window where the mist shone grey,
knowing that no barriers of walls or door or ceiling could keep out
this host of Presences that poured so thickly everywhere about him.
It was like a wall of being, with peering eyes, small hands stretched
out, a thousand pattering wee feet, and tiny voices crying in a chorus
very faintly and beseeching.... The haunted room! Was it not, rather,
a temple vestibule, prepared and sanctified by yearning rites few men
might ever guess, for all the childless women of the world? How could
she know that _he_ would understand--this woman he had seen but twice
in all his life? And how entrust to him so great a mystery that was her
secret? Had she so easily divined in him a similar yearning to which,
long years ago, death had denied fulfilment? Was she clairvoyant in the
true sense, and did all faces bear on them so legibly this great map
that sorrow traced?...
And then, with awful suddenness, mere feelings dipped away, and
something concrete happened. The handle of the door had faintly
rattled. He turned. The round brass knob was slowly moving. And first,
at the sight, something of common fear did grip him, as though his
heart had missed a beat, but on the instant he heard the voice of his
own mother, now long beyond the stars, calling to him to go softly yet
with speed. He watched a moment the feeble efforts to undo the door,
yet never afterwards could swear that he saw actual movement, for
something in him, tragic as blindness, rose through a mist of tears and
darkened vision utterly....
He went towards the door. He took the handle very gently, and very
softly then he opened it. Beyond was darkness. He saw the empty
passage, the edge of the banisters where the great hall yawned below,
and, dimly, the outline of the Alpine photograph and the stuffed deer’s
head upon the wall. And then he dropped upon his knees and opened wide
his arms to something that came in upon uncertain, viewless feet. All
the young winds and flowers and dews of dawn passed with it ... filling
him to the brim ... covering closely his breast and eyes and lips.
There clung to him all the small beginnings of life that cannot stand
alone ... the little helpless hands and arms that have no confidence
... and when the wealth of tears and love that flooded his heart
seemed to break upon the frontiers of some mysterious yet impossible
fulfilment, he rose and went with curious small steps towards the
window to taste the cooling, misty air of that other dark Emptiness
that waited so patiently there above the entire world. He drew the
sash up. The air felt soft and tender as though there were somewhere
children in it too--children of stars and flowers, of mists and wings
and music, all that the Universe contains unborn and tiny.... And when
at length he turned again the door was closed. The room was empty of
any life but that which lay so wonderfully blessed within himself. And
this, he felt, had marvellously increased and multiplied....
Sleep then came back to him, and in the morning he left the house
before the others were astir, pleading some overlooked engagement. For
he had seen Ghosts indeed, but yet not ghosts that he could talk about
with others round an open fire.