“Keep the American!” Miss Searle, in compliance with the injunction
conveyed in her brother’s telegram (with something certainly of
telegraphic curtness), lost no time in expressing the pleasure it would
give her that our friend should remain. “Really you must,” she said;
and forthwith repaired to the house-keeper to give orders for the
preparation of a room.
“But how in the world did he know of my being here?” my companion put to
me.
I answered that he had probably heard from his solicitor of the other’s
visit. “Mr. Simmons and that gentleman must have had another interview
since your arrival in England. Simmons, for reasons of his own, has
made known to him your journey to this neighbourhood, and Mr. Searle,
learning this, has immediately taken for granted that you’ve formally
presented yourself to his sister. He’s hospitably inclined and wishes
her to do the proper thing by you. There may even,” I went on, “be more
in it than that. I’ve my little theory that he’s the very phoenix of
usurpers, that he has been very much struck with what the experts have
had to say for you, and that he wishes to have the originality of making
over to you your share--so limited after all--of the estate.”
“I give it up!” my friend mused. “Come what come will!”
“You, of course,” said Miss Searle, reappearing and turning to me, “are
included in my brother’s invitation. I’ve told them to see about a room
for you. Your luggage shall immediately be sent for.”
It was arranged that I in person should be driven over to our little inn
and that I should return with our effects in time to meet Mr. Searle at
dinner. On my arrival several hours later I was immediately conducted
to my room. The servant pointed out to me that it communicated by a
door and a private passage with that of my fellow visitor. I made my way
along this passage--a low narrow corridor with a broad latticed casement
through which there streamed upon a series of grotesquely sculptured
oaken closets and cupboards the vivid animating glow of the western
sun--knocked at his door and, getting no answer, opened it. In an
armchair by the open window sat my friend asleep, his arms and legs
relaxed and head dropped on his breast. It was a great relief to see him
rest thus from his rhapsodies, and I watched him for some moments before
waking him. There was a faint glow of colour in his cheek and a light
expressive parting of his lips, something nearer to ease and peace than
I had yet seen in him. It was almost happiness, it was almost health. I
laid my hand on his arm and gently shook it. He opened his eyes, gazed
at me a moment, vaguely recognised me, then closed them again. “Let me
dream, let me dream!”
“What are you dreaming about?”
A moment passed before his answer came. “About a tall woman in a quaint
black dress, with yellow hair and a sweet, sweet smile, and a soft low
delicious voice! I’m in love with her.”
“It’s better to see her than to dream about her,” I said. “Get up and
dress; then we’ll go down to dinner and meet her.”
“Dinner--dinner--?” And he gradually opened his eyes again. “Yes, upon
my word I shall dine!”
“Oh you’re all right!” I declared for the twentieth time as he rose to
his feet. “You’ll live to bury Mr. Simmons.” He told me he had spent the
hours of my absence with Miss Searle--they had strolled together half
over the place. “You must be very intimate,” I smiled.
“She’s intimate with _me_. Goodness knows what rigmarole I’ve treated her
to!” They had parted an hour ago; since when, he believed, her brother
had arrived.
The slow-fading twilight was still in the great drawing-room when we
came down. The housekeeper had told us this apartment was rarely used,
there being others, smaller and more convenient, for the same needs.
It seemed now, however, to be occupied in my comrade’s honour. At the
furthest end, rising to the roof like a royal tomb in a cathedral, was
a great chimney-piece of chiselled white marble, yellowed by time, in
which a light fire was crackling. Before the fire stood a small short
man, with his hands behind him; near him was Miss Searle, so transformed
by her dress that at first I scarcely knew her. There was in our
entrance and reception something remarkably chilling and solemn. We
moved in silence up the long room; Mr. Searle advanced slowly, a dozen
steps, to meet us; his sister stood motionless. I was conscious of her
masking her visage with a large white tinselled fan, and that her eyes,
grave and enlarged, watched us intently over the top of it. The master
of Lackley grasped in silence the proffered hand of his kinsman and eyed
him from head to foot, suppressing, I noted, a start of surprise at his
resemblance to Sir Joshua’s portrait. “This is a happy day.” And then
turning to me with an odd little sharp stare: “My cousin’s friend is my
friend.” Miss Searle lowered her fan.
The first thing that struck me in Mr. Searle’s appearance was his very
limited stature, which was less by half a head than that of his sister.
The second was the preternatural redness of his hair and beard. They
intermingled over his ears and surrounded his head like a huge lurid
nimbus. His face was pale and attenuated, the face of a scholar, a
dilettante, a comparer of points and texts, a man who lives in a library
bending over books and prints and medals. At a distance it might have
passed for smooth and rather blankly composed; but on a nearer view
it revealed a number of wrinkles, sharply etched and scratched, of a
singularly aged and refined effect. It was the complexion of a man of
sixty. His nose was arched and delicate, identical almost with the nose
of my friend. His eyes, large and deep-set, had a kind of auburn glow,
the suggestion of a keen metal red-hot--or, more plainly, were full
of temper and spirit. Imagine this physiognomy--grave and solemn,
grotesquely solemn, in spite of the bushy brightness which made a sort
of frame for it--set in motion by a queer, quick, defiant, perfunctory,
preoccupied smile, and you will have an imperfect notion of the
remarkable presence of our host; something better worth seeing and
knowing, I perceived as I quite breathlessly took him in, than anything
we had yet encountered. How thoroughly I had entered into sympathy
with my poor picked-up friend, and how effectually I had associated my
sensibilities with his own, I had not suspected till, within the short
five minutes before the signal for dinner, I became aware, without his
giving me the least hint, of his placing himself on the defensive. To
neither of us was Mr. Searle sympathetic. I might have guessed from her
attitude that his sister entered into our thoughts. A marked change had
been wrought in her since the morning; during the hour, indeed--as
I read in the light of the wondering glance he cast at her--that had
elapsed since her parting with her cousin. She had not yet recovered
from some great agitation. Her face was pale and she had clearly
been crying. These notes of trouble gave her a new and quite perverse
dignity, which was further enhanced by something complimentary and
commemorative in her dress.
Whether it was taste or whether it was accident I know not; but the
amiable creature, as she stood there half in the cool twilight, half in
the arrested glow of the fire as it spent itself in the vastness of its
marble cave, was a figure for a painter. She was habited in some faded
splendour of sea-green crape and silk, a piece of millinery which,
though it must have witnessed a number of dull dinners, preserved still
a festive air. Over her white shoulders she wore an ancient web of the
most precious and venerable lace and about her rounded throat a single
series of large pearls. I went in with her to dinner, and Mr. Searle,
following with my friend, took his arm, as the latter afterwards told
me, and pretended jocosely to conduct him. As dinner proceeded the
feeling grew within me that a drama had begun to be played in which the
three persons before me were actors--each of a really arduous part. The
character allotted to my friend, however, was certainly the least easy
to represent with effect, though I overflowed with the desire that he
should acquit himself to his honour. I seemed to see him urge his faded
faculties to take their cue and perform. The poor fellow tried to do
himself credit more seriously than ever in his old best days. With Miss
Searle, credulous passive and pitying, he had finally flung aside all
vanity and propriety and shown the bottom of his fantastic heart.
But with our host there might be no talking of nonsense nor taking
of liberties; there and then, if ever, sat a consummate conservative,
breathing the fumes of hereditary privilege and security. For an hour,
accordingly, I saw my poor protege attempt, all in pain, to meet a new
decorum. He set himself the task of appearing very American, in order
that his appreciation of everything Mr. Searle represented might seem
purely disinterested. What his kinsman had expected him to be I know
not; but I made Mr. Searle out as annoyed, in spite of his exaggerated
urbanity, at finding him so harmless. Our host was not the man to
show his hand, but I think his best card had been a certain implicit
confidence that so provincial a parasite would hardly have good manners.
He led the conversation to the country we had left; rather as if a leash
had been attached to the collar of some lumpish and half-domesticated
animal the tendency of whose movements had to be recognised. He spoke of
it indeed as of some fabled planet, alien to the British orbit, lately
proclaimed to have the admixture of atmospheric gases required
to support animal life, but not, save under cover of a liberal
afterthought, to be admitted into one’s regular conception of things. I,
for my part, felt nothing but regret that the spheric smoothness of
his universe should be disfigured by the extrusion even of such
inconsiderable particles as ourselves.
“I knew in a general way of our having somehow ramified over there,” Mr.
Searle mentioned; “but had scarcely followed it more than you pretend to
pick up the fruit your long-armed pear tree may drop, on the other side
of your wall, in your neighbour’s garden. There was a man I knew at
Cambridge, a very odd fellow, a decent fellow too; he and I were rather
cronies; I think he afterwards went to the Middle States. They’ll be,
I suppose, about the Mississippi? At all events, there was that
great-uncle of mine whom Sir Joshua painted. He went to America, but he
never got there. He was lost at sea. You look enough like him to make
one fancy he _did_ get there and that you’ve kept him alive by one of
those beastly processes--I think you have ‘em over there: what do you
call it, ‘putting up’ things? If you’re he you’ve not done a wise thing
to show yourself here. He left a bad name behind him. There’s a ghost
who comes sobbing about the house every now and then, the ghost of one
to whom he did a wrong.”
“Oh mercy _on_ us!” cried Miss Searle in simple horror.
“Of course _you_ know nothing of such things,” he rather dryly allowed.
“You’re too sound a sleeper to hear the sobbing of ghosts.”
“I’m sure I should like immensely to hear the sobbing of a ghost,” said
my friend, the light of his previous eagerness playing up into his eyes.
“Why does it sob? I feel as if that were what we’ve come above all to
learn.”
Mr. Searle eyed his audience a moment gaugingly; he held the balance as
to measure his resources. He wished to do justice to his theme. With
the long finger-nails of his left hand nervously playing against the
tinkling crystal of his wineglass and his conscious eyes betraying that,
small and strange as he sat there, he knew himself, to his pleasure and
advantage, remarkably impressive, he dropped into our untutored minds
the sombre legend of his house. “Mr. Clement Searle, from all I gather,
was a young man of great talents but a weak disposition. His mother was
left a widow early in life, with two sons, of whom he was the elder and
the more promising. She educated him with the greatest affection and
care. Of course when he came to manhood she wished him to marry well.
His means were quite sufficient to enable him to overlook the want of
money in his wife; and Mrs. Searle selected a young lady who possessed,
as she conceived, every good gift save a fortune--a fine proud handsome
girl, the daughter of an old friend, an old lover I suspect, of her own.
Clement, however, as it appeared, had either chosen otherwise or was
as yet unprepared to choose. The young lady opened upon him in vain the
battery of her attractions; in vain his mother urged her cause. Clement
remained cold, insensible, inflexible. Mrs. Searle had a character which
appears to have gone out of fashion in my family nowadays; she was a
great manager, a _maîtresse-femme_. A proud passionate imperious woman,
she had had immense cares and ever so many law-suits; they had sharpened
her temper and her will. She suspected that her son’s affections had
another object, and this object she began to hate. Irritated by his
stubborn defiance of her wishes she persisted in her purpose. The more
she watched him the more she was convinced he loved in secret. If he
loved in secret of course he loved beneath him. He went about the place
all sombre and sullen and brooding. At last, with the rashness of an
angry woman, she threatened to bring the young lady of her choice--who,
by the way, seems to have been no shrinking blossom--to stay in the
house. A stormy scene was the result. He threatened that if she did
so he would leave the country and sail for America. She probably
disbelieved him; she knew him to be weak, but she overrated his
weakness. At all events the rejected one arrived and Clement Searle
departed. On a dark December day he took ship at Southampton. The two
women, desperate with rage and sorrow, sat alone in this big house,
mingling their tears and imprecations. A fortnight later, on Christmas
Eve, in the midst of a great snowstorm long famous in the country,
something happened that quickened their bitterness. A young woman,
battered and chilled by the storm, gained entrance to the house and,
making her way into the presence of the mistress and her guest, poured
out her tale. She was a poor curate’s daughter out of some little hole
in Gloucestershire. Clement Searle had loved her--loved her all too
well! She had been turned out in wrath from her father’s house; his
mother at least might pity her--if not for herself then for the child
she was soon to bring forth. But the poor girl had been a second time
too trustful. The women, in scorn, in horror, with blows possibly, drove
her forth again into the storm. In the storm she wandered and in the
deep snow she died. Her lover, as you know, perished in that hard winter
weather at sea; the news came to his mother late, but soon enough. We’re
haunted by the curate’s daughter!”
Mr. Searle retailed this anecdote with infinite taste and point, the
happiest art; when he ceased there was a pause of some moments. “Ah well
we may be!” Miss Searle then mournfully murmured.
Searle blazed up into enthusiasm. “Of course, you know”--with which he
began to blush violently--“I should be sorry to claim any identity
with the poor devil my faithless namesake. But I should be immensely
gratified if the young lady’s spirit, deceived by my resemblance, were
to mistake me for her cruel lover. She’s welcome to the comfort of it.
What one can do in the case I shall be glad to do. But can a ghost haunt
a ghost? I _am_ a ghost!”
Mr. Searle stared a moment and then had a subtle sneer. “I could almost
believe you are!”
“Oh brother--and cousin!” cried Miss Searle with the gentlest yet most
appealing dignity. “How can you talk so horribly?” The horrible talk,
however, evidently possessed a potent magic for my friend; and his
imagination, checked a while by the influence of his kinsman, began
again to lead him a dance. From this moment he ceased to steer his frail
bark, to care what he said or how he said it, so long as he expressed
his passionate appreciation of the scene around him. As he kept up this
strain I ceased even secretly to wish he wouldn’t. I have wondered since
that I shouldn’t have been annoyed by the way he reverted constantly to
himself. But a great frankness, for the time, makes its own law and
a great passion its own channel. There was moreover an irresponsible
indescribable effect of beauty in everything his lips uttered. Free
alike from adulation and from envy, the essence of his discourse was a
divine apprehension, a romantic vision free as the flight of Ariel, of
the poetry of his companions’ situation and their contrasted general
irresponsiveness.
“How does the look of age come?” he suddenly broke out at dessert. “Does
it come of itself, unobserved, unrecorded, unmeasured? Or do you woo it
and set baits and traps for it, and watch it like the dawning brownness
of a meerschaum pipe, and make it fast, when it appears, just where it
peeps out, and light a votive taper beneath it and give thanks to it
daily? Or do you forbid it and fight it and resist it, and yet feel it
settling and deepening about you as irresistible as fate?”
“What the deuce is the man talking about?” said the smile of our host.
“I found a little grey hair this morning,” Miss Searle incoherently
prosed.
“Well then I hope you paid it every respect!” cried her visitor.
“I looked at it for a long time in my hand-glass,” she answered with
more presence of mind.
“Miss Searle can for many years to come afford to be amused at grey
hairs,” I interposed in the hope of some greater ease. It had its
effect. “Ten years from last Thursday I shall be forty-four,” she almost
comfortably smiled.
“Well, that’s just what I am,” said Searle. “If I had only come here ten
years ago! I should have had more time to enjoy the feast, but I should
have had less appetite. I needed first to get famished.”
“Oh why did you wait for that?” his entertainer asked. “To think of
these ten years that we might have been enjoying you!” At the vision of
which waste and loss Mr. Searle had a fine shrill laugh.
“Well,” my friend explained, “I always had a notion--a stupid vulgar
notion if there ever was one--that to come abroad properly one had to
have a pot of money. My pot was too nearly empty. At last I came with my
empty pot!”
Mr. Searle had a wait for delicacy, but he proceeded. “You’re reduced,
you’re--a--straitened?”
Our companion’s very breath blew away the veil. “Reduced to nothing.
Straitened to the clothes on my back!”
“You don’t say so!” said Mr. Searle with a large vague gasp.
“Well--well--well!” he added in a voice which might have meant
everything or nothing; and then, in his whimsical way, went on to finish
a glass of wine. His searching eye, as he drank, met mine, and for a
moment we each rather deeply sounded the other, to the effect no doubt
of a slight embarrassment. “And you,” he said by way of carrying this
off--“how about _your_ wardrobe?”
“Oh his!” cried my friend; “his wardrobe’s immense. He could dress up a
regiment!” He had drunk more champagne--I admit that the champagne
was good--than was from any point of view to have been desired. He was
rapidly drifting beyond any tacit dissuasion of mine. He was feverish
and rash, and all attempt to direct would now simply irritate him. As
we rose from the table he caught my troubled look. Passing his arm for
a moment into mine, “This is the great night!” he strangely and softly
said; “the night and the crisis that will settle me.”
Mr. Searle had caused the whole lower portion of the house to be thrown
open and a multitude of lights to be placed in convenient and effective
positions. Such a marshalled wealth of ancient candlesticks and
flambeaux I had never beheld. Niched against the dusky wainscots,
casting great luminous circles upon the pendent stiffness of sombre
tapestries, enhancing and completing with admirable effect the variety
and mystery of the great ancient house, they seemed to people the wide
rooms, as our little group passed slowly from one to another, with a
dim expectant presence. We had thus, in spite of everything, a wonderful
hour of it. Mr. Searle at once assumed the part of cicerone, and--I had
not hitherto done him justice--Mr. Searle became almost agreeable. While
I lingered behind with his sister he walked in advance with his kinsman.
It was as if he had said: “Well, if you want the old place you shall
have it--so far as the impression goes!” He spared us no thrill--I
had almost said no pang--of that experience. Carrying a tall silver
candlestick in his left hand, he raised it and lowered it and cast the
light hither and thither, upon pictures and hangings and carvings and
cornices. He knew his house to perfection. He touched upon a hundred
traditions and memories, he threw off a cloud of rich reference to
its earlier occupants. He threw off again, in his easy elegant way, a
dozen--happily lighter--anecdotes. His relative attended with a brooding
deference. Miss Searle and I meanwhile were not wholly silent.
“I suppose that by this time you and your cousin are almost old
friends,” I remarked.
She trifled a moment with her fan and then raised her kind small
eyes. “Old friends--yet at the same time strangely new! My cousin, my
cousin”--and her voice lingered on the word--“it seems so strange to
call him my cousin after thinking these many years that I’ve no one in
the world but my brother. But he’s really so very odd!”
“It’s not so much he as--well, as his situation, that deserves that
name,” I tried to reason.
“I’m so sorry for his situation. I wish I could help it in some way. He
interests me so much.” She gave a sweet-sounding sigh. “I wish I could
have known him sooner--and better. He tells me he’s but the shadow of
what he used to be.”
I wondered if he had been consciously practising on the sensibilities of
this gentle creature. If he had I believed he had gained his point. But
his position had in fact become to my sense so precarious that I hardly
ventured to be glad. “His better self just now seems again to be taking
shape,” I said. “It will have been a good deed on your part if you help
to restore him to all he ought to be.”
She met my idea blankly. “Dear me, what can I do?”
“Be a friend to him. Let him like you, let him love you. I dare say you
see in him now much to pity and to wonder at. But let him simply enjoy
a while the grateful sense of your nearness and dearness. He’ll be
a better and stronger man for it, and then you can love him, you can
esteem him, without restriction.”
She fairly frowned for helplessness. “It’s a hard part for poor stupid
me to play!”
Her almost infantine innocence left me no choice but to be absolutely
frank. “Did you ever play any part at all?”
She blushed as if I had been reproaching her with her insignificance.
“Never! I think I’ve hardly lived.”
“You’ve begun to live now perhaps. You’ve begun to care for something
else than your old-fashioned habits. Pardon me if I seem rather
meddlesome; you know we Americans are very rough and ready. It’s a great
moment. I wish you joy!”
“I could almost believe you’re laughing at me. I feel more trouble than
joy.”
“Why do you feel trouble?”
She paused with her eyes fixed on our companions. “My cousin’s arrival’s
a great disturbance,” she said at last.
“You mean you did wrong in coming to meet him? In that case the fault’s
mine. He had no intention of giving you the opportunity.”
“I certainly took too much on myself. But I can’t find it in my heart to
regret it. I never shall regret it! I did the only thing I _could_, heaven
forgive me!”
“Heaven bless you, Miss Searle! Is any harm to come of it? I did the
evil; let me bear the brunt!”
She shook her head gravely. “You don’t know my brother!”
“The sooner I master the subject the better then,” I said. I couldn’t
help relieving myself--at least by the tone of my voice--of the
antipathy with which, decidedly, this gentleman had inspired me. “Not
perhaps that we should get on so well together!” After which, as she
turned away, “Are you _very_ much afraid of him?” I added.
She gave me a shuddering sidelong glance. “He’s looking at me!”
He was placed with his back to us, holding a large Venetian hand-mirror,
framed in chiselled silver, which he had taken from a shelf of
antiquities, just at such an angle that he caught the reflexion of his
sister’s person. It was evident that I too was under his attention, and
was resolved I wouldn’t be suspected for nothing. “Miss Searle,” I said
with urgency, “promise me something.”
She turned upon me with a start and a look that seemed to beg me to
spare her. “Oh don’t ask me--please don’t!” It was as if she were
standing on the edge of a place where the ground had suddenly fallen
away, and had been called upon to make a leap. I felt retreat was
impossible, however, and that it was the greater kindness to assist her
to jump.
“Promise me,” I repeated.
Still with her eyes she protested. “Oh what a dreadful day!” she cried
at last.
“Promise me to let him speak to you alone if he should ask you--any wish
you may suspect on your brother’s part notwithstanding.” She coloured
deeply. “You mean he has something so particular to say?”
“Something so particular!”
“Poor cousin!”
“Well, poor cousin! But promise me.”
“I promise,” she said, and moved away across the long room and out of
the door.
“You’re in time to hear the most delightful story,” Searle began to me
as I rejoined him and his host. They were standing before an old sombre
portrait of a lady in the dress of Queen Anne’s time, whose ill-painted
flesh-tints showed livid, in the candle-light, against her dark drapery
and background. “This is Mrs. Margaret Searle--a sort of Beatrix
Esmond--_qui se passait ses fantaisies_. She married a paltry Frenchman,
a penniless fiddler, in the teeth of her whole family. Pretty Mrs.
Margaret, you must have been a woman of courage! Upon my word, she looks
like Miss Searle! But pray go on. What came of it all?”
Our companion watched him with an air of distaste for his boisterous
homage and of pity for his crude imagination. But he took up the tale
with an effective dryness: “I found a year ago, in a box of very old
papers, a letter from the lady in question to a certain Cynthia Searle,
her elder sister. It was dated from Paris and dreadfully ill-spelled.
It contained a most passionate appeal for pecuniary assistance. She
had just had a baby, she was starving and dreadfully neglected by her
husband--she cursed the day she had left England. It was a most dismal
production. I never heard she found means to return.”
“So much for marrying a Frenchman!” I said sententiously.
Our host had one of his waits. “This is the only lady of the family who
ever was taken in by an adventurer.”
“Does Miss Searle know her history?” asked my friend with a stare at the
rounded whiteness of the heroine’s cheek.
“Miss Searle knows nothing!” said our host with expression.
“She shall know at least the tale of Mrs. Margaret,” their guest
returned; and he walked rapidly away in search of her.
Mr. Searle and I pursued our march through the lighted rooms. “You’ve
found a cousin with a vengeance,” I doubtless awkwardly enough laughed.
“Ah a vengeance?” my entertainer stiffly repeated.
“I mean that he takes as keen an interest in your annals and possessions
as yourself.”
“Oh exactly so! He tells me he’s a bad invalid,” he added in a moment.
“I should never have supposed it.”
“Within the past few hours he’s a changed man. Your beautiful house,
your extreme kindness, have refreshed him immensely.” Mr. Searle uttered
the vague ejaculation with which self-conscious Britons so often betray
the concussion of any especial courtesy of speech. But he followed this
by a sudden odd glare and the sharp declaration: “I’m an honest man!” I
was quite prepared to assent; but he went on with a fury of frankness,
as if it were the first time in his life he had opened himself to any
one, as if the process were highly disagreeable and he were hurrying
through it as a task. “An honest man, mind you! I know nothing about Mr.
Clement Searle! I never expected to see him. He has been to me a--a--!”
And here he paused to select a word which should vividly enough express
what, for good or for ill, his kinsman represented. “He has been to me
an Amazement! I’ve no doubt he’s a most amiable man. You’ll not deny,
however, that he’s a very extraordinary sort of person. I’m sorry he’s
ill. I’m sorry he’s poor. He’s my fiftieth cousin. Well and good. I’m
an honest man. He shall not have it to say that he wasn’t received at my
house.”
“He too, thank heaven, is an honest man!” I smiled.
“Why the devil then,” cried Mr. Searle, turning almost fiercely on me,
“has he put forward this underhand claim to my property?”
The question, quite ringing out, flashed backward a gleam of light upon
the demeanour of our host and the suppressed agitation of his sister. In
an instant the jealous gentleman revealed itself. For a moment I was so
surprised and scandalised at the directness of his attack that I lacked
words to reply. As soon as he had spoken indeed Mr. Searle appeared to
feel he had been wanting in form. “Pardon me,” he began afresh, “if I
speak of this matter with heat. But I’ve been more disgusted than I
can say to hear, as I heard this morning from my solicitor, of the
extraordinary proceedings of Mr. Clement Searle. Gracious goodness,
sir, for what does the man take me? He pretends to the Lord knows what
fantastic admiration for my place. Let him then show his respect for it
by not taking too many liberties! Let him, with his high-flown parade
of loyalty, imagine a tithe of what _I_ feel! I love my estate; it’s my
passion, my conscience, my life! Am I to divide it up at this time of
day with a beggarly foreigner--a man without means, without appearance,
without proof, a pretender, an adventurer, a chattering mountebank? I
thought America boasted having lands for all men! Upon my soul, sir,
I’ve never been so shocked in my life.”
I paused for some moments before speaking, to allow his passion fully to
expend itself and to flicker up again if it chose; for so far as I was
concerned in the whole awkward matter I but wanted to deal with him
discreetly. “Your apprehensions, sir,” I said at last, “your not
unnatural surprise, perhaps, at the candour of our interest, have acted
too much on your nerves. You’re attacking a man of straw, a creature
of unworthy illusion; though I’m sadly afraid you’ve wounded a man
of spirit and conscience. Either my friend has no valid claim on your
estate, in which case your agitation is superfluous; or he _has_ a valid
claim--”
Mr. Searle seized my arm and glared at me; his pale face paler still
with the horror of my suggestion, his great eyes of alarm glowing and
his strange red hair erect and quivering. “A valid claim!” he shouted.
“Let him try it--let him bring it into court!”
We had emerged into the great hall and stood facing the main doorway.
The door was open into the portico, through the stone archway of which
I saw the garden glitter in the blue light of a full moon. As the master
of the house uttered the words I have just repeated my companion came
slowly up into the porch from without, bareheaded, bright in the outer
moonlight, dark in the shadow of the archway, and bright again in the
lamplight at the entrance of the hall. As he crossed the threshold the
butler made an appearance at the head of the staircase on our left,
faltering visibly a moment at sight of Mr. Searle; after which, noting
my friend, he gravely descended. He bore in his hand a small silver
tray. On the tray, gleaming in the light of the suspended lamp, lay a
folded note. Clement Searle came forward, staring a little and startled,
I think, by some quick nervous prevision of a catastrophe. The butler
applied the match to the train. He advanced to my fellow visitor, all
solemnly, with the offer of his missive. Mr. Searle made a movement as
if to spring forward, but controlled himself. “Tottenham!” he called in
a strident voice.
“Yes, sir!” said Tottenham, halting.
“Stand where you are. For whom is that note?”
“For Mr. Clement Searle,” said the butler, staring straight before him
and dissociating himself from everything.
“Who gave it to you?”
“Mrs. Horridge, sir.” This personage, I afterwards learned, was our
friend the housekeeper.
“Who gave it Mrs. Horridge?”
There was on Tottenham’s part just an infinitesimal pause before
replying.
“My dear sir,” broke in Searle, his equilibrium, his ancient ease,
completely restored by the crisis, “isn’t that rather my business?”
“What happens in my house is my business, and detestable things seem to
be happening.” Our host, it was clear, now so furiously detested them
that I was afraid he would snatch the bone of contention without more
ceremony. “Bring me that thing!” he cried; on which Tottenham stiffly
moved to obey.
“Really this is too much!” broke out my companion, affronted and
helpless.
So indeed it struck me, and before Mr. Searle had time to take the note
I possessed myself of it. “If you’ve no consideration for your sister
let a stranger at least act for her.” And I tore the disputed object
into a dozen pieces.
“In the name of decency, what does this horrid business mean?” my
companion quavered.
Mr. Searle was about to open fire on him, but at that moment our hostess
appeared on the staircase, summoned evidently by our high-pitched
contentious voices. She had exchanged her dinner-dress for a dark
wrapper, removed her ornaments and begun to disarrange her hair, a
thick tress of which escaped from the comb. She hurried down with a
pale questioning face. Feeling distinctly that, for ourselves, immediate
departure was in the air, and divining Mr. Tottenham to be a person of
a few deep-seated instincts and of much latent energy, I seized the
opportunity to request him, _sotto voce_, to send a carriage to the door
without delay. “And put up our things,” I added.
Our host rushed at his sister and grabbed the white wrist that escaped
from the loose sleeve of her dress. “What was in that note?” he quite
hissed at her.
Miss Searle looked first at its scattered fragments and then at her
cousin. “Did you read it?”
“No, but I thank you for it!” said Searle.
Her eyes, for an instant, communicated with his own as I think they had
never, never communicated with any other source of meaning; then she
transferred them to her brother’s face, where the sense went out of
them, only to leave a dull sad patience. But there was something even
in this flat humility that seemed to him to mock him, so that he flushed
crimson with rage and spite and flung her away. “You always were an
idiot! Go to bed.”
In poor Searle’s face as well the gathered serenity had been by this
time all blighted and distorted and the reflected brightness of his
happy day turned to blank confusion. “Have I been dealing these three
hours with a madman?” he woefully cried.
“A madman, yes, if you will! A man mad with the love of his home and the
sense of its stability. I’ve held my tongue till now, but you’ve been
too much for me. Who the devil are you, and what and why and whence?”
the terrible little man continued. “From what paradise of fools do you
come that you fancy I shall make over to you, for the asking, a part
of my property and my life? I’m forsooth, you ridiculous person, to go
shares with you? Prove your preposterous claim! There isn’t _that_ in it!”
And he kicked one of the bits of paper on the floor.
Searle received this broadside gaping. Then turning away he went and
seated himself on a bench against the wall and rubbed his forehead
amazedly. I looked at my watch and listened for the wheels of our
carriage.
But his kinsman was too launched to pull himself up. “Wasn’t it enough
that you should have plotted against my rights? Need you have come into
my very house to intrigue with my sister?”
My friend put his two hands to his face. “Oh, oh, oh!” he groaned while
Miss Searle crossed rapidly and dropped on her knees at his side.
“Go to bed, you fool!” shrieked her brother.
“Dear cousin,” she said, “it’s cruel you’re to have so to think of us!”
“Oh I shall think of _you_ as you’d like!” He laid a hand on her head.
“I believe you’ve done nothing wrong,” she brought bravely out.
“I’ve done what I could,” Mr. Searle went on--“but it’s arrant folly to
pretend to friendship when this abomination lies between us. You were
welcome to my meat and my wine, but I wonder you could swallow them. The
sight spoiled _my_ appetite!” cried the master of Lackley with a laugh.
“Proceed with your trumpery case! My people in London are instructed and
prepared.”
“I shouldn’t wonder if your case had improved a good deal since you gave
it up,” I was moved to observe to Searle.
“Oho! you don’t feign ignorance then?” and our insane entertainer shook
his shining head at me. “It’s very kind of you to give it up! Perhaps
you’ll also give up my sister!”
Searle sat staring in distress at his adversary. “Ah miserable man--I
thought we had become such beautiful friends.”
“Boh, you hypocrite!” screamed our host.
Searle seemed not to hear him. “Am I seriously expected,” he slowly and
painfully pursued, “to defend myself against the accusation of any real
indelicacy--to prove I’ve done nothing underhand or impudent? Think what
you please!” And he rose, with an effort, to his feet. “I know what _you_
think!” he added to Miss Searle.
The wheels of the carriage resounded on the gravel, and at the same
moment a footman descended with our two portmanteaux. Mr. Tottenham
followed him with our hats and coats.
“Good God,” our host broke out again, “you’re not going away?”--an
ejaculation that, after all that had happened, had the grandest
comicality. “Bless my soul,” he then remarked as artlessly, “of course
you’re going!”
“It’s perhaps well,” said Miss Searle with a great effort, inexpressibly
touching in one for whom great efforts were visibly new and strange,
“that I should tell you what my poor little note contained.”
“That matter of your note, madam,” her brother interrupted, “you and I
will settle together!”
“Let me imagine all sorts of kind things!” Searle beautifully pleaded.
“Ah too much has been imagined!” she answered simply. “It was only a
word of warning. It was to tell you to go. I knew something painful was
coming.”
He took his hat. “The pains and the pleasures of this day,” he said to
his kinsman, “I shall equally never forget. Knowing you,” and he offered
his hand to Miss Searle, “has been the pleasure of pleasures. I hoped
something more might have come of it.”
“A monstrous deal too much has come of it!” Mr. Searle irrepressibly
declared.
His departing guest looked at him mildly, almost benignantly, from head
to foot, and then with closed eyes and some collapse of strength, “I’m
afraid so, I can’t stand more,” he went on. I gave him my arm and we
crossed the threshold. As we passed out I heard Miss Searle break into
loud weeping.
“We shall hear from each other yet, I take it!” her brother pursued,
harassing our retreat.
My friend stopped, turning round on him fiercely. “You very impossible
man!” he cried in his face.
“Do you mean to say you’ll not prosecute?” Mr. Searle kept it up. “I
shall force you to prosecute! I shall drag you into court, and you shall
be beaten--beaten--beaten!” Which grim reiteration followed us on our
course.
We drove of course to the little wayside inn from which we had departed
in the morning so unencumbered, in all broad England, either with
enemies or friends. My companion, as the carriage rolled along, seemed
overwhelmed and exhausted. “What a beautiful horrible dream!” he
confusedly wailed. “What a strange awakening! What a long long day! What
a hideous scene! Poor me! Poor woman!” When we had resumed possession of
our two little neighbouring rooms I asked him whether Miss Searle’s
note had been the result of anything that had passed between them on
his going to rejoin her. “I found her on the terrace,” he said, “walking
restlessly up and down in the moonlight. I was greatly excited--I
hardly know what I said. I asked her, I think, if she knew the story of
Margaret Searle. She seemed frightened and troubled, and she used
just the words her brother had used--‘I know nothing.’ For the moment,
somehow, I felt as a man drunk. I stood before her and told her, with
great emphasis, how poor Margaret had married a beggarly foreigner--all
in obedience to her heart and in defiance to her family. As I talked the
sheeted moonlight seemed to close about us, so that we stood there in
a dream, in a world quite detached. She grew younger, prettier, more
attractive--I found myself talking all kinds of nonsense. Before I knew
it I had gone very far. I was taking her hand and calling her ‘Margaret,
dear Margaret!’ She had said it was impossible, that she could do
nothing, that she was a fool, a child, a slave. Then with a sudden
sense--it was odd how it came over me there--of the reality of my
connexion with the place, I spoke of my claim against the estate. ‘It
exists,’ I declared, ‘but I’ve given it up. Be generous! Pay me for my
sacrifice.’ For an instant her face was radiant. ‘If I marry you,’
she asked, ‘will it make everything right?’ Of that I at once assured
her--in our marriage the whole difficulty would melt away like a
rain-drop in the great sea. ‘Our marriage!’ she repeated in wonder; and
the deep ring of her voice seemed to wake us up and show us our folly.
‘I love you, but I shall never see you again,’ she cried; and she
hurried away with her face in her hands. I walked up and down the
terrace for some moments, and then came in and met you. That’s the only
witchcraft I’ve used!”
The poor man was at once so roused and so shaken by the day’s events
that I believed he would get little sleep. Conscious on my own part that
I shouldn’t close my eyes, I but partly undressed, stirred my fire
and sat down to do some writing. I heard the great clock in the little
parlour below strike twelve, one, half-past one. Just as the vibration
of this last stroke was dying on the air the door of communication with
Searle’s room was flung open and my companion stood on the threshold,
pale as a corpse, in his nightshirt, shining like a phantom against the
darkness behind him. “Look well at me!” he intensely gasped; “touch me,
embrace me, revere me! You see a man who has seen a ghost!”
“Gracious goodness, what do you mean?”
“Write it down!” he went on. “There, take your pen. Put it into dreadful
words. How do I look? Am I human? Am I pale? Am I red? Am I speaking
English? A ghost, sir! Do you understand?”
I confess there came upon me by contact a kind of supernatural shock. I
shall always feel by the whole communication of it that I too have seen
a ghost. My first movement--I can smile at it now--was to spring to the
door, close it quickly and turn the key upon the gaping blackness from
which Searle had emerged. I seized his two hands; they were wet with
perspiration. I pushed my chair to the fire and forced him to sit down
in it; then I got on my knees and held his hands as firmly as possible.
They trembled and quivered; his eyes were fixed save that the pupil
dilated and contracted with extraordinary force. I asked no questions,
but waited there, very curious for what he would say. At last he spoke.
“I’m not frightened, but I’m--oh excited! This is life! This is living!
My nerves--my heart--my brain! They’re throbbing--don’t you feel it? Do
you tingle? Are you hot? Are you cold? Hold me tight--tight--tight! I
shall tremble away into waves--into surges--and know all the secrets of
things and all the reasons and all the mysteries!” He paused a moment
and then went on: “A woman--as clear as that candle: no, far clearer! In
a blue dress, with a black mantle on her head and a little black muff.
Young and wonderfully pretty, pale and ill; with the sadness of all
the women who ever loved and suffered pleading and accusing in her
wet-looking eyes. God knows I never did any such thing! But she took me
for my elder, for the other Clement. She came to me here as she would
have come to me there. She wrung her hands and she spoke to me ‘marry
me!’ she moaned; ‘marry me and put an end to my shame!’ I sat up in bed,
just as I sit here, looked at her, heard her--heard her voice melt away,
watched her figure fade away. Bless us and save us! Here I be!”
I made no attempt either to explain or to criticise this extraordinary
passage. It’s enough that I yielded for the hour to the strange force
of my friend’s emotion. On the whole I think my own vision was the
more interesting of the two. He beheld but the transient irresponsible
spectre--I beheld the human subject hot from the spectral presence. Yet
I soon recovered my judgement sufficiently to be moved again to try to
guard him against the results of excitement and exposure. It was easily
agreed that he was not for the night to return to his room, and I made
him fairly comfortable in his place by my fire. Wishing above all to
preserve him from a chill I removed my bedding and wrapped him in the
blankets and counterpane. I had no nerves either for writing or for
sleep; so I put out my lights, renewed the fuel and sat down on the
opposite side of the hearth. I found it a great and high solemnity just
to watch my companion. Silent, swathed and muffled to his chin, he sat
rigid and erect with the dignity of his adventure. For the most part
his eyes were closed; though from time to time he would open them with
a steady expansion and stare, never blinking, into the flame, as if he
again beheld without terror the image of the little woman with the muff.
His cadaverous emaciated face, his tragic wrinkles intensified by the
upward glow from the hearth, his distorted moustache, his extraordinary
gravity and a certain fantastical air as the red light flickered over
him, all re-enforced his fine likeness to the vision-haunted knight of
La Mancha when laid up after some grand exploit. The night passed wholly
without speech. Toward its close I slept for half an hour. When I awoke
the awakened birds had begun to twitter and Searle, unperturbed, sat
staring at me. We exchanged a long look, and I felt with a pang that his
glittering eyes had tasted their last of natural sleep. “How is it? Are
you comfortable?” I nevertheless asked.
He fixed me for a long time without replying and then spoke with a
weak extravagance and with such pauses between his words as might have
represented the slow prompting of an inner voice. “You asked me when
you first knew me what I was. ‘Nothing,’ I said, ‘nothing of any
consequence.’ Nothing I’ve always supposed myself to be. But I’ve
wronged myself--I’m a great exception. I’m a haunted man!”
If sleep had passed out of his eyes I felt with even a deeper pang that
sanity had abandoned his spirit. From this moment I was prepared for
the worst. There were in my friend, however, such confirmed habits of
mildness that I found myself not in the least fearing he would prove
unmanageable. As morning began fully to dawn upon us I brought our
curious vigil to a close. Searle was so enfeebled that I gave him
my hands to help him out of his chair, and he retained them for some
moments after rising to his feet, unable as he seemed to keep his
balance. “Well,” he said, “I’ve been once favoured, but don’t think I
shall be favoured again. I shall soon be myself as fit to ‘appear’ as
any of them. I shall haunt the master of Lackley! It can only mean
one thing--that they’re getting ready for me on the other side of the
grave.”
When I touched the question of breakfast he replied that he had his
breakfast in his pocket; and he drew from his travelling-bag a phial of
morphine. He took a strong dose and went to bed. At noon I found him
on foot again, dressed, shaved, much refreshed. “Poor fellow,” he said,
“you’ve got more than you bargained for--not only a man with a grievance
but a man with a ghost. Well, it won’t be for long!” It had of course
promptly become a question whither we should now direct our steps. “As
I’ve so little time,” he argued for this, “I should like to see the
best, the best alone.” I answered that either for time or eternity I had
always supposed Oxford to represent the English maximum, and for Oxford
in the course of an hour we accordingly departed.