THERE'S A CONSCIENCE!
Madge had been taken so wholly unawares that for a moment she remained
stock-still--and voiceless. Then she followed the woman to the door.
"You have come to do what?"
"I've come to see the house."
"And pray who are you?"
"What affair is that of yours? Don't I tell you I've come to see the
house?"
"But I don't understand you. What do you mean by saying you've come to
see the house?"
For only answer the woman, turning her back on her, walked another
step or two along the little passage. She exclaimed, as if addressing
the staircase, which was in front of her, in what seemed a tone of
intense emotion--
"How his presence is in all the place! How he fills the air!"
Madge felt more bewildered than she would have cared to admit. Was the
woman mad? Mad or sane, she resolved that she would not submit tamely
to such another irruption as the last. She laid her hand upon the
woman's shoulder.
"Will you be so good as to tell me, at once, to whom I have the
pleasure of speaking, and what business has brought you here?"
The woman turned and looked at her; as she did so, Madge was conscious
of a curious sense of discomfort.
She was of medium height, slender build, and apparently between forty
and fifty years of age. Her attire was not only shabby, it was tawdry
to the last degree. Her garments were a heterogeneous lot; one might
safely swear they had none of them been made for the wearer. One and
all were shocking examples of outworn finery. The black chip hat which
she wore perched on her head, with an indescribable sort of would-be
jauntiness, was broken at the brim, and the one-time gorgeous ostrich
feathers were crushed and soiled. A once well-cut cape of erstwhile
dark blue cloth was about her shoulders. It was faded, stained, and
creased. The fur which had been used to adorn the edges was bare and
rusty. It had been lined with silk--as she moved her arms one
perceived that of the lining there was nothing left but rags and
tatters. Her dress, once the latest fashionable freak in some
light-hued flimsy silk, had long since been fit for nothing else than
cutting into dusters. She wore ancient patent-leather shoes upon her
feet, and equally ancient gloves upon her hands--the bare flesh
showing through holes in every finger.
If her costume was strange, her face was stranger. It was the face of
a woman who had once been beautiful--how long ago, no one who chanced
on her haphazard could with any certainty have guessed. It might have
been five, ten, fifteen, twenty years ago--and more than that--since
hers had been a countenance which charmed even a casual beholder. It
was the face of a woman who had been weak or wicked, and maybe both,
and who in consequence had been bandied from pillar to post, till this
was all that there was left of her. Her big blue eyes were deep set in
careworn caverns; her mouth, which had once been small and dainty, was
now blurred and pendulous, the mouth of a woman who drank; her cheeks
were sunk and hollow as if she had lost every tooth in her head, the
cheek-bones gleaming through the yellow skin in sharp and cruel
ridges. To crown it all, her hair was dyed--a vivid yellow. Like all
the rest of her, the dye was old and worn. It stood in urgent need of
a renewal. The roots were grey, they demonstrated their greyness with
savage ostentation. Here and there among the yellow there were grey
patches too--in some queer way her attempt at juvenesence had made her
look older even than she was.
This was not a pleasant face to have encountered anywhere at any time,
being the sort from which good women instinctively shrink back. Just
now its unpleasantness was intensified by the fact that it was lit up
by some, to Madge, inscrutable emotion; inflamed by some mastering
excitement. The hollow eyes gleamed as if they were lighted by inner
fires; the lips twitched as if the muscles which worked them were
uncontrollable. The woman spoke in short, sharp, angry gusts, as if
she were stumbling on the verge of frenzied passion.
"This house is mine," she said.
"Yours?"
"It was his, and mine--and now it's mine."
Madge, persuaded that the woman must be either mad or drunk, felt that
perhaps calmness might be her safest weapon.
"Do you mean that you're the landlady?"
"The landlady!" The woman laughed--unmirthfully. "There is no
landlady. And the landlord--he's a ghost. He's in it now--don't you
feel that he is in it?"
She spoke with such singular intensity that, in spite of herself,
Madge shuddered. She was feeling more and more uncomfortable--wishing
heartily that some one might come, if it was only the mysterious
stranger who had previously intruded.
The woman went on--her excitement seeming to grow with every word she
uttered.
"The house is full of ghosts--full! They're in every corner, every
nook and cranny--and I know them every one. Come here--I'll show you
some of them."
She caught the girl by the arm. Madge, yielding to her strange frenzy,
suffered herself to be led into the sitting-room. Once inside, the
woman loosed her hold. She looked about her. Then crossed to the
fireplace, standing in the centre of the hearthrug.
"This is where I struck him." She pointed just in front of her. "He
was sitting there. I had asked him for some money. He would not let me
have any. He always clung to his money--always! I swear it--always!"
She raised her hands, as if appealing to the ceiling to bear her
witness. "He said that I was ruining him. Ruining him? bah! I knew
better than that. He would let no one ruin him--he was not of that
kind. I told him I must have money. He said he'd given me five pounds
last week. 'Five pounds!' I cried; 'what are five pounds?' Then we
quarrelled--he said things, I said things. Then I flew into a rage; my
temper has been the curse of my whole life. I caught up a decanter of
whisky which was on the table, and struck him with it on the head. The
bottle broke, the whisky went all over him--how it smelt! Can't you
smell it?--and he went tumbling down, down, on to the floor. He's
lying there now--can't you see him lying there?" She turned to Madge
with a gesture which seemed to make the girl's blood run colder.
"Can't you see the ghost?"
She moved a little to one side.
"Just here is where I knelt down, and asked him to forgive me. That
was after--I'd been carrying on with some fellow I'd met at a dance,
and he had found me out. I cried and cried as if my heart would break,
and at last he came and put his hand upon my head--when I set myself
to do it, and stuck at it, I could twist him round my finger!--and he
began to stroke my hair--I'd lovely hair then, no woman ever had
lovelier, and he was always one to stroke it when I'd let him!--and he
said, 'My girl, how often shall I have to forgive you?' Listen! Can't
you hear him saying it now? Can't you see the ghost?"
She went to where the modest sideboard stood.
"This is where we had our sideboard too--it was a bigger one than
this; all our things were good. I was standing here, leaning against
it just like this, the first time he saw me drunk. He'd been out all
the evening on some sort of business, and I'd been left in the house
alone with the girl, and I hadn't liked it, and I'd been sulking. And
at last I got to the whisky and I started to drink, drink, drink. I
always had been fond of drink long before that, but I'd never let him
find it out. But that time I was that sulky I didn't seem to care, and
by the time I might have cared I couldn't care--I was too far gone. I
had to keep on drinking. There wasn't much in the bottle; when I got
to the end of it I started on another. Then I got to the sideboard,
and stood leaning over it, lolly fashion, booze, booze, boozing. All
of a sudden the door opened, and he came into the room. I turned to
have a look at him, the bottle in one hand and the glass in the other.
Directly I got clear of the sideboard I went flop on the floor, and
the bottle and the glass went with me, and there I had to lie. He
rushed towards me, and as soon as he had had a look at me he saw how
it was. Then he fell on his knees at my side, and put his hands up to
his face, and began to cry. My God, how he did cry!--not like me. His
sobs seemed tearing him to pieces, and his life's blood seemed coming
from him with every tear. Drunk as I was, it made me cry to hear him.
Listen! Can't you hear him crying now? Can't you see the ghost?"
The woman's words and manner were so realistic, and despite--or
perhaps because of--her seeming frenzy, she had such an eerie capacity
of conjuring up the picture as her memory painted it, that Madge
listened spellbound. She was as incapable of interrupting the other's
flow of language as if the conscience haunted wretch had cast on her
some strange enchantment.
The sea of visions went to the table, and, bending over it, beckoned
to Madge to draw closer. As if she found the invitation irresistible,
Madge approached. The woman's outstretched finger pointed to a
particular place about the centre of one side of the table. Her
excitement all at once subsided; her voice grew softer. Her manner
became more human, more womanly.
"See!--this is where my little baby died--my little child--the only
one I ever had. It was a girl; we called it Lily--my name's Lily"--she
glanced up with a grin, as if conscious of how grotesquely
inappropriate, in her case, such a name was now; "it was such a little
thing--I didn't want it when it came. I never was fond of children,
and I wasn't one to play the mother. But, when it did come, it got
hold of me somehow--yes, it did! it did! I was fond of it, in my way.
As for him, he worshipped it; it was baby, baby, baby! all the time. I
was nowhere. It made me wild to hear him, and to see the way that he
went on. We fell out because I would have it brought up by hand. He
wanted me to let it have my milk--but I wouldn't have it. I wasn't
going to be any baby's slave--not likely! I don't think he ever
forgave me that. Then he was always at me because he said I neglected
it; and that made me worse than ever: I wasn't going to have a crying
brat thrust down my throat at every turn, and so I told him. 'Why
isn't there a place in which they bring up babies so that they needn't
worry their mothers?' I wanted to know. When I said that, how he did
look at me, and how he went on! I thought he would have killed me--but
I didn't care. He did his share of all the nursing that baby ever
had--and perhaps a little more."
Again the woman laughed.
"At last the little thing went wrong. It always was small; it never
seemed to grow--except thin. It was the queerest looking little mite,
with a serious face like a parson's, and great big eyes which seemed
to go right through you, as if it was looking at something which
nobody but itself could see. He would have it that it got worse and
worse, but he was always making such a fuss that I said he was making
a fool of the child. The doctor came and came, but I was pretty often
out, and when I wasn't I didn't always choose to see him, so I only
heard what he cared to tell me--and I didn't believe the half of that.
"One night I went to a masked ball with Mrs. Sutton--she was a larky
one, she was, and led her husband a pretty dance. It was latish when I
came back; I hadn't enjoyed myself one bit, and left in a temper and
came off home by myself I let myself in at the front door, and when I
came into this room, on the table just here"--she pointed with her
finger--"there was a pillow, and on the pillow was the baby, and he
was kneeling on the floor in front, his elbows on the table, and his
face on his hands, and the tears streaming down his cheeks as if
they'd never stop. I'd been to the ball as a ballet girl--though he
hadn't known it, and I hadn't meant that he should, but the sight took
me so aback that, without thinking, I dropped my cloak and stood
before him just as I was. 'What's the matter now?' I cried; 'what's
the child down here at this time of the night for?' I expected that
he'd let fly at me, and perhaps send me packing out of the house right
there and then. But, instead, he just glanced my way as if he hardly
saw me, or wanted to, and said, 'Baby's dying.' When he said that, it
was as if he had run something right into my heart. 'Dying,' I cried,
'stuff!' I ran to the table and bent over the pillow. I had never seen
anybody dying before, and knew nothing at all about it, but directly I
looked at it, I seemed to know that what he said was true, and that
the child was dying. My heart stopped beating--I couldn't breathe, I
couldn't speak, I couldn't move, I could only stare like a creature
who had lost her wits--it was as if a hand had been stretched right
out of Heaven to strike me a blow. There he was on one side of the
table--and there was me leaning right over the other, both of us
motionless, neither of us speaking a word; and there was the baby
lying on the pillow between us, stiller than we were. How long we
stopped like that I don't know; it seemed to me as if it was
hours--but I daresay it was only a few minutes. All at once the
baby--my baby--gave a little movement with its little arms--a sort of
trembling. He moved his arm, and put one of his fingers into its tiny
hand; the baby seemed to fasten on to it. 'Give it one of your
fingers,' he said, sobbing as if his heart would break. 'It'll like to
feel your finger as it goes!' Hardly knowing what I was doing, I
stretched out one of my fingers; it was the first finger of my right
hand--this one." She held up the finger in question in its ragged
casing. "And I put it in the mite's wee hand. It took it--yes, it
took it. It closed its fingers right round it, and gave it quite a
squeeze--yes, quite a squeeze. Then it loosened its hold. It was dead.
Dead upon the pillow.--And it's there now. Can't you see it lying on
the pillow, with a smile on its face? a smile! Can't you see the
ghost?"
Stooping, the woman made pretence to kiss the lips of some one who was
lying just beneath her. It might have been that to her the thing was
no pretence, and that, as in a vision, the dead lips did indeed touch
hers. Then, drawing herself erect again, she broke into another of her
discordant laughs. Throwing out her arms on either side of her, she
exclaimed in strident tones:
"Ghosts! Ghosts! The place is full of them--I see them everywhere. I
touch them, hear them all the time. They've been with me all through
the years, wherever I've been--and where haven't I been? My God--in
heaven and hell! crowds and crowds of them, more and more as the years
went on. And do you think that I can't see them here--in their house,
and mine! Can't you see them too?"
Madge replied between set lips--she had been forming her own
conclusions while the woman raved:
"No, I do not see them. Nor would you were you not under the influence
of drink."
The woman stared at her in what seemed genuine surprise.
"Under the influence of drink! Me? No such luck! I wish I were." Again
she gave one of those bursts of laughter which so jarred on Madge's
nerves. "When I'm drunk I can't see ghosts--it's only when I'm sober.
I've had nothing to eat since I don't know when, let alone to drink.
I'm starving, starving! That's the time when I see ghosts. They point
at me with their fingers and say, 'Look at us and look at you--this is
what it's come to!' They make me see what might have been. He made me
come to-day; I didn't want to, but he made me. And now he's in all the
house.--Listen! He's getting out of bed in the room upstairs--that's
his bedroom. Can't you hear his lame foot moving about the floor?
How often I've thrown that lame foot in his face when I've been
wild!--can't you hear it hobble--hobble?"
"You are mad! How dare you talk such nonsense? There's no one in the
house but you and I."
The woman seemed to believe so implicitly in the diseased imaginings
of her conscience-haunted brain, that Madge felt that unless she made
a resolute effort her own mental equilibrium might totter. On the
other's face there came a look of shrewd, malignant cunning.
"Isn't there! That's all you know,--I'm no more mad than you are. And
I tell you what--he's not the only thing that's in the house. There's
something else as well. It was his, and now it's mine. And don't you
think to rob me."
"Rob you?--I."
"Yes, you. There's others after it as well as you--I know! I'm not the
simpleton that some may think. But I won't be robbed by all the lot of
you--you make no error. It was his, and now it's mine."
"If there really is anything in the house to which you have the
slightest shadow of a claim, which I very much doubt, and let me know
what it is, and where it is, I'll see that you have it without fail."
A look of vacancy came on the woman's face. She passed her hand across
her brow.
"That's it--I don't know just where it is. He comes and tells me,
almost, but never quite. He says it's in the house, but he doesn't say
exactly where. But he never lies--so I do know it's in the house, and
I won't be robbed."
"I have not the slightest idea of what you mean--if you really do mean
anything at all. I don't know if you know me--or are under the
impression that I know you; if so, I can only assure you that I don't.
I have not the faintest notion who you are."
The woman, drawing nearer, clutched Madge's arm with both her hands.
"Don't you know who I am? I'm the ghost's wife!"
Her manner was not only exceedingly unpleasant; it was, in a sense,
uncanny--so uncanny that, in spite of herself, Madge could not help a
startled look coming into her face. The appearance of this look seemed
to amuse her tormentor. She broke into a continuous peal of
unmelodious laughter.
"I'm the ghost's wife!" she kept repeating. "I'm the ghost's wife."
Madge Brodie prided herself on her strength of nerve, and as, a rule,
not without cause. But, on that occasion, almost for the first time in
her life it played her false. She would have been glad to have been
able to scream and flee; but she was incapable even of doing that. The
other seemed to hold her spellbound; she was conscious that her senses
were reeling--that, unless something happened soon, she would faint.
But from that final degradation she was saved.
"Madge," exclaimed a voice, "who is this woman?"
It was Ella Duncan, and with her was Jack Martyn. At the sound of the
voice, the woman released her hold. Never before had Madge been
sensible of such a spasm of relief. She rushed to Ella with a
hysterical sob.
"Oh, Ella!" she cried, "how thankful I am you've come."
Ella looked at her with surprise.
"Madge!--who is this woman?"
The woman in question spoke for herself. She threw up her arms.
"I'm the ghost's wife!" she shrieked, "I'm the ghost's wife!"
Before they had suspected her purpose, or could say anything to stop
her, she had rushed out of the room and from the house.