Joan went straight from Cornwall to London and the Bloomsbury
boarding-house in which some of her curiously earned money was invested.
All was to begin over again now; but to the girl this idea brought
inspiration rather than discouragement, for the world was still her
oyster, if she could open it, and experience had already taught her some
dexterity in the use of the knife. At this house in Woburn Place she
had the right to live without paying, while she "looked round," and Miss
Witt, who owed her present position to Joan, was only too delighted to
welcome her benefactress.
The place was doing well, and the corner of difficulty had been turned;
this was the news the manager-housekeeper had to give Joan. Every room
but one was full, and so far the boarders seemed to be "good pay," with
perhaps a single exception.
"There's only the little top floor back that's empty," cheerfully went
on Miss Witt. "Of course, I will take that and give you mine."
"You'll do nothing of the sort, my dear woman," said Joan. "I like
running up and down stairs. It does me good. Besides, I'd rather be at
the back. There's a tree, or something that once tried hard to be a
tree, to look at, as I know well, for the room used to be mine; so
there's no use talking any more about that matter--it's settled. You
stay where you are, and I will rise, like cream, to the top. Now tell
me about this doubtful person you are afraid won't pay. Is it a man or
a woman?"
"A woman," replied Miss Witt, "and one of the strangest beings I ever
saw. It is a great comfort to me that you are here, miss, for you can
decide what is to be done about her. She hasn't paid her board for a
fortnight, but she keeps pleading that as soon as she is well, and can
go out, she will get remittances which have been delayed."
"Oh, she is ill, then?"
"So she says. But I'm not sure, miss, it isn't just an excuse to work
upon my compassion, for why should she have to go out for remittances?
She stops in her room, lying upon a sofa, and makes a deal of bother
with her meals being carried up so many pairs of stairs, though it's
hardly worth while her having them at all, she eats so little. Yet she
doesn't look a bit different from what she did when she was supposed to
be well and going about as much like anybody else as one of her sort
could _ever_ do."
"What do you mean?" asked Joan, whose curiosity was fired.
"Only that she is, and was, more a ghost than a human being, with her
great, hollow, black eyes, like burning coals, set deep under her thick
eyebrows and overhanging forehead; with her thin cheeks--why, miss, they
almost meet in the middle--her yellow-white skin, her tall, gliding
figure and stealthy way of walking, so that you never hear a sound till
she's at your back."
"Queer kind of boarder," commented Joan.
"That she is, miss; and when she applied for a room, I would have said
we were full up, but in those days we had several of our best rooms
empty, and, strange as she was, her clothes were so good, and the
luggage on the four-wheeler waiting outside was so promising, as you
might say, that it did seem a pity to send away two guineas a week
because Providence had given it a scarecrow face. So I showed her the
best back room on the top floor----"
"Next to mine," cut in Joan.
"If you will have it so, miss; and there she's been for the last six
weeks, not having paid a penny since the end of the first month."
"What is the ghost's name and age?" the girl went on with her catechism.
"Her name, if one was to take her word, which I'm far from being certain
of, is Mrs. Gone; and as for her age, miss, she might be almost anywhere
between fifty and a hundred."
"What a clever old lady!" laughed the girl. "Well, we can't turn the
poor wretch away while she's ill, if she is ill, can we? I know too
well what it is to be alone in the world and down on your luck, to be
hard on anybody else, especially a woman. We must give Mrs. Gone the
benefit of the doubt for a little while. But your description has quite
interested me; I should like to see this ghost who doesn't walk."
"The house is the same as yours, miss," said Miss Witt. "You have the
right to go into her room at any time, more particularly as she hasn't
paid for it."
"Perhaps I'll carry up her dinner this evening, by way of an excuse,"
returned Joan--"if you think she could bear the shock of seeing a
strange face."
Upon this, Miss Witt, who adored the girl, protested that, in her
opinion, the sight of such a face could only be a pleasure to any person
and in any circumstances. Joan laughed at the compliment, but she did
not forget her intention. Mrs. Gone's meals were usually taken up a few
minutes before the gong summoned the guests to the dining-room, because
it was easier to spare a servant then than later, and it was just after
the dressing-bell had rung that the girl knocked at the "ghost's" door.
Joan was surprised to find her heart quickening its beats as she waited
for a bidding to "Come in!" One would think that a sight of this old
woman who would not pay her board was an exciting event! She smiled at
herself, but the smile faded as she threw open the door in answer to a
faint murmur on the other side. Miss Witt's sketch of Mrs. Gone had not
been an exaggeration.
There she lay on a sofa by the window, her face gleaming white in the
twilight; and it was a wonderful face. A shiver went creeping up and
down Joan's spine, as a flame leaped out from the shadowy hollows of two
sunken eyes to hers.
"This woman has been some one in particular--some one extraordinary,"
the girl thought quickly; and as politely as if she had addressed a
duchess, she explained her intrusion. "The servants were busy, and I
offered to carry up your dinner," Joan said. "I arrived only to-day;
and as Miss Witt looks upon me as a sort of proprietor, she told me how
ill you have been. I hope you are better."
The old woman with the strange face looked steadily at the beautiful
girl in the pretty, simple, evening frock which was to grace the
boarding-house dinner. "Did Miss Witt tell you nothing else?" she
asked, in a voice which would have made the fortune of a tragic actress
in the death scene of some aged queen.
"She told me that she was afraid you were in trouble," promptly answered
Joan, who had her own way of dressing the truth. By this time the girl
had entered the room, set the tray on a table near the sofa, and taking
a rose from her bodice, laid it on the pile of plates. This she did on
the impulse of the moment, not with a preconceived idea of effect, and
she was rewarded by a slight softening of the tense muscles round the
once handsome mouth.
"I hope you like roses?" she asked.
"Yes," Mrs. Gone answered brusquely. "Why do you give it to me?"
"Because I'm sorry you are ill, and perhaps lonely," said Joan, able for
once to account for an action without a single mental reserve. "I have
had a good deal of worry in my life, and can sympathise with others, as
I told Miss Witt when she spoke of you. One reason why I came was to say
that you needn't distress yourself about your indebtedness to this
house. Try to get well, and pay at your convenience. You shall not be
pressed."
Joan had not meant to say all this when she arranged to have a sight of
Mrs. Gone. She had merely wished to satisfy her curiosity; but now she
felt impelled to utter these words of encouragement--why, she did not
know, for she had not conceived any sudden fancy for the sinister old
woman. On the contrary, the white face, with its burning eyes and
secretive mouth, inspired her with something like fear. A woman with
such a face could not have many sweet, redeeming graces of character or
heart. There was, to supersensitive nerves, an atmosphere of evil as
well as mystery about her; but though Joan felt this, it gave a keener
edge to her interest.
"Thank you," said Mrs. Gone. "You are kind, as well as pretty. I do
not like young people usually, but I might learn to like you. I hope
you will come again."
The words were a dismissal and a compliment. Joan accepted them as both.
She promised to repeat her visit, and after lighting the shaded lamp on
the table, left Mrs. Gone to eat her dinner.
The girl would have given much to lift the veil of mystery wrapped about
this woman's past and personality. She even boasted to herself that she
would find some way, sooner or later, at least to peep under its edge;
but day after day passed, and though she went often to Mrs. Gone's room,
and was always thanked for her kind attentions, she seemed no nearer to
attaining her object than at first. Beyond occupying a room which she
did not pay for, Mrs. Gone was not an expensive guest. She ate almost
nothing; and when Joan had been in Woburn Place for a week, the white
face with its burning eyes had become so drawn with suffering that in
real compassion the girl offered to call a doctor at her own expense.
But Mrs. Gone would not consent. "I hate doctors," she said. "No one
could tell me more about myself than I know."
The girl's own affairs were absorbing enough, for she saw no new opening
yet for her ambition; still, she found time to think a great deal about
Mrs. Gone. "Am I a soft-hearted idiot, allowing myself to be imposed
upon by a professional 'sponge'?" she wondered; "or is there something
in my odd feeling that I shall be rewarded for all I do for this
extraordinary woman?"
Such questions were passing through her mind one night when she had gone
to bed late, after being out at the theatre. She had been in Woburn
Place eight days, and was growing impatient, for none of the boarders
were of the kind to be used as "stepping-stones," and none of the
Society and financial papers, which she studied, afforded any hopeful
suggestion for another phase of her career. To be sure, the young man
with whom she had consented to go to the theatre was employed as a
reporter for a great London daily, and she had been "nice" to him, with
the vague idea that she might somehow be able to profit by his
infatuation; but at present she did not see her way, and it appeared
that she was wasting sweetness on the desert air.
"I suppose," Joan said to herself, turning over her hot pillow, "that if
I were an ordinary girl, I might be contented to go on as I am. I can
live here for nothing, and get enough interest on the money I've put
into this concern to buy clothes and pay my way about, with strict
economy. All the men in the house are in love with me; and if they were
more interesting, that might be amusing. But I'm not born to be
contented with small people or things. I don't want clothes. I want
creations. I don't want the admiration of young men from the City. I
want to be appreciated by princes. I believe I must have been a
princess in another state of existence, for I always feel that the best
of everything is hardly good enough for me."
As she thought this, half laughing, there came a sound from the next
room--that room which might have been the grave of the strange woman who
occupied it, so dead was the silence which reigned there day and night.
Never before had Joan heard the least noise on the other side of the
dividing wall, but now she was startled by a crash as of breaking glass,
followed by the dull, soft thud which could only have been made by the
fall of a human body. Joan sat up, her heart thumping, and it gave a
frightened bound as a groan came brokenly to her ears.
She waited no longer, but slipped her bare feet into a pair of satin
_mules_, flung on her dressing-gown, and in another moment was out of
her room and in the dark passage, fumbling for the handle of the other
door.
Mrs. Gone kept her door unlocked in the daytime, perhaps to save herself
the trouble of rising to admit servants, or her only visitor, Joan
Carthew; but the girl feared that it might not be so at night, and that
before she could penetrate the mystery of the fall and the groan, the
whole house would have to be disturbed. She was relieved, therefore, to
find that the door yielded to her touch. Pushing it open, she listened
for an instant, but only the dead silence throbbed in her ears.
As she got into her dressing-gown, with characteristic presence of mind
Joan had caught up a box of matches and put it into her pocket. The
room was as dark as the passage outside, and the girl struck a match
before crossing the threshold. The little flame leaped and brightened.
Something on the floor glimmered white in the darkness, and Joan did not
need to bend down to know what it was.
The gas was close to the door, and she lighted it with the dying match,
which burnt her fingers. Then she saw clearly what had happened. In
tottering uncertainly across the floor, Mrs. Gone had knocked over a
small table holding a china candlestick, a water-bottle, and a goblet.
She had fallen, and after uttering that one groan which had crept to
Joan's ears, she had lost consciousness.
The girl's quick eyes sought for an explanation of the catastrophe. The
long, white figure lay at some distance from the bed, and near the
mantel. On the mantel stood a curiously shaped, dark green bottle,
which Joan had once been requested to give to Mrs. Gone. She had seen a
few drops of some colourless liquid poured into a wineglass of water;
and when it had been swallowed, the ghastly pallor of the face had
changed to a more natural tint. Mrs. Gone had then said that she took
the medicine when very ill. If she used it oftener, its effect would
disappear, and she would have nothing left to turn to at the worst.
"It was that bottle she was trying to find in the dark," Joan guessed.
"She must have been too ill to try and light the gas. Now, how much was
it that I saw her pour out? It might have been ten drops--no more."
So thinking, the girl filled a glass on the wash-handstand a third full
of water, measured ten drops of the medicine with a steady hand, and
raising Mrs. Gone's head, put the tumbler to her lips. The strong teeth
seemed clenched, but some of the liquid must have passed their barrier,
for the dark eyes opened wide and looked up into Joan's face.
"Too late----" the woman panted, with a gurgling in the throat which
choked her words. "Dying--now. Wish that--you--you have been
kind--only one in the world. My secret--you might have--Lord Northmuir
would have given----"
The voice trailed away into silence. The gurgle died into a rattle; the
woman's breast heaved and was still. Her eyes had not closed, but
though they stared into Joan's, the spark of life behind their windows
had gone out. Mrs. Gone was dead, and had taken her secret with her
into the unknown.
Joan had never seen death before, but there was no mistaking it. Her
first impulse was to run downstairs, call Miss Witt and a young doctor
who had his office and bedroom on the dining-room floor. Nevertheless,
when she had laid the heavy head gently down and sprung to her feet, she
remained standing.
For some minutes she stood motionless, almost rigid, her lips pressed
together, her eyes hard and bright. Then she struck one hand lightly
upon the other, exclaiming half aloud: "I'll do it!"
It seemed certain by this time that no one had heard the crash of glass
and the fall which had alarmed her, for the house was still.
Nevertheless, Joan tiptoed to the door and bolted it. When she had done
this, she opened all the drawers of the dressing-table and searched them
carefully for papers. Discovering none, she left everything exactly as
she had found it. Next she examined the pockets of the three or four
dresses hanging in the wardrobe, but they were limp and empty. There
were still left the leather portmanteau and handbag which had appealed
to Miss Witt's respectful admiration. Both were locked, but Joan's
instinct led her to look under the pillows on the bed, and there lay a
key-ring. She was able to open portmanteau and bag, but not a paper of
any kind was to be seen, and the girl recalled a remark of Miss Witt's,
that never since Mrs. Gone had become a boarder in Woburn Place had she
been known to receive or send a letter.
Having assured herself that no information was to be gained among the
dead woman's possessions, Joan unlocked the door and went softly
downstairs to rouse Miss Witt. She justified what she had done by reason
of Mrs. Gone's last words, for she believed that the dead woman would
have made her a present of the secret if she could.