I lit a fresh cigar, poured out another glass of wine, and gave myself
up to meditation. Those blank spaces completely mystified me. For what
other object had this lengthy transcription been made than to record
A.'s "last will," and the causes leading up to and (so far as that was
possible) justifying it? Yet, on the other hand, the careful omission
of every clue whereby the persons concerned might have been identified
seemed to annul and stultify the laborious record of their actions. Or
if the composition were a mere fiction, why not have invented names as
well as incidents?
But fiction, I was satisfied, it could not be. It was not the fashion to
compose such fictions a hundred and fifty or more years ago. And it was
not within the scope of such an arid old specimen of the antique clergy
as he whose stilted Latin and angular chirography I had just examined to
follow such a fashion even had it existed. No, no. Account for it how I
might, the things here set down were facts, not fancies.
The will was the only part of the compilation written in English, as
though it were especially commended to the knowledge of all men; and it
was certainly not the sort of thing a dying man would be apt to compose
and have attested purely for his own amusement. Yet, as it stood, it was
no more than a lifeless formula. But, indeed, so far as this feature of
the narrative was concerned, the subtlest casuistry failed to enlighten
me as to what Mr. A.'s proposed revenge had been, and how he expected it
to be accomplished. An attempt to make the tourmaline locket serve as a
key to the enigma promised well at first, but could not quite be induced
to fit the lock after all. Either the problem was too abstruse, or my
head was not in the best condition for solving it. The longer I puzzled
over it, the more plainly did my inefficiency appear; and at last I came
to the very sensible determination to go to bed, and hope for clearer
faculties on the morrow.
I had just finished winding up my watch, which marked half-past ten,
when there was a violent ring at my door-bell, followed by a rattling
appeal to the knocker.
"A telegram!" I exclaimed, falling back in my chair. "The only thing I
detest more than a postman. Well, the postman brought an enigma; perhaps
the telegram may contain the solution."
It was not a telegram, but Calbot, to whom I have already made
incidental allusion. He opened the library door without knocking, came
swiftly in, and walked up to the fire. This abruptness of manner, which
was by no means proper to him, added to something very peculiar in his
general aspect and expression, gave me quite a start.
He was dressed in light in-door costume, and, in spite of the cold, wore
neither top-coat nor gloves. His face had a pallor which would have been
extraordinary in anyone, but in a man whose cheek was ordinarily so
ruddy and robust as Calbot's, it was almost ghastly. He said nothing
for some moments, but seemed to be struggling with an irrepressible and
exaggerated physical tremor, resembling St. Vitus's dance. I must
say that my nerves have never been more severely tried than by this
unexpected apparition, in so strange a guise, of a friend whom I had
always looked upon as about the most imperturbable and common-sensible
one I had. He was a young man, but older than his years, clear-headed,
practical, clever, an excellent lawyer, and a fine fellow. Eccentricity
of any kind was altogether foreign to his character. Something very
unpleasant, I apprehended, must be at the bottom of his present profound
and uncontrollable agitation.
Of course I jumped up after the first shock, and shook his hand--which,
notwithstanding the cold weather and his own paleness, was dry and hot.
I fancied Calbot hardly knew where he was or what he was doing; not
that he seemed delirious, but rather overwhelmingly preoccupied about
something altogether hateful and ugly.
"What's the matter, John?" I said, instinctively using a sharp tone, and
laying my hand heavily on his shoulder. "Are you ill?" Then a thought
struck me, and I added: "Nothing wrong about Miss Burleigh, I hope?"
"Drayton," said my friend--his utterance was interrupted somewhat by the
nervous starts and twitches which still mastered his efforts to control
them--"something terrible has happened. I wanted to tell you. I can't
fathom it. Drayton, I've seen---- May I take a glass of wine?"
He drank two glasses in quick succession. As he hardly ever touched
wine, there was no little significance in the act. The rich old liquor
evidently did him good. To tell the truth, I would rather have given him
some brandy. He was not in a state to appreciate a fine flavour, and my
port was as rare as it was good. However, I was really concerned about
him, and would gladly have given the whole decanterful to set him right
again.
He would not take a chair, but stood on the rug with his back to the
fire. As I sat looking up at his tall figure, I caught the painted
eye of my priestly ancestor over his shoulder, and it seemed to me to
twinkle with saturnine humour.
"Well, what have you seen, Calbot?"
"Some evil thing has come between Miss Burleigh and me, and has parted
us. I have seen it--two or three times. She has felt it. It's killing
her, Drayton. As for me.... You know me pretty well, and you know what
my life has been thus far. I've not been a good man, of course--quite
the contrary; I've done any quantity of bad things, but I don't know
that I've committed any such hideous sin as ought to bring a punishment
like this upon me--not to speak of _her_! I'm not a parricide, nor an
adulterer; I never sold my salvation to the devil--did I, Drayton?"
"No, no, of course not, my dear Calbot. You have a fever, that's all.
Don't get excited. Just lie down on the sofa for half an hour, and quiet
yourself a little."
"I see you think I'm out of my head, and no wonder. I behave like a
madman. But I'm not mad at all; I wish I could think I were. This
shuddering--it won't last--but I tell you, Drayton, when you see a man
of my health and strength stricken this way in two days, you may believe
it would have driven many a man to madness, or to suicide----"
"Let me pour it out for you; your hand shakes so. I can give you some
splendid French cognac, if you'd prefer it? Well. Hadn't you better lie
down?"
"Come, I can control myself, now--I will!" said Calbot, through his
teeth, and putting a strong constraint upon himself. For about a minute
he kept silent, the blood gradually coming into his cheeks and the
nervous twitchings growing less frequent.
"That's better," said I, encouragingly. "You don't look so much as
though you'd seen a ghost, now. How is that Chancery case of yours
getting on?"
"A ghost? You speak lightly enough, and I suppose your idea of a ghost
is some conventional bogey such as children are scared with. We laugh
at such things--heaven knows why! An evil, sin-breathing spirit, coming
from hell to take vengeance, for some dead and buried wrong, upon living
men and women--what is there laughable in that?"
"Really, Calbot," I said, with a smile--a rather uneasy smile, be it
admitted--"I never laughed at a ghost, for the simple reason that I
never saw one to laugh at."
"You never saw one, and you mean to hint, I suppose, that there are none
to see?"
"Well," returned I, still maintaining a precarious grimace, "I'm not a
spiritualist, you know----"
"Nor I," interrupted Calbot, in a lower and quieter tone than he had
yet used. He took a chair, and, sitting down close in front of me, bent
forward and whispered in my ear: "But I saw the soul of a dead man
yesterday; and this afternoon I saw it again, and chased it from the
Burleighs' house in Mayfair, along the Strand, and through the heart of
London, to its grave in St. G----'s churchyard. I copied the inscription
on the stone: it is a very old one, as you will see by the date."
A far bolder man than I have ever claimed to be might have felt his
heart stand still at this speech; and its effect on me was greatly
heightened by Calbot's tone and manner, and by the way he fastened
his eyes upon me. Nor were the circumstances in other respects
reassuring--alone at night, with a man three or four times my physical
equal, who was wholly emancipated from rational control. I sat quite
still for a few moments--very long moments they seemed to me--staring
helplessly at Calbot, who took a small notebook out of his pocket, tore
out a leaf with something scrawled on it, and handed it to me. I read it
mechanically--"Archibald Armstrong. Died February 6th, 1698." Meanwhile
Calbot helped himself to another glass of wine; but I was too much
unnerved to restrain him, and, indeed, too much bewildered.
"Archibald Armstrong," muttered I, repeating the name aloud; "died
February 6th--yes; but it was this present year 1875--not 1698. Why, I
went to the auction-sale of his effects this very afternoon!"
"Keep the paper," said Calbot, not noticing my observation, "it
may possibly lead to something. And now I wish you to listen to
my statement. I am neither crazy, Drayton, nor intoxicated. But I
am not the same man you have known heretofore; my life has been
seared--blasted. Perhaps you think my language extravagant; but after
what I have experienced there can be no such thing as extravagance for
me. It is an awful thing," he added, with a long involuntary sigh, "to
have been face to face with an evil spirit!"
"In Heaven's name, Calbot," cried I, starting up from my chair, and
trembling all over, I believe, from nervous excitement, "don't go on
talking and looking like that. If you can tell me a straightforward,
consistent story, I'll listen to it; but these hints and interjections
of yours will drive me mad!"
"I'm going to tell you, Drayton, though it will be the next worst thing
to meeting that----Thing----itself, to tell about it. But the matter
is too grim earnest to allow of trifling. You have a great deal of
knowledge on queer and out-of-the-way subjects, Drayton, and I thought
it not impossible that you might make some suggestions, for there must
be some reason for this hideous visitation--some cause for it; and
though all is over for me now, there would be a kind of satisfaction in
knowing what that reason was. Besides, I must speak to someone, and you
are a dear friend, and an old one."
I was a good deal relieved to hear Calbot speak thus affectionately of
our relations with each other; and indeed he appeared no way inclined to
violence. Accordingly, having offered him a Cabana (which he refused), I
put the box and the decanter back in the cupboard, and locked the door.
Then, relighting my own cigar, and putting a lump or two of coal on the
fire, I resumed my chair, and bade my friend begin his story.