It _was_ a curious thing, said the private tutor; one of those grotesque
and whimsical incidents which occur to one as one goes through life. I
lost the best situation which I am ever likely to have through it. But I
am glad that I went to Thorpe Place, for I gained—well, as I tell you
the story you will learn what I gained.
I don’t know whether you are familiar with that part of the Midlands
which is drained by the Avon. It is the most English part of England.
Shakespeare, the flower of the whole race, was born right in the middle
of it. It is a land of rolling pastures, rising in higher folds to the
westward, until they swell into the Malvern Hills. There are no towns,
but numerous villages, each with its grey Norman church. You have left
the brick of the southern and eastern counties behind you, and
everything is stone—stone for the walls, and lichened slabs of stone for
the roofs. It is all grim and solid and massive, as befits the heart of
a great nation.
It was in the middle of this country, not very far from Evesham, that
Sir John Bollamore lived in the old ancestral home of Thorpe Place, and
thither it was that I came to teach his two little sons. Sir John was a
widower—his wife had died three years before—and he had been left with
these two lads aged eight and ten, and one dear little girl of seven.
Miss Witherton, who is now my wife, was governess to this little girl. I
was tutor to the two boys. Could there be a more obvious prelude to an
engagement? She governs me now, and I tutor two little boys of our own.
But, there—I have already revealed what it was which I gained in Thorpe
Place!
It was a very, very old house, incredibly old—pre-Norman, some of it—and
the Bollamores claimed to have lived in that situation since long before
the Conquest. It struck a chill to my heart when first I came there,
those enormously thick grey walls, the rude crumbling stones, the smell
as from a sick animal which exhaled from the rotting plaster of the aged
building. But the modern wing was bright and the garden was well kept.
No house could be dismal which had a pretty girl inside it and such a
show of roses in front.
Apart from a very complete staff of servants there were only four of us
in the household. These were Miss Witherton, who was at that time
four-and-twenty and as pretty—well, as pretty as Mrs. Colmore is
now—myself, Frank Colmore, aged thirty, Mrs. Stevens, the housekeeper, a
dry, silent woman, and Mr. Richards, a tall, military-looking man, who
acted as steward to the Bollamore estates. We four always had our meals
together, but Sir John had his usually alone in the library. Sometimes
he joined us at dinner, but on the whole we were just as glad when he
did not.
For he was a very formidable person. Imagine a man six feet three inches
in height, majestically built, with a high-nosed, aristocratic face,
brindled hair, shaggy eyebrows, a small, pointed Mephistophelian beard,
and lines upon his brow and round his eyes as deep as if they had been
carved with a penknife. He had grey eyes, weary, hopeless-looking eyes,
proud and yet pathetic, eyes which claimed your pity and yet dared you
to show it. His back was rounded with study, but otherwise he was as
fine a looking man of his age—five-and-fifty perhaps—as any woman would
wish to look upon.
But his presence was not a cheerful one. He was always courteous, always
refined, but singularly silent and retiring. I have never lived so long
with any man and known so little of him. If he were indoors he spent his
time either in his own small study in the Eastern Tower, or in the
library in the modern wing. So regular was his routine that one could
always say at any hour exactly where he would be. Twice in the day he
would visit his study, once after breakfast, and once about ten at
night. You might set your watch by the slam of the heavy door. For the
rest of the day he would be in his library—save that for an hour or two
in the afternoon he would take a walk or a ride, which was solitary like
the rest of his existence. He loved his children, and was keenly
interested in the progress of their studies, but they were a little awed
by the silent, shaggy-browed figure, and they avoided him as much as
they could. Indeed, we all did that.
It was some time before I came to know anything about the circumstances
of Sir John Bollamore’s life, for Mrs. Stevens, the housekeeper, and Mr.
Richards, the land-steward, were too loyal to talk easily of their
employer’s affairs. As to the governess, she knew no more than I did,
and our common interest was one of the causes which drew us together. At
last, however, an incident occurred which led to a closer acquaintance
with Mr. Richards and a fuller knowledge of the life of the man whom I
served.
The immediate cause of this was no less than the falling of Master
Percy, the youngest of my pupils, into the mill-race, with imminent
danger both to his life and to mine, since I had to risk myself in order
to save him. Dripping and exhausted—for I was far more spent than the
child—I was making for my room when Sir John, who had heard the hubbub,
opened the door of his little study and asked me what was the matter. I
told him of the accident, but assured him that his child was in no
danger, while he listened with a rugged, immobile face, which expressed
in its intense eyes and tightened lips all the emotion which he tried to
conceal.
“One moment! Step in here! Let me have the details!” said he, turning
back through the open door.
And so I found myself within that little sanctum, inside which, as I
afterwards learned, no other foot had for three years been set save that
of the old servant who cleaned it out. It was a round room, conforming
to the shape of the tower in which it was situated, with a low ceiling,
a single narrow, ivy-wreathed window, and the simplest of furniture. An
old carpet, a single chair, a deal table, and a small shelf of books
made up the whole contents. On the table stood a full-length photograph
of a woman—I took no particular notice of the features, but I remember
that a certain gracious gentleness was the prevailing impression. Beside
it were a large black japanned box and one or two bundles of letters or
papers fastened together with elastic bands.
Our interview was a short one, for Sir John Bollamore perceived that I
was soaked, and that I should change without delay. The incident led,
however, to an instructive talk with Richards, the agent, who had never
penetrated into the chamber which chance had opened to me. That very
afternoon he came to me, all curiosity, and walked up and down the
garden path with me, while my two charges played tennis upon the lawn
beside us.
“You hardly realize the exception which has been made in your favour,”
said he. “That room has been kept such a mystery, and Sir John’s visits
to it have been so regular and consistent, that an almost superstitious
feeling has arisen about it in the household. I assure you that if I
were to repeat to you the tales which are flying about, tales of
mysterious visitors there, and of voices overheard by the servants, you
might suspect that Sir John had relapsed into his old ways.”
“Why do you say relapsed?” I asked.
He looked at me in surprise.
“Is it possible,” said he, “that Sir John Bollamore’s previous history
is unknown to you?”
“Absolutely.”
“You astound me. I thought that every man in England knew something of
his antecedents. I should not mention the matter if it were not that you
are now one of ourselves, and that the facts might come to your ears in
some harsher form if I were silent upon them. I always took it for
granted that you knew that you were in the service of ‘Devil’
Bollamore.”
“But why ‘Devil’?” I asked.
“Ah, you are young and the world moves fast, but twenty years ago the
name of ‘Devil’ Bollamore was one of the best known in London. He was
the leader of the fastest set, bruiser, driver, gambler, drunkard—a
survival of the old type, and as bad as the worst of them.”