Colonel Morris, after leaving River Hall, had migrated temporarily to a
fashionable West End hotel, and was, when I called to see him, partaking
of tiffin in the bosom of his family, instead of at his club.
As it was notorious that he and Mrs. Morris failed to lead the most
harmonious of lives, I did not feel surprised to find him in an
extremely bad temper.
In person, short, dapper, wiry, thin, and precise, his manner matched
his appearance. He had martinet written on every square foot of his
figure. His moustache was fiercely waxed, his shirt-collar inflexible,
his backbone stiff, while his shoulder-blades met flat and even behind.
He held his chin a little up in the air, and his walk was less a march
than a strut.
He came into the room where I had been waiting for him, as I fancied he
might have come on a wet, cold morning to meet an awkward-squad. He held
the card I sent for his inspection in his hand, and referred to it,
after he had looked me over with a supercilious glance.
"Mr. Patterson, from Messrs. Craven and Son," he read slowly out loud,
and then added:
"May I inquire what Mr. Patterson from Messrs. Craven and Son
wants with me?"
"I come from Miss Blake, sir," I remarked.
"It is here written that you come from Messrs. Craven and Son," he said.
"So I do, sir--upon Miss Blake's business. She is a client of ours, as
you may remember."
"I do remember. Go on."
He would not sit down himself or ask me to be seated, so we stood
throughout the interview. I with my hat in my hand, he twirling his
moustache or scrutinising his nails while he talked.
"Miss Blake has received a letter from you, sir, and has requested me to
ask you for an explanation of it."
"I have no further explanation to give," he replied.
"But as you took the house for two years, we cannot advise Miss Blake to
allow you to relinquish possession in consideration of your having paid
her six months' rent."
"Very well. Then you can advise her to fight the matter, as I suppose
you will. I am prepared to fight it."
"We never like fighting, if a matter can be arranged amicably," I
answered. "Mr. Craven is at present out of town; but I know I am only
speaking his words, when I say we shall be glad to advise Miss Blake to
accept any reasonable proposition which you may feel inclined to make."
"I have sent her half a year's rent," was his reply; "and I have
refrained from prosecuting you all for conspiracy, as I am told I might
have done. Lawyers, I am aware, admit they have no consciences, and I
can make some allowance for a person in Miss Blake's position,
otherwise."
"Yes, sir?" I said, interrogatively.
"I should never have paid one penny. It has, I find, been a well-known
fact to Mr. Craven, as well as to Miss Blake, that no tenant can remain
in River Hall. When my wife was first taken ill there--in consequence of
the frightful shock she received--I sent for the nearest medical man,
and he refused to come; absolutely sent me a note, saying, 'he was very
sorry, but he must decline to attend Mrs. Morris. Doubtless, she had her
own physician, who would be happy to devote himself to the case.'"
"And what did you do?" I asked, my pulses tingling with awakened
curiosity.
"Do!" he repeated, pleased, perhaps, to find so appreciative a listener.
"I sent, of course, for the best advice to be had in London, and I went
to the local doctor--a man who keeps a surgery and dispenses
medicines--myself, to ask what he meant by returning such an insolent
message in answer to my summons. And what do you suppose he said by way
of apology?"
"I cannot imagine," I replied.
"He said he would not for ten times over the value of all the River
Hall patients, attend a case in the house again. 'No person can live in
it,' he went on, 'and keep his, her, or its health. Whether it is the
river, or the drains, or the late owner, or the devil, I have not an
idea. I can only tell you no one has been able to remain in it since
Mr. Elmsdale's death, and if I attend a case there, of course I say,
Get out of this at once. Then comes Miss Blake and threatens me with
assault and battery--swears she will bring an action against me for
libelling the place; declares I wish to drive her and her niece to the
workhouse, and asserts I am in league with some one who wants to keep
the house vacant, and I am sick of it. Get what doctor you choose, but
don't send for me.'"
"Well, sir?" I suggested.
"Well! I don't consider it well at all. Here am I, a man returning to
his native country--and a beastly country it is!--after nearly thirty
years' absence, and the first transaction upon which I engage proves a
swindle. Yes, a swindle, Mr. Patterson. I went to you in all good faith,
took that house at your own rent, thought I had got a desirable home,
and believed I was dealing with respectable people, and now I find I was
utterly deceived, both as regards the place and your probity. You knew
the house was uninhabitable, and yet you let it to me."
"I give you my word," I said, "that we really do not know yet in what
way the house is uninhabitable. It is a good house, as you know; it is
well furnished; the drainage is perfect; so far as we are concerned, we
do not believe a fault can be found with the place. Still, it has been a
fact that tenants will not stay in it, and we were therefore glad to let
it to a gentleman like yourself, who would, we expected, prove above
subscribing to that which can only be a vulgar prejudice."
"What is a vulgar prejudice?" he asked.
"The idea that River Hall is haunted," I replied.
"River Hall is haunted, young man," he said, solemnly.
"By what?" I asked.
"By some one who cannot rest in his grave," was the answer.
"Colonel Morris," I said, "some one _must_ be playing tricks in
the house."
"If so, that some one does not belong to this world," he remarked.
"Do you mean really and seriously to tell me you believe in ghosts?" I
asked, perhaps a little scornfully.
"I do, and if you had lived in River Hall, you would believe in them
too," he replied. "I will tell you," he went on, "what I saw in the
house myself. You know the library?"
I nodded in assent. We did know the library. There our trouble seemed to
have taken up its abode.
"Are you aware lights have frequently been reflected from that room,
when no light has actually been in it?"
I could only admit this had occasionally proved a ground of what we
considered unreasonable complaint.
"One evening," went on the Colonel, "I determined to test the matter for
myself. Long before dusk I entered the room and examined it
thoroughly--saw to the fastenings of the windows, drew up the blinds,
locked the door, and put the key in my pocket. After dinner I took a
cigar and walked up and down the grass path beside the river, until
dark. There was no light--not a sign of light of any kind, as I turned
once more and walked up the path again; but as I was retracing my steps
I saw that the room was brilliantly illuminated. I rushed to the nearest
window and looked in. The gas was all ablaze, the door of the strong
room open, the table strewed with papers, while in an office-chair drawn
close up to the largest drawer, a man was seated counting over
bank-notes. He had a pile of them before him, and I distinctly saw that
he wetted his fingers in order to separate them."
"Most extraordinary!" I exclaimed. I could not decently have said
anything less; but I confess that I had in my recollection the fact of
Colonel Morris having dined.
"The most extraordinary part of the story is still to come," he
remarked. "I hurried at once into the house, unlocked the door, found
the library in pitch darkness, and when I lit the gas the strong room
was closed; there was no office-chair in the room, no papers were on the
table--everything, in fact, was precisely in the same condition as I had
left it a few hours before. Now, no person in the flesh could have
performed such a feat as that."
"I cannot agree with you there," I ventured. "It seems to me less
difficult to believe the whole thing a trick, than to attribute the
occurrence to supernatural agency. In fact, while I do not say it is
impossible for ghosts to be, I cannot accept the fact of their
existence."
"Well, I can, then," retorted the Colonel. "Why, sir, once at the Cape
of Good Hope--" but there he paused. Apparently he recollected just in
time that the Cape of Good Hope was a long way from River Hall.
"And Mrs. Morris," I suggested, leading him back to the banks of the
Thames. "You mentioned some shock--"
"Yes," he said, frankly. "She met the same person on the staircase I saw
in the library. He carried in one hand a lighted candle, and in the
other a bundle of bank-notes. He never looked at her as he passed--never
turned his head to the spot where she stood gazing after him in a
perfect access of terror, but walked quietly downstairs, crossed the
hall, and went straight into the library without opening the door. She
fainted dead away, and has never known an hour's good health since."
"According to all accounts, she had not before, or good temper either,"
I thought; but I only said, "You had told Mrs. Morris, I presume, of
your adventure in the library?"
"No," he answered; "I had not; I did not mention it to anyone except a
brother officer, who dined with me the next evening."
"Your conversation with him might have been overheard, I
suppose," I urged.
"It is possible, but scarcely probable," he replied. "At all events, I
am quite certain it never reached my wife's ears, or she would not have
stayed another night in the house."
I stood for a few moments irresolute, but then I spoke. I told him how
much we--meaning Messrs. Craven and Son--his manager and his cashier,
and his clerks, regretted the inconvenience to which he had been put;
delicately I touched upon the concern we felt at hearing of Mrs. Morris'
illness. But, I added, I feared his explanation, courteous and ample as
it had been, would not satisfy Miss Blake, and trusted he might, upon
consideration, feel disposed to compromise the matter.
"We," I added, "will be only too happy to recommend our client to accept
any reasonable proposal you may think it well to make."
Whereupon it suddenly dawned upon the Colonel that he had been
showing me all his hand, and forthwith he adopted a very natural
course. He ordered me to leave the room and the hotel, and not to
show my face before him again at my peril. And I obeyed his
instructions to the letter.
On the same evening of that day I took a long walk round by the
Uninhabited House.
There it was, just as I had seen it last, with high brick walls dividing
it from the road; with its belt of forest-trees separating it from the
next residence, with its long frontage to the river, with its closed
gates and shuttered postern-door.
The entrance to it was not from the main highway, but from a lane which
led right down to the Thames; and I went to the very bottom of that lane
and swung myself by means of a post right over the river, so that I
might get a view of the windows of the room with which so ghostly a
character was associated. The blinds were all down and the whole place
looked innocent enough.
The strong, sweet, subtle smell of mignonette came wafted to my senses,
the odours of jessamine, roses, and myrtle floated to me on the evening
breeze. I could just catch a glimpse of the flower-gardens, radiant with
colour, full of leaf and bloom.
"No haunted look there," I thought. "The house is right enough, but some
one must have determined to keep it empty." And then I swung myself back
into the lane again, and the shadow of the high brick wall projected
itself across my mind as it did across my body.
"Is this place to let again, do you know?" said a voice in my ear, as I
stood looking at the private door which gave a separate entrance to that
evil-reputed library.
The question was a natural one, and the voice not unpleasant, yet I
started, having noticed no one near me.
"I beg your pardon," said the owner of the voice. "Nervous, I fear!"
"No, not at all, only my thoughts were wandering. I beg your pardon--I
do not know whether the place is to let or not."
"A good house?" This might have been interrogative, or uttered as an
assertion, but I took it as the former, and answered accordingly.
"Yes, a good house--a very good house, indeed," I said.
"It is often vacant, though," he said, with a light laugh.
"Through no fault of the house," I added.
"Oh! it is the fault of the tenants, is it?" he remarked, laughing once
more. "The owners, I should think, must be rather tired of their
property by this time."
"I do not know that," I replied. "They live in hope of finding a good
and sensible tenant willing to take it."
"And equally willing to keep it, eh?" he remarked. "Well, I, perhaps, am
not much of a judge in the matter, but I should say they will have to
wait a long time first."
"You know something about the house?" I said, interrogatively.
"Yes," he answered, "most people about here do, I fancy--but least said
soonest mended"; and as by this time we had reached the top of the lane,
he bade me a civil good-evening, and struck off in a westerly direction.
Though the light of the setting sun shone full in my face, and I had to
shade my eyes in order to enable me to see at all, moved by some feeling
impossible to analyse, I stood watching that retreating figure.
Afterwards I could have sworn to the man among ten thousand.
A man of about fifty, well and plainly dressed, who did not appear to be
in ill-health, yet whose complexion had a blanched look, like forced
sea-kale; a man of under, rather than over middle height, not of slight
make, but lean as if the flesh had been all worn off his bones; a man
with sad, anxious, outlooking, abstracted eyes, with a nose slightly
hooked, without a trace of whisker, with hair thin and straight and
flaked with white, active and lithe in his movements, a swift walker,
though he had a slight halt. While looking at him thrown up in relief
against the glowing western sky, I noticed, what had previously escaped
my attention, that he was a little deformed. His right shoulder was
rather higher than the other. A man with a story in his memory, I
imagined; a man who had been jilted by the girl he loved, or who had
lost her by death, or whose wife had proved faithless; whose life, at
all events, had been marred by a great trouble. So, in my folly, I
decided; for I was young then, and romantic, and had experienced some
sorrow myself connected with pecuniary matters.
For the latter reason, it never perhaps occurred to me to associate the
trouble of my new acquaintance, if he could be so called, with money
annoyances. I knew, or thought I knew, at all events, the expression
loss of fortune stamps on a man's face; and the look which haunted me
for days after had nothing in it of discontent, or self-assertion, or
struggling gentility, or vehement protest against the decrees of
fortune. Still less was it submissive. As I have said, it haunted me for
days, then the memory grew less vivid, then I forgot the man altogether.
Indeed, we shortly became so absorbed in the fight between Miss Blake
and Colonel Morris, that we had little time to devote to the
consideration of other matters.
True to her promise, Miss Blake appeared next morning in Buckingham
Street. Without bestowing upon me even the courtesy of "good morning,"
she plunged into the subject next her heart.
"Did you see him?" she asked.
I told her I had. I repeated much of what he said; I assured her he
was determined to fight the matter, and that although I did really not
think any jury would give a verdict in his favour, still I believed,
if the matter came into court, it would prevent our ever letting the
house again.
"I should strongly recommend you, Miss Blake," I finished, "to keep what
he offers, and let us try and find another tenant."
"And who asked you to recommend anything, you fast young man?" she
demanded. "I am sure I did not, and I am very sure Mr. Craven would not
be best pleased to know his clerks were setting themselves up higher
than their master. You would never find William Craven giving himself
airs such as you young whipper-snappers think make you seem of some
consequence. I just tell him what I want done, and he does it, and you
will please to do the same, and serve a writ on that villain without an
hour's delay."
I asked on what grounds we were to serve the writ. I pointed out that
Colonel Morris did not owe her a penny, and would not owe her a penny
for some months to come; and in reply she said she would merely inquire
if I meant that she and her poor niece were to go to the workhouse.
To this I answered that the amount already remitted by Colonel Morris
would prevent such a calamity, but she stopped my attempt at consolation
by telling me not to talk about things I did not understand.
"Give me William Craven's address," she added, "and I will write to
him direct. I wonder what he means by leaving a parcel of ignorant
boys to attend to his clients while he is away enjoying himself! Give
me his address, and some paper and an envelope, and I can write my
letter here."
I handed her the paper and the envelope, and placed pen and ink
conveniently before her, but I declined to give her Mr. Craven's
address. We would forward the letter, I said; but when Mr. Craven went
away for his holiday, he was naturally anxious to leave business behind
as much as possible.
Then Miss Blake took steady aim, and fired at me. Broadside after
broadside did she pour into my unprotected ears; she opened the vials of
her wrath and overwhelmed me with reproaches; she raked up all the
grievances she had for years been cherishing against England, and by
some sort of verbal legerdemain made me responsible for every evil she
could recollect as ever having happened to her. Her sister's marriage,
her death, Mr. Elmsdale's suicide, the unsatisfactory state of his
affairs, the prejudice against River Hall, the defection of Colonel
Morris--all these things she laid at my door, and insisted on making me
responsible for them.
"And now," she finished, pushing back her bonnet and pulling off her
gloves, "I'll just write my opinion of you to Mr. Craven, and I'll wait
till you direct the envelope, and I'll go with you to the post, and I'll
see you put the letter in the box. If you and your fine Colonel Morris
think you can frighten or flatter me, you are both much mistaken, I can
tell you that!"
I did not answer her. I was too greatly affronted to express what I felt
in words. I sat on the other side of the table--for I would not leave
her alone in Mr. Craven's office--sulking, while she wrote her letter,
which she did in a great, fat, splashing sort of hand, with every other
word underlined; and when she had done, and tossed the missive over to
me, I directed it, took my hat, and prepared to accompany her to the
Charing Cross office.
We went down the staircase together in silence, up Buckingham Street,
across the Strand, and so to Charing Cross, where she saw me drop the
letter into the box. All this time we did not exchange a syllable, but
when, after raising my hat, I was about to turn away, she seized hold of
my arm, and said, "Don't let us part in bad blood. Though you are only a
clerk, you have got your feelings, no doubt, and if in my temper I hurt
them, I am sorry. Can I say more? You are a decent lad enough, as times
go in England, and my bark is worse than my bite. I didn't write a word
about you to William Craven. Shake hands, and don't bear malice to a
poor lonely woman."
Thus exhorted, I took her hand and shook it, and then, in token of
entire amity, she told me she had forgotten to bring her purse with her
and could I let her have a sovereign. She would pay me, she declared
solemnly, the first day she came again to the office.
This of course I did not believe in the least, nevertheless I gave
her what she required--and Heaven knows, sovereigns were scarce
enough with me then--thankfully, and felt sincerely obliged to her
for making herself my debtor. Miss Blake did sometimes ruffle one's
feathers most confoundedly, and yet I knew it would have grieved me
had we parted in enmity.
Sometimes, now, when I look upon her quiet and utterly respectable old
age--when I contemplate her pathetic grey hair and conventional lace
cap--when I view her clothed like other people and in her right mind, I
am very glad indeed to remember I had no second thought about that
sovereign, but gave it to her--with all the veins of my heart, as she
would have emphasised the proceeding.
"Though you have no name to speak of," observed Miss Blake as she
pocketed the coin, "I think there must be some sort of blood in you. I
knew Pattersons once who were connected by marriage with a great duke in
the west of Ireland. Can you say if by chance you can trace relationship
to any of them?"
"I can say most certainly not, Miss Blake," I replied. "We are
Pattersons of nowhere and relations of no one."
"Well, well," remarked the lady, pityingly, "you can't help that, poor
lad. And if you attend to your duties, you may yet be a rich City
alderman."
With which comfort she left me, and wended her homeward way through St.
Martin's Lane and the Seven Dials.