Colonel Morris' side of the case was now to be heard, and heads were
bending eagerly forward to catch each word of wisdom that should fall
from the lips of Serjeant Playfire, when I felt a hand, cold as ice,
laid on mine, and turning, beheld Miss Blake at my elbow.
She was as white as the nature of her complexion would permit, and her
voice shook as she whispered:
"Take me away from this place, will you?"
I cleared a way for her out of the court, and when we reached
Westminster Hall, seeing how upset she seemed, asked if I could get
anything for her--"a glass of water, or wine," I suggested, in my
extremity.
"Neither water nor wine will mend a broken heart," she answered,
solemnly; "and mine has been broken in there"--with a nod she indicated
the court we had just left.
Not remembering at the moment an approved recipe for the cure of such a
fracture, I was cudgelling my brains to think of some form of reply not
likely to give offence, when, to my unspeakable relief, Mr. Craven came
up to where we stood.
"I will take charge of Miss Blake now, Patterson," he said,
gravely--very gravely; and accepting this as an intimation that he
desired my absence, I was turning away, when I heard Miss Blake say:
"Where is she--the creature? What have they done with her at all?"
"I have sent her home," was Mr. Craven's reply. "How could you be so
foolish as to mislead me as you have done?"
"Come," thought I, smelling the battle afar off, "we shall soon have
Craven _v_. Blake tried privately in our office." I knew Mr. Craven
pretty well, and understood he would not readily forgive Miss Blake for
having kept Miss Helena's experiences a secret from him.
Over and over I had heard Miss Blake state there was not a thing really
against the house, and that Helena, poor dear, only hated the place
because she had there lost her father.
"Not much of a loss either, if she could be brought to think so,"
finished Miss Blake, sometimes.
Consequently, to Mr. Craven, as well as to all the rest of those
connected with the firm, the facts elicited by Serjeant Playfire were
new as unwelcome.
If the daughter of the house dreamed dreams and beheld visions, why
should strangers be denied a like privilege? If Miss Elmsdale believed
her father could not rest in his grave, how were we to compel belief as
to calm repose on the part of yearly tenants?
"Playfire has been pitching into us pretty strong," remarked Taylor,
when I at length elbowed my way back to where our manager sat. "Where is
Mr. Craven?"
"I left him with Miss Blake."
"It is just as well he has not heard all the civil remarks Playfire made
about our connection with the business. Hush! he is going to call his
witnesses. No, the court is about to adjourn for luncheon."
Once again I went out into Westminster Hall, and was sauntering idly up
and down over its stones when Mr. Craven joined me.
"A bad business this, Patterson," he remarked.
"We shall never get another tenant for that house," I answered.
"Certainly no tenant will ever again be got through me," he said,
irritably; and then Taylor came to him, all in a hurry, and explaining
he was wanted, carried him away.
"They are going to compromise," I thought, and followed slowly in the
direction taken by my principal.
How I knew they were thinking of anything of the kind, I cannot say, but
intuitively I understood the course events were taking.
Our counsel had mentally decided that, although the jury might feel
inclined to uphold contracts and to repudiate ghosts, still, it would be
impossible for them to overlook the fact that Colonel Morris had rented
the place in utter ignorance of its antecedents, and that we had, so
far, taken a perhaps undue advantage of him; moreover, the gallant
officer had witnesses in court able to prove, and desirous of proving,
that we had over and over again compromised matters with dissatisfied
tenants, and cancelled agreements, not once or twice, but many, times;
further, on no single occasion had Miss Blake and her niece ever slept a
single night in the uninhabited house from the day when they left it; no
matter how scarce of money they chanced to be, they went into lodgings
rather than reside at River Hall. This was beyond dispute and Miss
Blake's evidence supplied the reason for conduct so extraordinary.
For some reason the house was uninhabitable. The very owners could not
live in it; and yet--so in imagination we heard Serjeant Playfire
declaim--"The lady from whom the TRUTH had that day been reluctantly
wrung had the audacity to insist that delicate women and tender children
should continue to inhabit a dwelling over which a CURSE seemed
brooding--a dwelling where the dead were always striving for mastery
with the living; or else pay Miss Blake a sum of money which should
enable her and the daughter of the suicide to live in ease and luxury on
the profits of DECEPTION."
And looking at the matter candidly, our counsel did not believe the jury
could return a verdict. He felt satisfied, he said, there was not a
landlord in the box, that they were all tenants, who would consider the
three months' rent paid over and above the actual occupation rent,
ample, and more than ample, remuneration.
On the other hand, Serjeant Playfire, whose experience of juries was
large, and calculated to make him feel some contempt for the judgment of
"twelve honest men" in any case from pocket-picking to manslaughter, had
a prevision that, when the judge had explained to Mr. Foreman and
gentlemen of the jury, the nature of a contract, and told them
supernatural appearances, however disagreeable, were not recognized in
law as a sufficient cause for breaking an agreement, a verdict would be
found for Miss Blake.
"There must be one landlord amongst them," he considered; "and if there
is, he will wind the rest round his finger. Besides, they will take the
side of the women, naturally; and Miss Blake made them laugh, and the
way she spoke of her niece touched them; while, as for the Colonel, he
won't like cross-examination, and I can see my learned friend means to
make him appear ridiculous. Enough has been done for honour--let us
think of safety."
"For my part," said Colonel Morris, when the question was referred to
him, "I am not a vindictive man, nor, I hope, an ungenerous foe; I do
not like to be victimized, and I have vindicated my principles. The
victory was mine in fact, if not in law, when that old Irishwoman's
confession was wrung out of her. So, therefore, gentlemen, settle the
matter as you please--I shall be satisfied."
And all the time he was inwardly praying some arrangement might be come
to. He was brave enough in his own way, but it is one thing to go into
battle, and another to stand legal fire without the chance of sending a
single bullet in return. Ridicule is the vulnerable spot in the heel of
many a modern Achilles; and while the rest of the court was "convulsed
with laughter" over Miss Blake's cross-examination, the gallant Colonel
felt himself alternately turning hot and cold when he thought that
through even such an ordeal he might have to pass. And, accordingly, to
cut short this part of my story, amongst them the lawyers agreed to
compromise the matter thus--
Colonel Morris to give Miss Blake a third quarter's rent--in other
words, fifty pounds more, and each side to pay its own costs.
When this decision was finally arrived at, Mr. Craven's face was a
study. Full well he knew on whom would fall the costs of one side. He
saw in prophetic vision the fifty pounds passing out of his hands into
those of Miss Blake, but no revelation was vouchsafed on the subject of
loans unpaid, of costs out of pocket, or costs at all. After we left
court he employed himself, I fancy, for the remainder of the afternoon
in making mental calculations of how much poorer a man Mrs. Elmsdale's
memory, and the Uninhabited House had left him; and, upon the whole, the
arithmetical problem could not have proved satisfactory when solved.
The judge complimented everyone upon the compromise effected. It was
honourable in every way, and creditable to all parties concerned, but
the jury evidently were somewhat dissatisfied at the turn affairs had
taken, while the witnesses were like to rend Colonel Morris asunder.
"They had come, at great inconvenience to themselves, to expose the
tactics of that Blake woman and her solicitor," so they said; "and they
thought the affair ought not to have been hushed up."
As for the audience, they murmured openly. They received the statement
that the case was over, with groans, hisses, and other marks of
disapproval, and we heard comments on the matter uttered by disappointed
spectators all the way up Parliament Street, till we arrived at that
point where we left the main thoroughfare, in order to strike across to
Buckingham Street.
There--where Pepys once lived--we betook ourselves to our books and
papers, with a sense of unusual depression in the atmosphere. It was a
gray, dull, cheerless afternoon, and more than one of us, looking out
at the mud bank, which, at low water, then occupied the space now laid
out as gardens, wondered how River Hall, desolate, tenantless,
uninhabited, looked under that sullen sky, with the murky river flowing
onward, day and night, day and night, leaving, unheeding, an unsolved
mystery on its banks.
For a week we saw nothing of Miss Blake, but at the end of that time, in
consequence of a somewhat imperative summons from Mr. Craven, she called
at the office late one afternoon. We comprehended she had selected that,
for her, unusual time of day for a visit, hoping our principal might
have left ere she arrived; but in this hope she was disappointed: Mr.
Craven was in, at leisure, and anxious to see her.
I shall never forget that interview. Miss Blake arrived about five
o'clock, when it was quite dark out of doors, and when, in all our
offices except Mr. Craven's, the gas was flaring away triumphantly. In
his apartment he kept the light always subdued, but between the fire and
the lamp there was plenty of light to see that Miss Blake looked ill and
depressed, and that Mr. Craven had assumed a peculiar expression, which,
to those who knew him best, implied he had made up his mind to pursue a
particular course of action, and meant to adhere to his determination.
"You wanted to see me," said our client, breaking the ice.
"Yes; I wanted to tell you that our connection with the River Hall
property must be considered at an end."
"Well, well, that is the way of men, I suppose--in England."
"I do not think any man, whether in England or Ireland, could have done
more for a client than I have tried to do for you, Miss Blake," was the
offended answer.
"I am sure I have never found fault with you," remarked Miss Blake,
deprecatingly.
"And I do not think," continued Mr. Craven, unheeding her remark, "any
lawyer ever met with a worse return for all his trouble than I have
received from you."
"Dear, dear," said Miss Blake, with comic disbelief in her tone, "that
is very bad."
"There are two classes of men who ought to be treated with entire
confidence," persisted Mr. Craven, "lawyers and doctors. It is as
foolish to keep back anything from one as from another."
"I daresay," argued Miss Blake; "but we are not all wise alike,
you know."
"No," remarked my principal, who was indeed no match for the lady, "or
you would never have allowed me to take your case into court in
ignorance of Helena having seen her father."
"Come, come," retorted Miss Blake; "you do not mean to say you believe
she ever did see her father since he was buried, and had the stone-work
put all right and neat again, about him? And, indeed, it went to my
heart to have a man who had fallen into such bad ways laid in the same
grave with my dear sister, but I thought it would be unchristian--"
"We need not go over all that ground once more, surely," interrupted Mr.
Craven. "I have heard your opinions concerning Mr. Elmsdale frequently
expressed ere now. That which I never did hear, however, until it proved
too late, was the fact of Helena having fancied she saw her father after
his death."
"And what good would it have done you, if I had repeated all the child's
foolish notions?"
"This, that I should not have tried to let a house believed by the owner
herself to be uninhabitable."
"And so you would have kept us without bread to put in our mouths, or a
roof over our heads."
"I should have asked you to do at first what I must ask you to do at
last. If you decline to sell the place, or let it unfurnished, on a long
lease, to some one willing to take it, spite of its bad character, I
must say the house will never again be let through my instrumentality,
and I must beg you to advertise River Hall yourself, or place it in the
hands of an agent."
"Do you mean to say, William Craven," asked Miss Blake, solemnly, "that
you believe that house to be haunted?"
"I do not," he answered. "I do not believe in ghosts, but I believe the
place has somehow got a bad name--perhaps through Helena's fancies, and
that people imagine it is haunted, and get frightened probably at sight
of their own shadows. Come, Miss Blake, I see a way out of this
difficulty; you go and take up your abode at River Hall for six months,
and at the end of that time the evil charm will be broken."
"And Helena dead," she observed.
"You need not take Helena with you."
"Nor anybody else, I suppose you mean," she remarked. "Thank you, Mr.
Craven; but though my life is none too happy, I should like to die a
natural death, and God only knows whether those who have been peeping
and spying about the place might not murder me in my bed, if I ever went
to bed in the house; that is--"
"Then, in a word, you do believe the place is haunted."
"I do nothing of the kind," she answered, angrily; "but though I have
courage enough, thank Heaven, I should not like to stay all alone in any
house, and I know there is not a servant in England would stay there
with me, unless she meant to take my life. But I tell you what, William
Craven, there are lots of poor creatures in the world even poorer than
we are--tutors and starved curates, and the like. Get one of them to
stay at the Hall till he finds out where the trick is, and I won't mind
saying he shall have fifty pounds down for his pains; that is, I mean,
of course, when he has discovered the secret of all these strange
lights, and suchlike."
And feeling she had by this proposition struck Mr. Craven under the
fifth rib, Miss Blake rose to depart.
"You will kindly think over what I have said," observed Mr. Craven.
"I'll do that if you will kindly think over what I have said," she
retorted, with the utmost composure; and then, after a curt
good-evening, she passed through the door I held open, nodding to me, as
though she would have remarked, "I'm more than a match for your master
still, young man."
"What a woman that is!" exclaimed Mr. Craven, as I resumed my seat.
"Do you think she really means what she says about the fifty pounds?"
I inquired.
"I do not know," he answered, "but I know I would cheerfully pay that
sum to anyone who could unravel the mystery of River Hall."
"Are you in earnest, sir?" I asked, in some surprise.
"Certainly I am," he replied.
"Then let me go and stay at River Hall," I said. "I will undertake to
run the ghost to earth for half the money."