MILDEW AND DECAY.
Life at Broome reverted to its old monotonous groove after the death
of Miss Letitia. At the funeral it was noticed by the few people who
attended it that Miss Pengarvon never once lifted to her eyes the
handkerchief which she carried in her hand, but her face was hidden by
a thick crape veil, and no one could tell how far she might be
otherwise affected. It is not the custom among families of the social
rank of the Pengarvons for the female members to be present at the
celebration of funeral obsequies, but Miss Barbara had always been a
law unto herself, and that which she willed to do, she did. In the
present instance, indeed, had she not chosen to follow the remains of
her sister, there would have been no one to do so save the doctor who
had attended her in her last illness, and the family solicitor,
with--at a respectful distance and on foot--Barney Dale and his wife,
who were mourners in the truest sense of the word.
As soon as Miss Pengarvon got back from the funeral, she shut herself
up in the Green Parlor, and resumed her needle as if nothing had
happened, and sat at work till far into the night, as though she were
desirous of making up for lost time. But from that day forward her
sister's empty chair was always placed over against her own on the
opposite side of the little oval worktable, just as when Miss Letitia
was alive; and as the autumn nights deepened into winter, Barney would
sometimes hear his mistress talking aloud, as though there was someone
with her in the room. She would ask questions, the answers to which
were audible to no one but herself, or answer others which no one but
herself had heard put. Sometimes it seemed to be Miss Letitia who was
there with her, sometimes poor, lost Isabel, at others, that fine
gentleman, Sir Jasper.
"It's all very uncanny, and I don't ken what to make of it," Barney
would sometimes remark to his wife, with a slow, ruminating shake of
the head--and uncanny indeed it was.
With Miss Pengarvon the love of hoarding had grown in intensity year
by year, till it had become the ruling passion of her life. Now as
always, her food was served up ceremoniously on some relics of the
family plate, but it consisted only of the plainest and least
expensive viands. With the passage of each year, the old house was
becoming more ruinous and dilapidated; nothing in the way of repairs
had been done to it since Sir Jasper's death. The whole of the rooms,
with the exception of the three or four occupied by the sisters, and
the kitchen and domestic offices, were locked and shuttered and left
to dust, mildew, and decay. What remained of the park was rented by a
farmer as pasturage for his cattle. In one corner of the garden Barney
cultivated a few vegetables, just enough for home consumption, but
further than that no hand ever touched the grounds or shrubberies,
which, in the course of years, had degenerated into a veritable
wilderness, not lacking in a certain wild, luxuriant beauty of their
own during the spring and summer months, but unspeakably dreary when
the leaves lay rotting and sodden on sad-eyed, still November
afternoons, or when the chill December rains fell with dull, hopeless
persistency, as over the deathbed of the passing year.
Early in January, Mrs. Dale died after a few hours' illness, and
Barney had to send for one of his nieces, Lucy Grice by name, to fill
her place. But the girl, after having been at Broome for a week,
declared that she would sleep there no longer. The place was haunted,
she averred. She had no objection to go there in the daytime and do
what work might be required of her, but stay there after nightfall she
would not.
Miss Pengarvon listened with a contemptuous stare while Barney
explained the state of the case to her.
"The girl is a fool," she said curtly. "Of course the house is
haunted, just as every house which has been inhabited by people who
are dead, is haunted--no more and no less. You and she can arrange the
matter between you as you think best."
Accordingly, the girl was allowed to go backward and forward, morning
and evening, between her mother's cottage at Dritton and Broome.
A few weeks after the foregoing little episode had taken place, a
stranger arrived one evening at the "King's Arms" Hotel, Stavering,
where he ordered supper and a bed. He was a handsome, well-preserved
man of sixty-five or thereabouts, and of semi-military appearance.
Next morning, after breakfast, he expressed a wish to see the
landlord, and was accordingly at once waited upon by that functionary,
a man about the same age as the stranger.
"Pray, sit down," said the latter, indicating a chair; "that is, if
you can spare me ten minutes of your company."
"Ten minutes! An hour, sir, if you wish it. Since the coaches were
knocked off the road there ain't----But I needn't trouble you on that
score, sir."
"May I ask whether you have lived in Stavering for any considerable
number of years?"
"For half a century, sir; a little more or a little less."
"In that case, you have probably some knowledge of the existence of a
family of the name of Pengarvon--the Pengarvons of Broome, I believe
they are generally called in these parts."
"There are not many folks in Stavering or for miles round about but
what have heard talk of the Pengarvons of Broome. A queer family, sir,
very!"
"So I have been told," answered the stranger, dryly. "Who lives at
Broome at the present time?"
"Miss Pengarvon, sir, a lady getting well on into years, eldest
daughter of the late Sir Jasper Pengarvon--with whom the title died,
there being no heir male in the family."
"Sir Jasper was twice married, was he not?"
"He was, sir. When he died he left two daughters by his first wife and
one by his second."
"Just so. Now, as to the daughter by the second wife--she is still
living, I presume?" He leaned forward a little as he put the question,
and seemed to wait almost breathlessly for an answer.
"That is more than I can say, sir; more than anybody can say, I should
imagine, unless it be Miss Pengarvon herself. Miss Isabel--that is the
daughter of Sir Jasper's second marriage--ah, what a sweet young lady
she was!--ran away, more than twenty years ago, with a gentleman who
had been stopping for a couple of months at this very hotel before he
and she disappeared. There was a fine to-do, I can tell you, sir, at
the time."
"And did Miss Isabel never come back?"
"Never that I heard tell of, sir. It was said that Miss Pengarvon
forbade her name ever being mentioned at the Hall, and that she even
went so far as to burn such of the poor young lady's clothes as she
had left behind her. An old witch, sir, if ever there was one!"
The stranger seemed not to have heard the last remark, but sat with
his chin on his breast, pondering silently. Presently he roused
himself with a sigh, and said:
"I am much obliged to you for your information. There is nothing more
I want to ask you at present."
The landlord rose.
"About dinner, sir: at what hour would you like it?"
"Eh? Oh, yes. At five sharp. Anything you can get me. I leave it to
you."
A quarter of an hour later the stranger sallied forth, with
closely-buttoned overcoat, buckskin gloves and silver-mounted cane.
After an inquiry or two, he found himself on the road which, among
other places, led to Broome. A walk of two miles and three-quarters
brought him to the Park gates, thick with the rust and grime of many
years, and hanging askew on their hinges. A heavy chain with a padlock
attached held them against all intruders. There was, however, a narrow
arched entrance in the wall hard by through which wayfarers could gain
access to the park, but the original door had rotted away long ago,
and its place was now filled by a rude make-shift of rough unpainted
planking, the handiwork of Barney Dale. A little way within the gates
stood the whilom lodge, windowless and partially roofless, its
flooring and other fittings having been torn away piecemeal by tramps
and vagabonds of various kinds, who had a kettle to boil, or a savory
stew which would be all the better for simmering over a fire of wood
ashes. Nettles and dockweed were now the sole lodge-keepers at Broome.
The stranger, as he walked through the park towards the house, did not
fail to note the further signs of neglect which were everywhere
visible. The carriage drive was so overgrown with grass and weeds as
to be barely distinguishable; such few trees as Sir Jasper had left
standing had been left unpruned and uncared for since his death; here
and there a few cows were cropping the ragged grass. When a turn of
the drive brought into view the front of the Hall, the stranger paused
for a few moments to contemplate it. On that grey, sunless winter
noon, with its rows of shuttered windows, it looked as if it might
have held inside it not one dead person, but a dozen--not one grim
secret only, but a score.
Miss Pengarvon, sitting at work in the Green Parlor, was suddenly
startled by a loud knocking at the front entrance of the Hall. Never
did that sound fall on her ears without recalling with startling
vividness that December night, now twenty years ago, when she who
knocked was repulsed with contumely, and left to find a winding-sheet
in the darkness and the snow.
A few moments later, Lucy Grice, after a preliminary tap at the door,
entered the Parlor, carrying the stranger's card gingerly between her
thumb and forefinger. It was the first time she had ever seen such an
article, and she was at a loss to know the use or meaning of it.
"A gentleman at the front door, ma'am, asked me to give you this,"
said Lucy. "He says he wants to see you very perticlar."
Miss Pengarvon took the card and peered at it through her spectacles.
"The name is altogether strange to me," she muttered. "What possible
business can have brought him here?" Then to the girl, after a
moment's cogitation, "You may show the gentleman in."
Accordingly Lucy ushered the stranger into the Green Parlor and shut
the door upon the two. Then she retired a little way down the corridor
and listened. The stranger's voice reached her as a low, deep murmur,
but the walls were too thick and she was too far away to distinguish
anything that was said. Then presently she heard Miss Pengarvon's
voice as if in reply, rising gradually to a pitch of shrillness and
vituperative energy such as she would not have believed possible in
the mistress of Broome. Involuntarily Lucy crept further away, and it
was as well she did so, seeing that before the stranger had been more
than five minutes in the room, the door was flung suddenly open.
"Leave my house this instant, and never dare to set foot in it again,"
exclaimed Miss Pengarvon in her harshest tones.
"Then you positively refuse to give me the information I ask for?"
said the stranger, as if urging some point for the last time. "Let me
beg of you to reconsider your determination."
"I have no information to give you, as I have already told you. Go;
that is all I demand of you! Go!" Then, if Lucy had been there, she
would have seen Miss Pengarvon with trembling fingers tear up the
stranger's card and fling the fragments contemptuously at his feet.
"You may pretend not to believe what I have told you, but you are
assured in your heart that it is true," he said, still speaking in the
cold, level tones he had adopted throughout the interview.
"Lies--lies--lies! I feel no assurance of the kind. I place no
credence in anything you have told me. Go, and never darken the
threshold of this house again!"
Without a word more the stranger passed out of the Green Parlor, and
the instant he had done so the door was shut and locked behind him.
"A fiend--nothing less than a fiend!" he remarked half aloud, as Lucy,
with a scared face, proceeded to let him out at the front door.
Barney Dale, who had been away on some errand for his mistress at the
time of the stranger's visit, was duly informed by his niece of all
that had happened during his absence, as far as the facts were known
to her. After Miss Pengarvon had retired for the night, Barney,
perceiving the pieces of torn card on the floor, picked them carefully
up, and succeeded, after a little trouble, in arranging them in their
proper order, That being done he read, "Major Strickland, Army and
Navy Club, Pall Mall."
"I canna call the name to mind nohow," muttered the old fellow. "What
business can it ha' been that brought him all the way from London to
Broome? Not----? No--that was all passed and over years ago. No,
anything but that."