chair was drawn up to the fire, and the upper part of the space behind
him was visible in the mirror. The brighter and clearer light thrown
down by the shade was shining upon his book. It is the fate of most
of us to receive visits when we should best like to be alone, and Mr.
Batchel allowed an impatient exclamation to escape him, when, at nine
o'clock on this evening, he heard the door-bell. A minute later, the
boy announced "Mr. Mutcher," and Mr. Batchel, with such affability as
he could hastily assume, rose to receive the caller. Mr. Mutcher was
the Deputy Provincial Grand Master of the Ancient Order of Gleaners,
and the formality of his manner accorded with the gravity of his title.
Mr. Batchel soon became aware that the rest of the evening was doomed.
The Deputy Provincial Grand Master had come to discuss the probable
effect of the Insurance Act upon Friendly Societies, of which Mr.
Batchel was an ardent supporter. He attended their meetings, in some
cases kept their accounts, and was always apt to be consulted in their
affairs. He seated Mr. Mutcher, therefore, in a chair on the opposite
side of the fireplace, and gave him his somewhat reluctant attention.
"This," said Mr. Mutcher, as he looked round the room, "is a cosy nook
on a cold night. I cordially appreciate your kindness, Reverend Sir, in
affording me this interview, and the comfort of your apartment leads me
to wish that it might be more protracted."
Mr. Batchel did his best not to dissent, and as he settled himself
for a long half-hour, began to watch the rise and fall, between two
lines upon the distant wall-paper of the shadow of Mr. Mutcher's
side-whisker, as it seemed to beat time to his measured speech.
The D.P.G.M. (for these functionaries are usually designated by
initials) was not a man to be hurried into brevity. His style had been
studiously acquired at Lodge meetings, and Mr. Batchel knew it well
enough to be prepared for a lengthy preamble.
"I have presumed," said Mr. Mutcher, as he looked straight before him
into the mirror, "to trespass upon your Reverence's forbearance,
because there are one or two points upon this new Insurance Act
which seem calculated to damage our long-continued prosperity--I say
long-continued prosperity," repeated Mr. Mutcher, as though Mr. Batchel
had missed the phrase. "I had the favour of an interview yesterday,"
he went on, "with the Sub-Superintendent of the Perseverance Accident
and General (these were household words in circles which Mr. Batchel
frequented, so that he was at no loss to understand them), and he
was unanimous with me in agreeing that the matter called for careful
consideration. There are one or two of our rules which we know to be
essential to the welfare of our Order, and yet which will have to go by
the board--I say by the board--as from July next. Now we are not Medes,
nor yet Persians"--Mr. Mutcher was about to repeat "Persians" when he
was observed to look hastily round the room and then to turn deadly
pale. Mr. Batchel rose and hastened to his support; he was obviously
unwell. The visitor, however, made a strong effort, rose from his chair
at once, saying "Pray allow me to take leave," and hurried to the door
even as he said the words. Mr. Batchel, with real concern, followed
him with the offer of brandy, or whatever might afford relief. Mr.
Mutcher did not so much as pause to reply. Before Mr. Batchel could
reach him he had crossed the hall, and the door-knob was in his hand.
He thereupon opened the door and passed into the street without another
word. More unaccountably still, he went away at a run, such as ill
became his somewhat majestic figure, and Mr. Batchel closed the door
and returned to the dining-room in a state of bewilderment. He took
up his book, and sat down again in his chair. He did not immediately
begin to read, but set himself to review Mr. Mutcher's unaccountable
behaviour, and as he raised his eyes to the mirror he saw an elderly
man standing at the sideboard.
Mr. Batchel quickly turned round, and as he did so, recalled the
similar movement of his late visitor. The room was empty. He
turned again to the mirror, and the man was still there--evidently
a servant--one would say without much hesitation, the butler.
The cut-away coat, and white stock, the clean-shaven chin, and
close-trimmed side-whiskers, the deftness and decorum of his movements
were all characteristic of a respectable family servant, and he stood
at the sideboard like a man who was at home there.
Another object, just visible above the frame of the mirror, caused
Mr. Batchel to look round again, and again to see nothing unusual.
But what he saw in the mirror was a square oaken box some few inches
deep, which the butler was proceeding to unlock. And at this point Mr.
Batchel had the presence of mind to make an experiment of extraordinary
value. He removed, for a moment, the Indian shade from the lamp, and
laid it upon the table, and thereupon the mirror showed nothing but
empty space and the frigid lines of the furniture. The butler had
disappeared, as also had the box, to re-appear the moment the shade was
restored to its place.
As soon as the box was opened, the butler produced a bundled
handkerchief which his left hand had been concealing under the tails
of his coat. With his right hand he removed the contents of the
handkerchief, hurriedly placed them in the box, closed the lid, and
having done this, left the room at once. His later movements had been
those of a man in fear of being disturbed. He did not even wait to lock
the box. He seemed to have heard someone coming.
Mr. Batchel's interest in the box will subsequently be explained. As
soon as the butler had left, he stood before the mirror and examined it
carefully. More than once, as he felt the desire for a closer scrutiny,
he turned to the sideboard itself, where of course no box was to be
seen, and returned to the mirror unreasonably disappointed. At length,
with the image of the box firmly impressed upon his memory, he sat down
again in his chair, and reviewed the butler's conduct, or as he doubted
he would have to call it, misconduct. Unfortunately for Mr. Batchel,
the contents of the handkerchief had been indistinguishable. But for
the butler's alarm, which caused him to be moving away from the box
even whilst he was placing the thing within it, the mirror could not
have shewn as much as it did. All that had been made evident was that
the man had something to conceal, and that it was surreptitiously done.
"Is this all?" said Mr. Batchel to himself as he sat looking into the
mirror, "or is it only the end of the first Act?" The question was, in
a measure, answered by the presence of the box. That, at all events
would have to disappear before the room could resume its ordinary
aspect; and whether it was to fade out of sight or to be removed by the
butler, Mr. Batchel did not intend to be looking another way at the
time. He had not seen, although perhaps Mr. Mutcher had, whether the
butler had brought it in, but he was determined to see whether he took
it out.
He had not gazed into the mirror for many minutes before he learned
that there was to be a second Act. Quite suddenly, a woman was at
the sideboard. She had darted to it, and the time taken in passing
over half the length of the mirror had been altogether too brief to
show what she was like. She now stood with her face to the sideboard,
entirely concealing the box from view, and all Mr. Batchel could
determine was that she was tall of stature, and that her hair was
raven-black, and not in very good order. In his anxiety to see her
face, he called aloud, "Turn round." Of course, he understood, when he
saw that his cry had been absolutely without effect, that it had been a
ridiculous thing to do. He turned his head again for a moment to assure
himself that the room was empty, and to remind himself that the curtain
had fallen, perhaps a century before, upon the drama--he began to think
of it as a tragedy--that he was witnessing. The opportunity, however,
of seeing the woman's features was not denied him. She turned her face
full upon the mirror--this is to speak as if we described the object
rather than the image--so that Mr. Batchel saw it plainly before him;
it was a handsome, cruel-looking face, of waxen paleness, with fine,
distended, lustrous, eyes. The woman looked hurriedly round the room,
looked twice towards the door, and then opened the box.
"Our respectable friend was evidently observed," said Mr. Batchel.
"If he has annexed anything belonging to this magnificent female,
he is in for a bad quarter of an hour." He would have given a great
deal, for once, to have had a sideboard backed by a looking glass, and
lamented that the taste of the day had been too good to tolerate such
a thing. He would have then been able to see what was going on at the
oaken box. As it was, the operations were concealed by the figure of
the woman. She was evidently busy with her fingers; her elbows, which
shewed plainly enough, were vibrating with activity. In a few minutes
there was a final movement of the elbows simultaneously away from her
sides, and it shewed, as plainly as if the hands had been visible, that
something had been plucked asunder. It was just such a movement as
accompanies the removal, after a struggle, of the close-fitting lid of
a canister.
"What next?" said Mr. Batchel, as he observed the movement, and
interpreted it as the end of the operation at the box. "Is this the end
of the second Act?"
He was soon to learn that it was not the end, and that the drama of the
mirror was indeed assuming the nature of tragedy. The woman closed the
box and looked towards the door, as she had done before; then she made
as if she would dart out of the room, and found her movement suddenly
arrested. She stopped dead, and, in a moment, fell loosely to the
ground. Obviously she had swooned away.
Mr. Batchel could then see nothing, except that the box remained in
its place on the sideboard, so that he arose and stood close up to the
mirror in order to obtain a view of the whole stage, as he called it.
It showed him, in the wider view he now obtained, the woman lying in
a heap upon the carpet, and a grey-wigged clergyman standing in the
doorway of the room.
"The Vicar of Stoneground, without a doubt," said Mr. Batchel. "The
household of my reverend predecessor is not doing well by him; to judge
from the effect of his appearance upon this female, there's something
serious afoot. Poor old man," he added, as the clergyman walked into
the room.
This expression of pity was evoked by the Vicar's face. The marks of
tears were upon his cheeks, and he looked weary and ill. He stood for
a while looking down upon the woman who had swooned away, and then
stooped down, and gently opened her hand.
Mr. Batchel would have given a great deal to know what the Vicar found
there. He took something from her, stood erect for a moment with an
expression of consternation upon his face; then his chin dropped, his
eyes showed that he had lost consciousness, and he fell to the ground,
very much as the woman had fallen.
The two lay, side by side, just visible in the space between the table
and the sideboard. It was a curious and pathetic situation. As the
clergyman was about to fall, Mr. Batchel had turned to save him, and
felt a real distress of helplessness at being reminded again that it
was but an image that he had looked upon. The two persons now lying
upon the carpet had been for some hundred years beyond human aid. He
could no more help them than he could help the wounded at Waterloo. He
was tempted to relieve his distress by removing the shade of the lamp;
he had even laid his hand upon it, but the feeling of curiosity was now
become too strong, and he knew that he must see the matter to its end.
The woman first began to revive. It was to be expected, as she had
been the first to go. Had not Mr. Batchel seen her face in the mirror,
her first act of consciousness would have astounded him. Now it only
revolted him. Before she had sufficiently recovered to raise herself
upon her feet, she forced open the lifeless hands beside her and
snatched away the contents of that which was not empty; and as she did
this, Mr. Batchel saw the glitter of precious stones. The woman was
soon upon her feet and making feebly for the door, at which she paused
to leer at the prostrate figure of the clergyman before she disappeared
into the hall. She appeared no more, and Mr. Batchel felt glad to be
rid of her presence.
The old Vicar was long in coming to his senses; as he began to move,
there stood in the doorway the welcome figure of the butler. With
infinite gentleness he raised his master to his feet, and with a strong
arm supported him out of the room, which at last, stood empty.
"That, at least," said Mr. Batchel, "is the end of the second Act. I
doubt whether I could have borne much more. If that awful woman comes
back I shall remove the shade and have done with it all. Otherwise, I
shall hope to learn what becomes of the box, and whether my respectable
friend who has just taken out his master is, or is not, a rascal." He
had been genuinely moved by what he had seen, and was conscious of
feeling something like exhaustion. He dare not, however, sit down,
lest he should lose anything important of what remained. Neither the
door nor the lower part of the room was visible from his chair, so
that he remained standing at the chimney-piece, and there awaited the
disappearance of the oaken box.
So intently were his eyes fixed upon the box, in which he was
especially interested, that he all but missed the next incident. A
velvet curtain which he could see through the half-closed door had
suggested nothing of interest to him. He connected it indefinitely,
as it was excusable to do, with the furniture of the house, and only
by inadvertence looked at it a second time. When, however, it began
to travel slowly along the hall, his curiosity was awakened in a new
direction. The butler, helping his master out of the room ten minutes
since, had left the door half open, but as the opening was not towards
the mirror, only a strip of the hall beyond could be seen. Mr. Batchel
went to open the door more widely, only to find, of course, that
the vividness of the images had again betrayed him. The door of his
dining-room was closed, as he had closed it after Mr. Mutcher, whose
perturbation was now so much easier to understand.
The curtain continued to move across the narrow opening, and explained
itself in doing so. It was a pall. The remains it so amply covered
were being carried out of the house to their resting-place, and were
followed by a long procession of mourners in long cloaks. The hats
they held in their black-gloved hands were heavily banded with crêpe
whose ends descended to the ground, and foremost among them was the
old clergyman, refusing the support which two of the chief mourners
were in the act of proffering. Mr. Batchel, full of sympathy, watched
the whole procession pass the door, and not until it was evident that
the funeral had left the house did he turn once more to the box. He
felt sure that the closing scene of the tragedy was at hand, and it
proved to be very near. It was brief and uneventful. The butler very
deliberately entered the room, threw aside the window-curtains and drew
up the blinds, and then went away at once, taking the box with him. Mr.
Batchel thereupon blew out his lamp and went to bed, with a purpose of
his own to be fulfilled upon the next day.
His purpose may be stated at once. He had recognised the oaken box,
and knew that it was still in the house. Three large cupboards in
the old library of Vicar Whitehead were filled with the papers of a
great law-suit about tithe, dating from the close of the 18th century.
Amongst these, in the last of the three cupboards, was the box of which
so much has been said. It was filled, so far as Mr. Batchel remembered,
with the assessments for poor's-rate of a large number of landholders
concerned in the suit, and these Mr. Batchel had never thought it worth
his while to disturb. He had gone to rest, however, on this night with
the full intention of going carefully through the contents of the box.
He scarcely hoped, after so long an interval, to discover any clue to
the scenes he had witnessed, but he was determined at least to make the
attempt. If he found nothing, he intended that the box should enshrine
a faithful record of the transactions in the dining-room.
It was inevitable that a man who had so much of the material of a story
should spend a wakeful hour in trying to piece it together. Mr. Batchel
spent considerably more than an hour in connecting, in this way and
that, the butler and his master, the gypsy-looking woman, the funeral,
but could arrive at no connexion that satisfied him. Once asleep, he
found the problem easier, and dreamed a solution so obvious as to make
him wonder that the matter had ever puzzled him. When he awoke in the
morning, also, the defects of the solution were so obvious as to make
him wonder that he had accepted it; so easily are we satisfied when
reason is not there to criticise. But there was still the box, and this
Mr. Batchel lifted down from the third cupboard, dusted with his towel,
and when he was dressed, carried downstairs with him. His breakfast
occupied but a small part of a large table, and upon the vacant area
he was soon laying, as he examined them, one by one, the documents
which the box contained. His recollection of them proved to be right.
They were overseers' lists of parochial assessments, of which he soon
had a score or more laid upon the table. They were of no interest in
themselves, and did nothing to further the matter in hand. They would
appear to have been thrust into the box by someone desiring to find a
receptacle for them.
In a little while, however, the character of the papers changed. Mr.
Batchel found himself reading something of another kind, written upon
paper of another form and colour.
"Irish bacon to be had of Mr. Broadley, hop merchant in Southwark."
"Rasin wine is kept at the Wine and Brandy vaults in Catherine Street."
"The best hones at Mr. Forsters in Little Britain."
There followed a recipe for a "rhumatic mixture," a way of making a
polish for mahogany, and other such matters. They were evidently the
papers of the butler.
Mr. Batchel removed them one by one, as he had removed the others;
household accounts followed, one or two private letters, and the
advertisement of a lottery, and then he reached a closed compartment
at the bottom of the box, occupying about half its area. The lid of
the compartment was provided with a bone stud, and Mr. Batchel lifted
it off and laid it upon the table amongst the papers. He saw at once
what the butler had taken from his handkerchief. There was an open
pocket-knife, with woeful-looking deposits upon its now rusty blade.
There was a delicate human finger, now dry and yellow, and on the
finger a gold ring.
Mr. Batchel took up this latter pitiful object and removed the ring,
even now, not quite easily. He allowed the finger to drop back into the
box, which he carried away at once into another room. His appetite for
breakfast had left him, and he rang the bell to have the things cleared
away, whilst he set himself, with the aid of a lens, to examine the
ring.
There had been three large stones, all of which had been violently
removed. The claws of their settings were, without exception, either
bent outwards, or broken off. Within the ring was engraved, in graceful
italic characters, the name AMEY LEE, and on the broader part, behind
the place of the stones
She doth joy double,
And halveth trouble.
This pathetic little love token Mr. Batchel continued to hold in his
hand as he rehearsed the whole story to which it afforded the clue.
He knew that the ring had been set with such stones as there was no
mistaking: he remembered only too well how their discovery had affected
the aged vicar. But never would he deny himself the satisfaction of
hoping that the old man had been spared the distress of learning how
the ring had been removed.
The name of Amey Lee was as familiar to Mr. Batchel as his own. Twice
at least every Sunday during the past seven years had he read it at
his feet, as he sat in the chancel, as well as the name of Robert Lee
upon an adjacent slab, and he had wondered during the leisurely course
of many a meandering hymn whether there was good precedent for the
spelling of the name. He made another use now of his knowledge of the
pavement. There was a row of tiles along the head of the slabs, and Mr.
Batchel hastened to fulfil without delay, what he conceived to be his
duty. He replaced the ring upon Amey Lee's finger and carried it into
the church, and there, having raised one of the tiles with a chisel,
gave it decent burial.
Whether the butler ever learned that he had been robbed in his turn,
who shall say? His immediate dismissal, after the funeral, seemed
inevitable, and his oaken box was evidently placed by him, or by
another, where no man heeded it. It still occupies a place amongst
the law papers and may lie undisturbed for another century; and when
Mr. Batchel put it there, without the promised record of events, he
returned to the dining room, removed the Indian shade from the lamp,
and, having put a lighted match to the edge, watched it slowly burn
away.
Only one thing remained. Mr. Batchel felt that it would give him some
satisfaction to visit Mr. Mutcher. His address, as obtained from the
District Miscellany of the Order of Gleaners, was 13, Albert Villas,
Williamson Street, not a mile away from Stoneground.
Mr. Mutcher, fortunately, was at home when Mr. Batchel called, and
indeed opened the door with a copious apology for being without his
coat.
"I hope," said Mr. Batchel, "that you have overcome your indisposition
of last Tuesday evening."
"Don't mention it, your Reverence," said Mr. Mutcher, "my wife gave
me such a talking to when I came 'ome that I was quite ashamed of
myself--I say ashamed of myself."
"She observed that you were unwell," said Mr. Batchel, "I am sure; but
she could hardly blame you for that."
By this time the visitor had been shewn into the parlour, and Mrs.
Mutcher had appeared to answer for herself.
"I really was ashamed, Sir," she said, "to think of the way Mutcher was
talking, and a clergyman's 'ouse too. Mutcher is not a man, Sir, that
takes anything, not so much as a drop; but he is wonderful partial to
cold pork, which never does agree with him, and never did, at night in
partic'lar."
"It was the cold pork, then, that made you unwell?" asked Mr. Batchel.
"It was, your Reverence, and it was not," Mr. Mutcher replied,
"for internal discomfort there was none--I say none. But a little
light-'eaded it did make me, and I could 'ave swore, your Reverence,
saving your presence, that I saw an elderly gentleman carry a box into
your room and put it down on the sheffoneer."
"There was no one there, of course," observed Mr. Batchel.
"No!" replied the D.P.G.M., "there was not; and the discrepancy was too
much for me. I hope you will pardon the abruptness of my departure."
"Certainly," said Mr. Batchel, "discrepancies are always embarrassing."
"And you will allow me one day to resume our discourse upon the subject
of National Insurance," he added, when he shewed his visitor to the
door.
"I shall not have much leisure," said Mr. Batchel, audaciously, taking
all risks, "until the Greek Kalends."
"Oh, I don't mind waiting till it does end," said Mr. Mutcher, "there
is no immediate 'urry."
"It's rather a long time," remarked Mr. Batchel.
"Pray don't mention it," answered the Deputy Provincial Grand Master,
in his best manner. "But when the time comes, perhaps you'll drop me a
line."
VIII.
THE PLACE OF SAFETY.
"I thank my governors, teachers, spiritual pastors, and masters," said
Wardle, as he lit a cigar after breakfast, "that I never acquired a
taste for that sort of thing."
Wardle was a pragmatical and candid friend who paid Mr. Batchel
occasional visits at Stoneground. He regarded antiquarian tastes
as a form of insanity, and it annoyed him to see his host poring
over registers, churchwardens' accounts, and documents which he
contemptuously alluded to as "dirty papers." "If you would throw those
things away, Batchel," he used to say, "and read the _Daily Mail_,
you'd be a better man for it."