A GREAT MYSTERY.
Everybody, not to say every householder, is alive to the acute dangers
of escaping gas. Every other thought was suspended for the moment. The
hall door was left open, watched over by little Hugh, and everybody,
even the stranger, Mrs. Grant, rushed to open some window. The next
thing was to find out the peccant burner.
Clementina called from the kitchen that the gas there was properly
turned off, save one light still burning. It was the same in hall and
dining-room; what was not alight was duly turned off. Miss Latimer,
coming downstairs at the moment, reported that there was no odour of
escaping gas in the higher regions.
“Well, there’s only my bedroom left,” said Tom, “and I’m certain I
turned off mine.”
But as he opened his chamber door his face lengthened. There was no
doubt now as to the source of the danger. No light was there, but the
cock of the gas-bracket stood “full on.”
The mischief was swiftly remedied, though the room was so saturated
with effluvia that it would take a prolonged airing to free it from the
fumes. But Tom was terribly perturbed by the discovery.
“I could have made affidavit that I turned off the gas,” he declared.
“I had it burning to dress by its light, and if I didn’t turn it off,
how came the light to be out?”
“You must have forgotten it wasn’t a candle, and you must have blown it
out, Tom,” said Miss Latimer.
“Well, then, I’m getting about as bad as my old landlady’s servant
girls,” decided Tom. “I can’t believe it of myself. Henceforth, I’ll
never feel sure of having done anything!”
“Perhaps you did turn it out, and then gave it an accidental knock
which turned the cock back again,” suggested Miss Latimer; “such things
will happen sometimes.”
Tom shook his head.
“The cock is very stiff,” he said.
“You must remember you were in haste. We are all rather put about just
now,” Miss Latimer went on. “But you must not dwell on it. All is well
that ends well.”
Still Tom remained dissatisfied and unconvinced, and took no part in
the eager discussion which had already begun between the two anxious
wives seated at the breakfast table.
“I think I know how I’ll manage,” said the Captain’s wife. “I’ll go
to the shipping offices myself. No”—she interrupted herself as Lucy
made a hasty movement—“you mustn’t think of coming with me. With your
face, my dear, you’d never get anything out of them while there was the
faintest chance of their being able to hold it back. But perhaps,” she
added turning to Tom, “this young gentleman will come with me to show
me the way, and to take care of me over those busy City crossings, for
I recollect that when I once went with the Captain to the office, there
was some clever steering to be done ere we got there!”
Up to this point nobody had remembered that Mrs. Grant did not know
Tom. Now Lucy recollected herself and introduced the boy as an employee
in Charlie’s office, and at present a member of the Challoner household.
Mrs. Grant beamed on him.
“This is most fortunate,” said she. “For I’m sure your masters will
give you an off day to help me find out whether there’s any news of
their Mr. Challoner—and of my Captain!”
“I’m sure they will!” cried Tom. “The chiefs are always asking whether
we have heard anything. Still I’ll have to go to the office first to
tell them why I’m wanting leave of absence.” He suited the action to
the word, bustling away, saying, “Wait till I come back—and I’ll be
back as fast as I can fly!”
When he was gone, Mrs. Grant and Lucy had time for a little quiet talk.
It was very easy for Mrs. Grant to say that on the platform she had
recognised Lucy from her old photograph, but she did not add that she
was shocked at the change visible in her, the manifold signs of nerve
strain and exhaustion.
“If she has much more waiting, she’ll set sail herself for a far-off
shore,” thought the good woman. Yet when she found that Lucy had
regular duties at the Institute, she would not allow Lucy to dream of
absenting herself for her sake.
“No, no,” she said. “I did not come here to upset your regular ways.
For one thing, if you begin to change those, people will realise how
anxious you are, and then they’ll pull long faces to you, and that will
make everything still harder and worse to bear. It’s wise to keep a
still sough, as we say in the North. You just go about your usual day’s
work, and when you come home, you’ll find me and the young gentleman
returned and waiting, and whatever we have heard, you shall hear it
all—honour bright, I promise you.”
Lucy had her full share of the sweet womanly instinct of obedience.
It is an instinct which is often strong in proportion to the strength
of the whole nature. It works so naturally and grows so strong in the
fortunate daughter and the happy wife, that it adds terribly to the
sense of disaster when the props to which it twines are withdrawn and
it is left trailing on the ground. Lucy was quite ready to succumb
to the genial domination of this wholesome kindly woman, already her
sister in suspense and who might so soon be also her sister in sorrow.
She went upstairs before she went away, and came down saying that poor
Tom’s mischance with his gas-burner had made her so nervous that she
had carefully tested all the upstairs burners.
“Somebody else might have made a similar mistake,” said she, “but they
are all right.” So she went off, taking Hugh to the Kindergarten on her
way.
“Let her keep regularly to her teaching,” Mrs. Grant confided to Miss
Latimer. “Keep her up to that, I beg you. While we wait, and when
waiting ends—as it may—there’s nothing helps us as work does. It’s
the blessed will of God that what most of us have to do for our bread
is exactly what is good for our souls. The wash-tub and the scrubbing
brush have done lots for many a poor body who is left behind. I’ve
often seen that. It’s not for any widow’s having to work that I’m ever
sorry, but because her work is often so ill-paid, that do what she may,
she can’t keep her head above water. But, I say,” she added, sniffing,
“don’t you smell the gas very strong again?”
“Oh, it is only the remains of the accident in the boy’s bedroom,”
answered Miss Latimer. “The breeze through the back windows is driving
it more to the front of the house.”
Just at that moment Tom’s key was heard turning in the front door, and
directly he entered the house he cried—
“Why, the smell of gas is worse than ever!”
“So I think,” observed Mrs. Grant.
Tom rushed to his own bedroom.
“There’s something at the bottom of all this,” he said. “I’m as
positive that I turned it off the first time as we all are that it was
turned off afterwards.” He stamped about the chamber, exclaiming, “It’s
all right here now, the gas is turned off, and there’s no smell inside
here. The mischief is somewhere else.”
“Mrs. Challoner examined all the burners upstairs, and saw that they
were right before she went out,” said Miss Latimer. “Perhaps you notice
the smell more because you’ve just come in from the fresh air, Tom.”
“But I’ve been in the house all the time,” persisted Mrs. Grant.
Tom sprang upstairs.
“There!” he shouted. “Here’s the staircase burner turned full on, and
it’s the same here—and here—and here,” he cried, rushing from chamber
to chamber, turning off burners and throwing open windows. “Yes,”
he reiterated, as he came downstairs again, “every burner upstairs
was started—the only ones turned off are that in my room where the
mischief began and in the dining-room where you were sitting.”
“They are all right downstairs,” remarked Clementina from the back of
the hall. But Tom went down and made a re-examination before he would
be satisfied on that point.
Mrs. Grant and Miss Latimer looked at each other bewildered.
“I’ve not been upstairs to do up the rooms yet,” observed Clementina.
“The only room I’ve tidied yet is Mr. Tom’s. I heard the mistress say
to you, ma’am, as she went out, that she’d just been over all the
burners, and that they were right.”
“Poor dear lady,” said Mrs. Grant; “she has been so flurried and put
about that when she tried the handles, she must have turned the gas on
and never noticed that she did it!”
“That must have been so, I suppose,” Miss Latimer reluctantly admitted;
“but it’s hard to believe. Lucy is so wonderfully careful. However much
she suffers herself, none of her duties suffer!”
“Ah, but that’s different,” Mrs. Grant replied. “She thought she was
thoroughly doing her duty now; only her mind slipped off, and she did
it the other way about.”
“I don’t believe it,” said Clementina energetically.
“What don’t you believe?” asked Tom.
“I don’t believe my mistress made any mistake. I never knew anybody so
careful as she is.”
“But what other explanation can we offer?” inquired Miss Latimer.
Clementina answered solemnly, “I believe there is an evil spirit in
this house just now.” Then, as if to give emphasis to her words, she
turned and marched from the room.
“She is very superstitious,” Miss Latimer observed to Mrs. Grant. “If
she gets this sort of thing into her head, as I’ve felt she was doing
for some time, she’ll go off, and her departure just now will be a
great trial. Are many people in the north superstitious?” she asked.
Mrs. Grant laughed. “Human nature is much the same everywhere,” she
answered. “That’s what the Captain always said. He’s known folks black,
and brown, and yellow, and every shade that they call white, but he
says there are only two differences among them, and that’s goodness
and badness, and that you find both everywhere. All the qualities,
he says, are sprinkled over the world, pretty fairly divided. As for
superstitions, what does the word mean? I believe in evil spirits, of
course, but they work through ourselves.”
“Well, I’m very glad I am not going to my pupils this morning,”
observed Miss Latimer, “and as I shall spend most of my time
supervising the gas-burners, I think you may rely that you will not
find the house blown up when you return from your quest.”
Mrs. Grant and Tom started off for the shipping office. As they went,
she confided to him her plan of operations.
“I shall send you in first,” she said. “Men often won’t tell a woman
the worst, though they know she’s got to hear it. They put off the
hard job on somebody else. It’s a cruel sort of kindness. Very likely
they’ll tell you plainly what they would gloss over to Mrs. Challoner
or me.”
“But they’ll ask who sent me?” suggested Tom.
“Don’t wait till they ask the question,” she answered. “What’s the name
of the firm you work for?”
“Patrick, Elsum, and Challoner,” he replied. “That’s the proper name;
but as Mr. Challoner only newly got into the firm, his name is often
not added. I don’t think it is in the Directory.”
“Then say straight out that you are a clerk at Patrick and Elsum’s,
and that you want to know everything they have heard of the _Slains
Castle_. Don’t seem any more anxious than you would be if it was a
matter of some client’s cargo. As soon as you come out and tell me all
they say, I’ll go in myself with you and have it all cleared up.”
She had to wait rather longer than she had thought, and when Tom came
out and advanced towards her, she saw that his face was very grave
indeed.
“Well?” she said, quite sharply.
“There is something known,” Tom answered in a low and solemn voice.
“They say that a spar and a piece of sail, with _Slains Castle_ painted
on them, have been picked up by a Pacific liner.”
Mrs. Grant stood still, and caught her breath.
“I’m going straight into the office,” she said, “to ask why they could
not write that to me, instead of bringing me up here to have to get it
out of them by guile! And it’s not such a wonderful thing that they
need keep it to themselves. One knew something must have happened,
and this only shows how something has gone wrong, and how they’ve had
to take to the boats and get into any port they could. That’s how I’m
going to look at it, and so must Mrs. Challoner.”
Her interview in the office was not very long. As she walked back with
Tom, Mrs. Grant’s thoughts seemed of Lucy rather than of herself.
“You see all this trouble has come into her life by an accident, as
it were,” she said; “it’s like happening to get shot the first time
you handle a gun. But this is the ill wind that I’ve always watched to
bring my trials. I laid that to my soul when I married the Captain.”
“I’m so glad that you’ll be with my poor friend,” remarked Tom, himself
immensely relieved by this vigorous presence.
“But, my dear boy, I must go straight home by the night train. If any
mischance has befallen the Captain, there’s but the more reason for the
mate to be at her post. Mrs. Challoner has got Miss Latimer and you to
look after her; she couldn’t have kinder people.”
All the little household had gathered in before Lucy came. They had the
fire blazing, and the tea set for her return. They could not lighten
the falling blow, but they could surround her with loving kindliness.
Lucy heard the news very quietly indeed. She lifted Hugh upon her
knee and kissed him two or three times. Then she said she was afraid
they would all take cold through wandering about in such disagreeable
weather. She put Hugh down, rose, and went out of the room, leading him
by the hand.
Mrs. Grant shook her head. “If our husbands are really gone,” she said,
“she won’t stay long after them.”
“Oh, yes, she will,” asserted Miss Latimer; “the source of all strength
is open to my Lucy, and she will be found ready to do the next thing.”
“I know there’s a great deal in that,” Mrs. Grant admitted. “Grief does
not kill according to the greatness of itself, or of the love behind
it, only according to the weakness of the constitution; but she looks
little more than a spirit already.”
A postman’s knock came to the door. Tom ran to see what had arrived. He
did not come straightway back to the parlour, and when he did, he threw
Miss Latimer a significant glance.
“I think I’d better run round to the office,” he said, “and let them
know what we have heard. And I think I’ll look in also on Mr. Somerset.
I’ll be back in good time to see Mrs. Grant to the station, as she is
quite determined to go to-night.”
By the time Tom reached the office, his principals had departed. Tom
did not choose to tell his melancholy news to any of the underlings;
but he was only too anxious to disburden himself to Mr. Somerset.
That gentleman was deeply moved by the tidings of the _Slains
Castle_—so ominous of the true significance of the long silence. Yet he
allowed himself to see that there might be some force in Mrs. Grant’s
arguments, when Tom repeated them to him.
But Tom had more news. He had to show Mr. Somerset what had arrived by
post only the minute before he started to visit him—what indeed had
been the controlling cause of that visit.
It was a letter with a black edge so deep that it scarcely left room
for the ill-written, ill-spelled direction—
To the Peple
at No. — Pellum Street.
“It is the same handwriting as was on the envelope of the blank sheet
that Mrs. Challoner got before Christmas,” said Tom. “Don’t you
remember that envelope was torn up at first, but that I got the pieces
out of the waste-paper basket and kept them? Directly I saw this I
compared the two; it’s the same handwriting, only this is worse.”
Mr. Somerset turned it over and over in his hand. “Did you tell Mrs.
Challoner about this?” he asked.
“No,” answered Tom emphatically; “I did not. It would have been too
cruel to show it to her to-day—I couldn’t. Besides, it is not addressed
to her.”
“You have done rightly,” said Mr. Somerset; “even if it be nothing but
the circular of a mourning warehouse, it is not a thing for her to see
to-day. Its coming to-day is a very strange coincidence!”
“Is it a mere coincidence?” questioned Tom.
“Well, as you say, it is not addressed to Mrs. Challoner. You are
one of ‘the peple’ as much as she is. You have a perfect right to
open it, and when we see its contents we can the better judge of its
significance.”
The contents were a sheet of thick paper with heavy black borders,
between which, on all four sides, was a long “screed,” which seemed
to the most careful scrutiny to be nothing but pot-hooks and hangers,
dotted i’s, and crossed t’s, making not one intelligible word among
them all!
“It is evident to me,” said Mr. Somerset, “that the blank letter and
the ‘knocks’ and this letter all emanate from somebody who wishes
to annoy and to give pain. I can’t see why they should do so. It is
probably the work of some of the servants who have given Mrs. Challoner
so much trouble, or of some of their friends. At any rate, the matter
is not one in which we can readily move; and to-day we will not call
Mrs. Challoner’s attention to it. She has but too much trouble already!”
“Yes, indeed!” sighed Tom. “We’ve all been terribly upset since
yesterday. We scarcely know what we are doing. I left my gas turned on
this morning, and not alight, and Mrs. Challoner got so nervous that
she tried if all the other burners were right, and turned them on by
mistake!”
Mr. Somerset did not pay much heed to these domestic catastrophes. He
was preparing to accompany Tom back to Pelham Street. He wanted to see
Mrs. Grant himself. He did not forget that the Challoners’ woe involved
hers, and like their true friend, as he was, he wished to show all the
attention and hospitality which he knew they would have desired to
tender to a woman under such anxiety.
He found Lucy, as Mrs. Grant whispered, “holding on bravely.” She was
even preparing to accompany her guest to the railway station, to see
her off on her homeward journey. But she was not reluctant to yield
to Mr. Somerset’s request that she would delegate this duty to him—a
proposal which Mrs. Grant backed with much urgency.
“Keep her to her work, all you good friends of hers,” whispered that
worthy woman. “Never mind her getting tired. For the rest, let her
be quiet when she wishes it. Spare her from all the little squalid
worries you can; I don’t mean keep them from her, but stand between
her and them; let her get them, as it were, passed through you first.
Ah, I know!” added Mrs. Grant; “for as I’m a sailor’s wife, so am I a
sailor’s daughter, and what we’re bearing to-day, I’ve seen my mother
live through thrice—once for her husband, and twice for her sons.”
As their cab drew up at the station, it had to wait a second while a
carriage drove off.
“Dr. Ivery’s carriage,” whispered sharp Tom to Mr. Somerset. “So I
suppose he is in the station.”
True enough, as they passed through the booking-office, there was
Dr. Ivery taking his ticket. Mr. Somerset knew him, having met him
several times during Mr. Challoner’s illness. They greeted each other,
Mrs. Grant and Tom passing on. Mrs. Grant’s train was already in the
station, but would not start for another quarter of an hour.
Tom turned to look at his friend and the physician. He saw that they
were in close conversation, and Mr. Somerset had actually produced
the black-edged letter! The doctor was carefully examining it under
a lamp. He handed it back with a few emphatic words, which Mr.
Somerset received with a gesture of surprise and interrogation. Then
they both looked at it together, the doctor pointing to details in
the superscription, Mr. Somerset eagerly following his words, and
alternately watching his finger and looking into his face. Finally, he
re-took the letter, and both gentlemen shook their heads, the doctor
extending both his hands as though to say that his words opened wide
issues. Then, as Mrs. Grant’s train was just starting, they hastily
shook hands, and Mr. Somerset hastened back to give the good lady his
parting words as she went off.
“Tom,” said Mr. Somerset, grasping the lad’s arm as they re-entered
the cab, which Mr. Somerset had retained to drive them back to Pelham
Street, “Dr. Ivery is truly concerned about the news I gave him. He has
much admiration for Mrs. Challoner’s pluck and determination. Then I
thought I would tell him about the little worry of these letters; and,
Tom, he has a most startling theory on the subject—indeed, it is no
theory, he regards it as a scientific fact.”
“What is it?” Tom asked eagerly.
“He says these letters are written by some demented person; that
such things are a well known phase of mental failure; that the very
caligraphy is characteristic, the way the letters and lines run into
each other, the bad spelling—everything!”
“I don’t see that the doctor’s opinion helps us much,” remarked Tom,
almost irritably. “Who is the lunatic? and why is the lunatic concerned
with our household?”
“Those questions remain unanswered,” said Mr. Somerset. “There is no
need to ask ‘why’ where lunacy is concerned. It is precisely without
reason that it acts, and there is little organic unity in its actions.”
They found Miss Latimer sitting alone in the parlour. Lucy had retired.
“Sorrow is sometimes sleepy,” said Miss Latimer, “and it is God’s
medicine when it is.” But Lucy had left behind kind “good nights” for
Mr. Somerset and Tom, and exhortations that the former was not to think
of going home without having his supper.
It was a dreary little meal. While Clementina set or removed the
dishes, they did not check their conversation about the general
position.
“If these strange freaks be really the work of a lunatic,” said Mr.
Somerset, “of course the poor creature cannot be blamed; but none the
less we must try that he or she be in some way restrained, as soon as
discovered, for nobody knows what they may do next.”
“Those that get called mad are sometimes not so mad as folks think,
sir,” Clementina put in, in her civil, sad way.
“It’s strange to discover that we seem to know as little of what is
going on beside us, as we do of what is happening to Mr. Challoner at
the other side of the world,” remarked Tom.
“Oh, we are badly in want of a sixth sense, such as some of your old
Highland seers claimed, Clementina,” said Miss Latimer.
“Aye, but they did not claim it, they had it,” said Clementina
confidently; “yet it wrought them little good. They could not use it
when they wished, they had to wait for it, and it came only when it
listed; often it would not come, and it would never bide.”
“Yet some people claim that these mysterious faculties are being slowly
brought into light and order,” observed Mr. Somerset, turning to Miss
Latimer. “I do not know anything of the subject myself, and I find it
hard to believe. There are people who profess so much of this modern
magic that if you gave them Charlie’s last letter, they would pretend
to tell you where he is, and what he is doing.”
“The Brahan Seer did that, nigh two hundred years ago,” said Clementina
eagerly. “He told the proud Lady Seaforth what was keeping her husband
in France, and he got himself burned for his pains.”
“I should think it was bordering on sin to make any such inquiry,”
said Miss Latimer. “If there are any mysterious faculties only half
developed in human nature, we should not hasten to mix them up with the
solemn and sacred things of our lives. We know enough to be sure that
many spiritual dangers lie that way. To venture our peace of mind among
such risks, is like going into a laboratory and tasting everything, not
knowing which is poisonous.”
“Yet, to use your simile, there must be laboratories, and tests, and
fit occasions for working among such things,” said Mr. Somerset. “Still
I agree with you absolutely in the necessity of keeping the treasures
of our hearts and lives out of so tainted and be-fogged an atmosphere.”
“Well, I’m sure these silly letters are not sacred treasures,” said
Tom. “Suppose we give one of them to a detective to-morrow, and take
him with us to put it into the hand of a psychometric or clairvoyant,
or whatever they call the modern wizard or witch, and allow them to
clairvoyantly perceive—isn’t that the cant?—the person who sent it. It
would be a good test if this did give us a clue, and if it didn’t, or
if it misled us, why there would be no harm done—it wouldn’t matter a
bit—we should be just where we are.”
Clementina had removed the supper-tray while he was speaking. Mr.
Somerset rose up to go. He did not reply to Tom’s suggestion, not
taking it seriously, but said “good night,” promising to come back very
soon, possibly next day.
In the morning Tom woke rather lazily, but he jumped up in a great
fright, seeing that his watch already pointed to half-past eight! “I
must have slept very heavily,” he thought, “to have heard no knock nor
bell, nor anything!”
And he dressed in great haste.
(_To be continued._)
GIRLS AS I HAVE KNOWN THEM.
BY ELSA D’ESTERRE-KEELING, Author of “Old Maids and Young.”