He nodded.
"Who told you?" He got suddenly very angry; a darkish red came into his
cheeks, his eyes glistened, but he made no answer, and we loitered
listlessly about the garden until it was time for tea....
Seaton's aunt was wearing an extraordinary kind of lace jacket when we
sidled sheepishly into the drawing-room together. She greeted me with a
heavy and protracted smile, and bade me bring a chair close to the
little table.
"I hope Arthur has made you feel at home," she said as she handed me my
cup in her crooked hand. "He don't talk much to me; but then I'm an old
woman. You must come again, Wither, and draw him out of his shell. You
old snail!" She wagged her head at Seaton, who sat munching cake and
watching her intently.
"And we must correspond, perhaps." She nearly shut her eyes at me. "You
must write and tell me everything behind the creature's back." I
confess I found her rather disquieting company. The evening drew on.
Lamps were brought by a man with a nondescript face and very quiet
footsteps. Seaton was told to bring out the chess-men. And we played a
game, she and I, with her big chin thrust over the board at every move
as she gloated over the pieces and occasionally croaked "Check!" after
which she would sit back inscrutably staring at me. But the game was
never finished. She simply hemmed me defencelessly in with a cloud of
men that held me impotent, and yet one and all refused to administer to
my poor flustered old king a merciful _coup de grâce_.
"There," she said, as the clock struck ten--"a drawn game, Withers. We
are very evenly matched. A very creditable defence, Withers. You know
your room. There's supper on a tray in the dining-room. Don't let the
creature over-eat himself. The gong will sound three-quarters of an
hour before a punctual breakfast." She held out her cheek to Seaton,
and he kissed it with obvious perfunctoriness. With me she shook hands.
"An excellent game," she said cordially, "but my memory is poor,
and"--she swept the pieces helter-skelter into the box--"the result
will never be known." She raised her great head far back. "Eh?"
It was a kind of challenge, and I could only murmur: "Oh, I was
absolutely in a hole, you know!" when she burst out laughing and waved
us both out of the room.
Seaton and I stood and ate our supper, with one candlestick to light
us, in a corner of the dining-room. "Well, and how would you like it?"
he said very softly, after cautiously poking his head round the
doorway.
"Like what?"
"Being spied on--every blessed thing you do and think?"
"I shouldn't like it at all," I said, "if she does."
"And yet you let her smash you up at chess!"
"I didn't let her!" I said indignantly.
"Well, you funked it, then."
"And I didn't funk it either," I said; "she's so jolly clever with her
knights." Seaton stared fixedly at the candle. "You wait, that's all,"
he said slowly. And we went upstairs to bed.
I had not been long in bed, I think, when I was cautiously awakened by
a touch on my shoulder. And there was Seaton's face in the candlelight
and his eyes looking into mine.
"What's up?" I said, rising quickly to my elbow.
"Don't scurry," he whispered, "or she'll hear. I'm sorry for waking
you, but I didn't think you'd be asleep so soon."
"Why, what's the time, then?" Seaton wore, what was then rather
unusual, a night-suit, and he hauled his big silver watch out of the
pocket in his jacket.
"It's a quarter to twelve. I never get to sleep before twelve--not
here."
"What do you do, then?"
"Oh, I read and listen."
"Listen?"
Seaton stared into his candle-flame as if he were listening even then.
"You can't guess what it is. All you read in ghost stories, that's all
rot. You can't see much, Withers, but you know all the same."
"Know what?"
"Why, that they're there."
"Who's there?" I asked fretfully, glancing at the door.
"Why, in the house. It swarms with 'em. Just you stand still and listen
outside my bedroom door in the middle of the night. I have, dozens of
times; they're all over the place."
"Look here, Seaton," I said, "you asked me to come here, and I didn't
mind chucking up a leave just to oblige you and because I'd promised;
but don't get talking a lot of rot, that's all, or you'll know the
difference when we get back."
"Don't fret," he said coldly, turning away. "I shan't be at school
long. And what's more, you're here now, and there isn't anybody else to
talk to. I'll chance the other."
"Look here, Seaton," I said, "you may think you're going to scare me
with a lot of stuff about voices and all that. But I'll just thank you
to clear out; and you may please yourself about pottering about all
night."
He made no answer; he was standing by the dressing-table looking across
his candle into the looking-glass; he turned and stared slowly round
the walls.
"Even this room's nothing more than a coffin. I suppose she told
you--'It's all exactly the same as when my brother William died'--trust
her for that! And good luck to him, say I. Look at that." He raised his
candle close to the little water-colour I have mentioned. "There's
hundreds of eyes like that in the house; and even if God does see you,
he takes precious good care you don't see Him. And it's just the same
with them. I tell you what, Withers, I'm getting sick of all this. I
shan't stand it much longer."
The house was silent within and without, and even in the yellowish
radiance of the candle a faint silver showed through the open window on
my blind. I slipped off the bedclothes, wide awake, and sat irresolute
on the bedside.
"I know you're only guying me," I said angrily, "but why is the house
full of--what you say? Why do you hear--what you _do_ hear? Tell me
that, you silly foal!"
Seaton sat down on a chair and rested his candlestick on his knee. He
blinked at me calmly. "She brings them," he said, with lifted eyebrows.
"Who? Your aunt?"
He nodded.
"How?"
"I told you," he answered pettishly. "She's in league. You don't know.
She as good as killed my mother; I know that. But it's not only her by
a long chalk. She just sucks you dry. I know. And that's what she'll do
for me; because I'm like her--like my mother, I mean. She simply hates
to see me alive. I wouldn't be like that old she-wolf for a million
pounds. And so"--he broke off, with a comprehensive wave of his
candlestick--"they're always here. Ah, my boy, wait till she's dead!
She'll hear something then, I can tell you. It's all very well now, but
wait till then! I wouldn't be in her shoes when she has to clear
out--for something. Don't you go and believe I care for ghosts, or
whatever you like to call them. We're all in the same box. We're all
under her thumb."
He was looking almost nonchalantly at the ceiling at the moment, when I
saw his face change, saw his eyes suddenly drop like shot birds and fix
themselves on the cranny of the door he had just left ajar. Even from
where I sat I could see his colour change; he went greenish. He
crouched without stirring, simply fixed. And I, scarcely daring to
breathe, sat with creeping skin, simply watching him. His hands
relaxed, and he gave a kind of sigh.
"Was that one?" I whispered, with a timid show of jauntiness. He looked
round, opened his mouth, and nodded. "What?" I said. He jerked his
thumb with meaningful eyes, and I knew that he meant that his aunt had
been there listening at our door cranny.
"Look here, Seaton," I said once more, wriggling to my feet. "You may
think I'm a jolly noodle; just as you please. But your aunt has been
civil to me and all that, and I don't believe a word you say about her,
that's all, and never did. Every fellow's a bit off his pluck at night,
and you may think it a fine sport to try your rubbish on me. I heard
your aunt come upstairs before I fell asleep. And I'll bet you a level
tanner she's in bed now. What's more, you can keep your blessed ghosts
to yourself. It's a guilty conscience, I should think."
Seaton looked at me curiously, without answering for a moment. "I'm not
a liar, Withers; but I'm not going to quarrel either. You're the only
chap I care a button for; or, at any rate, you're the only chap that's
ever come here; and it's something to tell a fellow what you feel. I
don't care a fig for fifty thousand ghosts, although I swear on my
solemn oath that I know they're here. But she"--he turned
deliberately--"you laid a tanner she's in bed, Withers; well, I know
different. She's never in bed much of the night, and I'll prove it,
too, just to show you I'm not such a nolly as you think I am. Come on!"
"Come on where?"
"Why, to see."
I hesitated. He opened a large cupboard and took out a small dark
dressing-gown and a kind of shawl-jacket. He threw the jacket on the
bed and put on the gown. His dusky face was colourless, and I could see
by the way he fumbled at the sleeves he was shivering. But it was no
good showing the white feather now. So I threw the tasselled shawl over
my shoulders and, leaving our candle brightly burning on the chair, we
went out together and stood in the corridor. "Now then, listen!" Seaton
whispered.
We stood leaning over the staircase. It was like leaning over a well,
so still and chill the air was all around us. But presently, as I
suppose happens in most old houses, began to echo and answer in my ears
a medley of infinite small stirrings and whisperings. Now out of the
distance an old timber would relax its fibers, or a scurry die away
behind the perishing wainscot. But amid and behind such sounds as these
I seemed to begin to be conscious, as it were, of the lightest of
footfalls, sounds as faint as the vanishing remembrance of voices in a
dream. Seaton was all in obscurity except his face; out of that his
eyes gleamed darkly, watching me.
"You'd hear, too, in time, my fine soldier," he muttered. "Come on!"
He descended the stairs, slipping his lean fingers lightly along the
balusters. He turned to the right at the loop, and I followed him
barefooted along a thickly-carpeted corridor. At the end stood a door
ajar. And from here we very stealthily and in complete blackness
ascended five narrow stairs. Seaton, with immense caution, slowly
pushed open a door and we stood together looking into a great pool of
duskiness, out of which, lit by the feeble clearness of a night-light,
rose a vast bed. A heap of clothes lay on the floor; beside them two
slippers dozed, with noses each to each, two yards apart. Somewhere a
little clock ticked huskily. There was a rather close smell of lavender
and eau de Cologne, mingled with the fragrance of ancient sachets,
soap, and drugs. Yet it was a scent even more peculiarly commingled
than that.
And the bed! I stared warily in; it was mounded gigantically, and it
was empty.
Seaton turned a vague pale face, all shadows: "What did I say?" he
muttered. "Who's--who's the fool now, I say? How are we going to get
back without meeting her, I say? Answer me that! Oh, I wish to goodness
you hadn't come here, Withers."
He stood visibly shivering in his skimpy gown, and could hardly speak
for his teeth chattering. And very distinctly, in the hush that
followed his whisper, I heard approaching a faint unhurried voluminous
rustle. Seaton clutched my arm, dragged me to the right across the room
to a large cupboard, and drew the door close to on us. And, presently,
as with bursting lungs I peeped out into the long, low, curtained
bedroom, waddled in that wonderful great head and body. I can see her
now, all patched and lined with shadow, her tied-up hair (she must have
had enormous quantities of it for so old a woman), her heavy lids above
those flat, slow, vigilant eyes. She just passed across my ken in the
vague dusk; but the bed was out of sight.
We waited on and on, listening to the clock's muffled ticking. Not the
ghost of a sound rose up from the great bed. Either she lay archly
listening or slept a sleep serener than an infant's. And when, it
seemed, we had been hours in hiding and were cramped, chilled, and half
suffocated, we crept out on all fours, with terror knocking at our
ribs, and so down the five narrow stairs and back to the little
candle-lit blue-and-gold bedroom.
Once there, Seaton gave in. He sat livid on a chair with closed eyes.
"Here," I said, shaking his arm, "I'm going to bed; I've had enough of
this foolery; I'm going to bed." His lids quivered, but he made no
answer. I poured out some water into my basin and, with that cold
pictured azure eye fixed on us, bespattered Seaton's sallow face and
forehead and dabbled his hair. He presently sighed and opened fish-like
eyes.
"Come on!" I said. "Don't get shamming, there's a good chap. Get on my
back, if you like, and I'll carry you into your bedroom."
He waved me away and stood up. So, with my candle in one hand, I took
him under the arm and walked him along according to his direction down
the corridor. His was a much dingier room than mine, and littered with
boxes, paper, cages, and clothes. I huddled him into bed and turned to
go. And suddenly, I can hardly explain it now, a kind of cold and
deadly terror swept over me. I almost ran out of the room, with eyes
fixed rigidly in front of me, blew out my candle, and buried my head
under the bedclothes.
When I awoke, roused by a long-continued tapping at my door, sunlight
was raying in on cornice and bedpost, and birds were singing in the
garden. I got up, ashamed of the night's folly, dressed quickly, and
went downstairs. The breakfast-room was sweet with flowers and fruit
and honey. Seaton's aunt was standing in the garden beside the open
French window, feeding a great flutter of birds. I watched her for a
moment, unseen. Her face was set in a deep reverie beneath the shadow
of a big loose sunhat. It was deeply lined, crooked, and, in a way I
can't describe, fixedly vacant and strange. I coughed, and she turned
at once with a prodigious smile to inquire how I had slept. And in that
mysterious way by which we learn each other's secret thoughts without a
sentence spoken I knew that she had followed every word and movement of
the night before, and was triumphing over my affected innocence and
ridiculing my friendly and too easy advances.
We returned to school, Seaton and I, lavishly laden, and by rail all
the way. I made no reference to the obscure talk we had had, and
resolutely refused to meet his eyes or to take up the hints he let
fall. I was relieved--and yet I was sorry--to be going back, and strode
on as fast as I could from the station, with Seaton almost trotting at
my heels. But he insisted on buying more fruit and sweets--my share of
which I accepted with a very bad grace. It was uncomfortably like a
bribe; and, after all, I had no quarrel with his rum old aunt, and
hadn't really believed half the stuff he had told me.
I saw as little of him as I could after that. He never referred to our
visit or resumed his confidences, though in class I would sometimes
catch his eye fixed on mine, full of a mute understanding, which I
easily affected not to understand. He left Gummidge's, as I have said,
rather abruptly, though I never heard of anything to his discredit. And
I did not see him or have any news of him again till by chance we met
one summer's afternoon in the Strand.
He was dressed rather oddly in a coat too large for him and a bright
silky tie. But we instantly recognised one another under the awning of
a cheap jeweler's shop. He immediately attached himself to me and
dragged me off, not too cheerfully, to lunch with him at an Italian
restaurant near by. He chattered about our old school, which he
remembered only with dislike and disgust; told me cold-bloodedly of the
disastrous fate of one or two of the old fellows who had been among his
chief tormentors; insisted on an expensive wine and the whole gamut of
the "rich" menu; and finally informed me, with a good deal of niggling,
that he had come up to town to buy an engagement-ring.
And of course: "How is your aunt?" I enquired at last.
He seemed to have been awaiting the question. It fell like a stone into
a deep pool, so many expressions flitted across his long un-English
face.
"She's aged a good deal," he said softly, and broke off.
"She's been very decent," he continued presently after, and paused
again. "In a way." He eyed me fleetingly. "I dare say you heard that
she--that is, that we--had lost a good deal of money."
"No," I said.
"Oh, yes!" said Seaton, and paused again.
And somehow, poor fellow, I knew in the clink and clatter of glass and
voices that he had lied to me; that he did not possess, and never had
possessed, a penny beyond what his aunt had squandered on his too ample
allowance of pocket-money.
"And the ghosts?" I enquired quizzically. He grew instantly solemn,
and, though it may have been my fancy, slightly yellowed. But "You are
making game of me, Withers," was all he said.
He asked for my address, and I rather reluctantly gave him my card.
"Look here, Withers," he said, as we stood in the sunlight on the
thronging kerb, saying good-bye, "here I am, and it's all very well;
I'm not perhaps as fanciful as I was. But you are practically the only
friend I have on earth--except Alice.... And there--to make a clean
breast of it, I'm not sure that my aunt cares much about my getting
married. She doesn't say so, of course. You know her well enough for
that." He looked sidelong at the rattling gaudy traffic.
"What I was going to say is this. Would you mind coming down? You
needn't stay the night unless you please, though, of course, you know
you would be awfully welcome. But I should like you to meet my--to meet
Alice; and then, perhaps, you might tell me your honest opinion of--of
the other too."
I vaguely demurred. He pressed me. And we parted with a half promise
that I would come. He waved his ball-topped cane at me and ran off in
his long jacket after a 'bus.
A letter arrived soon after, in his small weak handwriting, giving me
full particulars regarding route and trains. And without the least
curiosity, even, perhaps with some little annoyance that chance should
have thrown us together again, I accepted his invitation and arrived
one hazy midday at his out-of-the-way station to find him sitting on a
low seat under a clump of double hollyhocks, awaiting me.
His face looked absent and singularly listless; but he seemed, none the
less, pleased to see me.
We walked up the village street, past the little dingy apothecary's and
the empty forge, and, as on my first visit, skirted the house together,
and, instead of entering by the front door, made our way down the green
path into the garden at the back. A pale haze of cloud muffled the sun;
the garden lay in a grey shimmer--its old trees, its snap-dragoned
faintly glittering walls. But there seemed now an air of neglect where
before all had been neat and methodical. There was a patch of
shallowly-dug soil and a worn-down spade leaning against a tree. There
was an old broken wheelbarrow. The goddess of neglect was there.
"You ain't much of a gardener, Seaton," I said, with a sigh of ease.
"I think, do you know, I like it best like this," said Seaton. "We
haven't any gardener now, of course. Can't afford it." He stood staring
at his little dark square of freshly-turned earth. "And it always seems
to me," he went on ruminatingly, "that, after all, we are nothing
better than interlopers on the earth, disfiguring and staining wherever
we go. I know it's shocking blasphemy to say so, but then it's
different here, you see. We are farther away."
"To tell you the truth, Seaton, I don't quite see," I said; "but it
isn't a new philosophy, is it? Anyhow, it's a precious beastly one."
"It's only what I think," he replied, with all his odd old stubborn
meekness.
We wandered on together, talking little, and still with that expression
of uneasy vigilance on Seaton's face. He pulled out his watch as we
stood gazing idly over the green meadow and the dark motionless
bulrushes.
"I think, perhaps, it's nearly time for lunch," he said. "Would you
like to come in?"
We turned and walked slowly towards the house, across whose windows I
confess my own eyes, too, went restlessly wandering in search of its
rather disconcerting inmate. There was a pathetic look of draggledness,
of want of means and care, rust and overgrowth and faded paint.
Seaton's aunt, a little to my relief, did not share our meal. Seaton
carved the cold meat, and dispatched a heaped-up plate by the elderly
servant for his aunt's private consumption. We talked little and in
half-suppressed tones, and sipped a bottle of Madeira which Seaton had
rather heedfully fetched out of the great mahogany sideboard.
I played him a dull and effortless game of chess, yawning between the
moves he generally made almost at haphazard, and with attention
elsewhere engaged. About five o'clock came the sound of a distant ring,
and Seaton jumped up, overturning the board, and so ending a game that
else might have fatuously continued to this day. He effusively excused
himself, and after some little while returned with a slim, dark, rather
sallow girl of about nineteen, in a white gown and hat, to whom I was
presented with some little nervousness as "his dear old friend and
schoolfellow."
We talked on in the pale afternoon light, still, as it seemed to me,
and even in spite of real effort to be clear and gay, in a
half-suppressed, lack-lustre fashion. We all seemed, if it were not my
fancy, to be expectant, to be rather anxiously awaiting an arrival, the
appearance of someone who all but filled our collective consciousness.
Seaton talked least of all, and in a restless interjectory way, as he
continually fidgeted from chair to chair. At last he proposed a stroll
in the garden before the sun should have quite gone down.
Alice walked between us. Her hair and eyes were conspicuously dark
against the whiteness of her gown. She carried herself not
ungracefully, and yet without the least movement of her arms or body,
and answered us both without turning her head. There was a curious
provocative reserve in that impassive and rather long face, a
half-unconscious strength of character.
And yet somehow I knew--I believe we all knew--that this walk, this
discussion of their future plans was a futility. I had nothing to base
such a cynicism on, except only a vague sense of oppression, the
foreboding remembrance of the inert invincible power in the background,
to whom optimistic plans and love-making and youth are as chaff and
thistledown. We came back, silent, in the last light. Seaton's aunt was
there--under an old brass lamp. Her hair was as barbarously massed and
curled as ever. Her eye-lids, I think, hung even a little heavier in
age over their slow-moving inscrutable pupils. We filed in softly out
of the evening, and I made my bow.
"In this short interval, Mr. Withers," she remarked amiably, "you have
put off youth, put on the man. Dear me, how sad it is to see the young
days vanishing! Sit down. My nephew tells me you met by chance--or act
of Providence, shall we call it?--and in my beloved Strand! You, I
understand, are to be best man--yes, best man, or am I divulging
secrets?" She surveyed Arthur and Alice with overwhelming graciousness.
They sat apart on two low chairs and smiled in return.
"And Arthur--how do you think Arthur is looking?"
"I think he looks very much in need of a change," I said deliberately.
"A change! Indeed?" She all but shut her eyes at me and with an
exaggerated sentimentality shook her head. "My dear Mr. Withers! Are we
not _all_ in need of a change in this fleeting, fleeting world?" She
mused over the remark like a connoisseur. "And you," she continued,
turning abruptly to Alice, "I hope you pointed out to Mr. Withers all
my pretty bits?"
"We walked round the garden," said Alice, looking out of the window.
"It's a very beautiful evening."
"Is it?" said the old lady, starting up violently. "Then on this very
beautiful evening we will go in to supper. Mr. Withers, your arm;
Arthur, bring your bride."
I can scarcely describe with what curious ruminations I led the way
into the faded, heavy-aired dining-room, with this indefinable old
creature leaning weightily on my arm--the large flat bracelet on the
yellow-laced wrist. She fumed a little, breathed rather heavily, as if
with an effort of mind rather than of body; for she had grown much
stouter and yet little more proportionate. And to talk into that great
white face, so close to mine, was a queer experience in the dim light
of the corridor, and even in the twinkling crystal of the candles. She
was naïve--appallingly naïve; she was sudden and superficial; she was
even arch; and all these in the brief, rather puffy passage from one
room to the other, with these two tongue-tied children bringing up the
rear. The meal was tremendous. I have never seen such a monstrous
salad. But the dishes were greasy and over-spiced, and were
indifferently cooked. One thing only was quite unchanged--my hostess's
appetite was as Gargantuan as ever. The old solid candelabra that
lighted us stood before her high-backed chair. Seaton sat a little
removed, with his plate almost in darkness.
And throughout this prodigious meal his aunt talked, mainly to me,
mainly at Seaton, with an occasional satirical courtesy to Alice and
muttered explosions of directions to the servant. She had aged, and
yet, if it be not nonsense to say so, seemed no older. I suppose to the
Pyramids a decade is but as the rustling down of a handful of dust. And
she reminded me of some such unshakable prehistoricism. She certainly
was an amazing talker--racy, extravagant, with a delivery that was
perfectly overwhelming. As for Seaton--her flashes of silence were for
him. On her enormous volubility would suddenly fall a hush: acid
sarcasm would be left implied; and she would sit softly moving her
great head, with eyes fixed full in a dreamy smile; but with her whole
attention, one could see, slowly, joyously absorbing his mute
discomfiture.
She confided in us her views on a theme vaguely occupying at the
moment, I suppose, all our minds. "We have barbarous institutions, and
so must put up, I suppose, with a never-ending procession of fools--of
fools _ad infinitum_. Marriage, Mr. Withers, was instituted in the
privacy of a garden; _sub rosa_, as it were. Civilization flaunts it in
the glare of day. The dull marry the poor; the rich the effete; and so
our New Jerusalem is peopled with naturals, plain and coloured, at
either end. I detest folly; I detest still more (if I must be frank,
dear Arthur) mere cleverness. Mankind has simply become a tailless host
of uninstinctive animals. We should never have taken to Evolution, Mr.
Withers. 'Natural Selection!'--little gods and fishes!--the deaf for
the dumb. We should have used our brains--intellectual pride, the
ecclesiastics call it. And by brains I mean--what do I mean, Alice?--I
mean, my dear child," and she laid two gross fingers on Alice's narrow
sleeve. "I mean courage. Consider it, Arthur. I read that the
scientific world is once more beginning to be afraid of spiritual
agencies. Spiritual agencies that tap, and actually float, bless their
hearts! I think just one more of those mulberries--thank you.
"They talk about 'blind Love,'" she ran inconsequently on as she helped
herself, with eyes fixed on the dish, "but why blind? I think, do you
know, from weeping over its rickets. After all, it is we plain women
that triumph, Mr. Withers, beyond the mockery of time. Alice, now!
Fleeting, fleeting is youth, my child! What's that you were confiding
to your plate, Arthur? Satirical boy! He laughs at his old aunt: nay,
but thou didst laugh. He detests all sentiment. He whispers the most
acid asides. Come, my love, we will leave these cynics; we will go and
commiserate with each other on our sex. The choice of two evils, Mr.
Smithers!" I opened the door, and she swept out as if borne on a
torrent of unintelligible indignation; and Arthur and I were left in
the clear four-flamed light alone.
For a while we sat in silence. He shook his head at my cigarette-case,
and I lit a cigarette. Presently he fidgeted in his chair and poked his
head forward into the light. He paused to rise and shut again the shut
door.
"How long will you be?" he said, standing by the table.