It WAS a curious thing, said the private tutor; one of those grotesque
and whimsical incidents which occur to one as one goes through life. I
lost the best situation which I am ever likely to have through it. But
I am glad that I went to Thorpe Place, for I gained--well, as I tell
you the story you will learn what I gained.
I don't know whether you are familiar with that part of the Midlands
which is drained by the Avon. It is the most English part of England.
Shakespeare, the flower of the whole race, was born right in the middle
of it. It is a land of rolling pastures, rising in higher folds to the
westwards, until they swell into the Malvern Hills. There are no
towns, but numerous villages, each with its grey Norman church. You
have left the brick of the southern and eastern counties behind you,
and everything is stone--stone for the walls, and lichened slabs of
stone for the roofs. It is all grim and solid and massive, as befits
the heart of a great nation.
It was in the middle of this country, not very far from Evesham, that
Sir John Bollamore lived in the old ancestral home of Thorpe Place, and
thither it was that I came to teach his two little sons. Sir John was
a widower--his wife had died three years before--and he had been left
with these two lads aged eight and ten, and one dear little girl of
seven. Miss Witherton, who is now my wife, was governess to this
little girl. I was tutor to the two boys. Could there be a more
obvious prelude to an engagement? She governs me now, and I tutor two
little boys of our own. But, there--I have already revealed what it
was which I gained in Thorpe Place!
It was a very, very old house, incredibly old--pre-Norman, some of
it--and the Bollamores claimed to have lived in that situation since
long before the Conquest. It struck a chill to my heart when first I
came there, those enormously thick grey walls, the rude crumbling
stones, the smell as from a sick animal which exhaled from the rotting
plaster of the aged building. But the modern wing was bright and the
garden was well kept. No house could be dismal which had a pretty girl
inside it and such a show of roses in front.
Apart from a very complete staff of servants there were only four of us
in the household. These were Miss Witherton, who was at that time
four-and-twenty and as pretty--well, as pretty as Mrs. Colmore is
now--myself, Frank Colmore, aged thirty, Mrs. Stevens, the housekeeper,
a dry, silent woman, and Mr. Richards, a tall military-looking man, who
acted as steward to the Bollamore estates. We four always had our
meals together, but Sir John had his usually alone in the library.
Sometimes he joined us at dinner, but on the whole we were just as glad
when he did not.
For he was a very formidable person. Imagine a man six feet three
inches in height, majestically built, with a high-nosed, aristocratic
face, brindled hair, shaggy eyebrows, a small, pointed Mephistophelian
beard, and lines upon his brow and round his eyes as deep as if they
had been carved with a penknife. He had grey eyes, weary,
hopeless-looking eyes, proud and yet pathetic, eyes which claimed your
pity and yet dared you to show it. His back was rounded with study,
but otherwise he was as fine a looking man of his age--five-and-fifty
perhaps--as any woman would wish to look upon.
But his presence was not a cheerful one. He was always courteous,
always refined, but singularly silent and retiring. I have never lived
so long with any man and known so little of him. If he were indoors he
spent his time either in his own small study in the Eastern Tower, or
in the library in the modern wing. So regular was his routine that one
could always say at any hour exactly where he would be. Twice in the
day he would visit his study, once after breakfast, and once about ten
at night. You might set your watch by the slam of the heavy door. For
the rest of the day he would be in his library--save that for an hour
or two in the afternoon he would take a walk or a ride, which was
solitary like the rest of his existence. He loved his children, and
was keenly interested in the progress of their studies, but they were a
little awed by the silent, shaggy-browed figure, and they avoided him
as much as they could. Indeed, we all did that.
It was some time before I came to know anything about the circumstances
of Sir John Bollamore's life, for Mrs. Stevens, the housekeeper, and
Mr. Richards, the land-steward, were too loyal to talk easily of their
employer's affairs. As to the governess, she knew no more than I did,
and our common interest was one of the causes which drew us together.
At last, however, an incident occurred which led to a closer
acquaintance with Mr. Richards and a fuller knowledge of the life of
the man whom I served.
The immediate cause of this was no less than the falling of Master
Percy, the youngest of my pupils, into the mill-race, with imminent
danger both to his life and to mine, since I had to risk myself in
order to save him. Dripping and exhausted--for I was far more spent
than the child--I was making for my room when Sir John, who had heard
the hubbub, opened the door of his little study and asked me what was
the matter. I told him of the accident, but assured him that his child
was in no danger, while he listened with a rugged, immobile face, which
expressed in its intense eyes and tightened lips all the emotion which
he tried to conceal.
"One moment! Step in here! Let me have the details!" said he, turning
back through the open door.
And so I found myself within that little sanctum, inside which, as I
afterwards learned, no other foot had for three years been set save
that of the old servant who cleaned it out. It was a round room,
conforming to the shape of the tower in which it was situated, with a
low ceiling, a single narrow, ivy-wreathed window, and the simplest of
furniture. An old carpet, a single chair, a deal table, and a small
shelf of books made up the whole contents. On the table stood a
full-length photograph of a woman--I took no particular notice of the
features, but I remember, that a certain gracious gentleness was the
prevailing impression. Beside it were a large black japanned box and
one or two bundles of letters or papers fastened together with elastic
bands.
Our interview was a short one, for Sir John Bollamore perceived that I
was soaked, and that I should change without delay. The incident led,
however, to an instructive talk with Richards, the agent, who had never
penetrated into the chamber which chance had opened to me. That very
afternoon he came to me, all curiosity, and walked up and down the
garden path with me, while my two charges played tennis upon the lawn
beside us.
"You hardly realize the exception which has been made in your favour,"
said he. "That room has been kept such a mystery, and Sir John's
visits to it have been so regular and consistent, that an almost
superstitious feeling has arisen about it in the household. I assure
you that if I were to repeat to you the tales which are flying about,
tales of mysterious visitors there, and of voices overheard by the
servants, you might suspect that Sir John had relapsed into his old
ways."
"Why do you say relapsed?" I asked.
He looked at me in surprise.
"Is it possible," said he, "that Sir John Bollamore's previous history
is unknown to you?"
"Absolutely."
"You astound me. I thought that every man in England knew something of
his antecedents. I should not mention the matter if it were not that
you are now one of ourselves, and that the facts might come to your
ears in some harsher form if I were silent upon them. I always took it
for granted that you knew that you were in the service of 'Devil'
Bollamore."
"But why 'Devil'?" I asked.
"Ah, you are young and the world moves fast, but twenty years ago the
name of 'Devil' Bollamore was one of the best known in London. He was
the leader of the fastest set, bruiser, driver, gambler, drunkard--a
survival of the old type, and as bad as the worst of them."