"Come, come, you are just as curious as any of us. Is it a woman or
not?"
"It is certainly a woman."
"Which room did you hear it from?"
"From the turret-room, before the ceiling fell."
"But I heard it from the library only last night. I passed the doors
as I was going to bed, and I heard something wailing and praying just
as plainly as I hear you. It may be a woman----"
"Why, what else COULD it be?"
He looked at me hard.
"There are more things in heaven and earth," said he. "If it is a
woman, how does she get there?"
"I don't know."
"No, nor I. But if it is the other thing--but there, for a practical
business man at the end of the nineteenth century this is rather a
ridiculous line of conversation." He turned away, but I saw that he
felt even more than he had said. To all the old ghost stories of
Thorpe Place a new one was being added before our very eyes. It may by
this time have taken its permanent place, for though an explanation
came to me, it never reached the others.
And my explanation came in this way. I had suffered a sleepless night
from neuralgia, and about midday I had taken a heavy dose of chlorodyne
to alleviate the pain. At that time I was finishing the indexing of
Sir John Bollamore's library, and it was my custom to work there from
five till seven. On this particular day I struggled against the double
effect of my bad night and the narcotic. I have already mentioned that
there was a recess in the library, and in this it was my habit to work.
I settled down steadily to my task, but my weariness overcame me and,
falling back upon the settee, I dropped into a heavy sleep.
How long I slept I do not know, but it was quite dark when I awoke.
Confused by the chlorodyne which I had taken, I lay motionless in a
semi-conscious state. The great room with its high walls covered with
books loomed darkly all round me. A dim radiance from the moonlight
came through the farther window, and against this lighter background I
saw that Sir John Bollamore was sitting at his study table. His
well-set head and clearly cut profile were sharply outlined against the
glimmering square behind him. He bent as I watched him, and I heard
the sharp turning of a key and the rasping of metal upon metal. As if
in a dream I was vaguely conscious that this was the japanned box which
stood in front of him, and that he had drawn something out of it,
something squat and uncouth, which now lay before him upon the table.
I never realized--it never occurred to my bemuddled and torpid brain
that I was intruding upon his privacy, that he imagined himself to be
alone in the room. And then, just as it rushed upon my horrified
perceptions, and I had half risen to announce my presence, I heard a
strange, crisp, metallic clicking, and then the voice.
Yes, it was a woman's voice; there could not be a doubt of it. But a
voice so charged with entreaty and with yearning love, that it will
ring for ever in my ears. It came with a curious faraway tinkle, but
every word was clear, though faint--very faint, for they were the last
words of a dying woman.
"I am not really gone, John," said the thin, gasping voice. "I am here
at your very elbow, and shall be until we meet once more. I die happy
to think that morning and night you will hear my voice. Oh, John, be
strong, be strong, until we meet again."
I say that I had risen in order to announce my presence, but I could
not do so while the voice was sounding. I could only remain half
lying, half sitting, paralysed, astounded, listening to those yearning
distant musical words. And he--he was so absorbed that even if I had
spoken he might not have heard me. But with the silence of the voice
came my half articulated apologies and explanations. He sprang across
the room, switched on the electric light, and in its white glare I saw
him, his eyes gleaming with anger, his face twisted with passion, as
the hapless charwoman may have seen him weeks before.
"Mr. Colmore!" he cried. "You here! What is the meaning of this, sir?"
With halting words I explained it all, my neuralgia, the narcotic, my
luckless sleep and singular awakening. As he listened the glow of
anger faded from his face, and the sad, impassive mask closed once more
over his features.
"My secret is yours, Mr. Colmore," said he. "I have only myself to
blame for relaxing my precautions. Half confidences are worse than no
confidences, and so you may know all since you know so much. The story
may go where you will when I have passed away, but until then I rely
upon your sense of honour that no human soul shall hear it from your
lips. I am proud still--God help me!--or, at least, I am proud enough
to resent that pity which this story would draw upon me. I have smiled
at envy, and disregarded hatred, but pity is more than I can tolerate.
"You have heard the source from which the voice comes--that voice which
has, as I understand, excited so much curiosity in my household. I am
aware of the rumours to which it has given rise. These speculations,
whether scandalous or superstitious, are such as I can disregard and
forgive. What I should never forgive would be a disloyal spying and
eavesdropping in order to satisfy an illicit curiosity. But of that,
Mr. Colmore, I acquit you.
"When I was a young man, sir, many years younger than you are now, I
was launched upon town without a friend or adviser, and with a purse
which brought only too many false friends and false advisers to my
side. I drank deeply of the wine of life--if there is a man living who
has drunk more deeply he is not a man whom I envy. My purse suffered,
my character suffered, my constitution suffered, stimulants became a
necessity to me, I was a creature from whom my memory recoils. And it
was at that time, the time of my blackest degradation, that God sent
into my life the gentlest, sweetest spirit that ever descended as a
ministering angel from above. She loved me, broken as I was, loved me,
and spent her life in making a man once more of that which had degraded
itself to the level of the beasts.
"But a fell disease struck her, and she withered away before my eyes.
In the hour of her agony it was never of herself, of her own sufferings
and her own death that she thought. It was all of me. The one pang
which her fate brought to her was the fear that when her influence was
removed I should revert to that which I had been. It was in vain that
I made oath to her that no drop of wine would ever cross my lips. She
knew only too well the hold that the devil had upon me--she who had
striven so to loosen it--and it haunted her night and day the thought
that my soul might again be within his grip.
"It was from some friend's gossip of the sick room that she heard of
this invention--this phonograph--and with the quick insight of a loving
woman she saw how she might use it for her ends. She sent me to London
to procure the best which money could buy. With her dying breath she
gasped into it the words which have held me straight ever since.
Lonely and broken, what else have I in all the world to uphold me? But
it is enough. Please God, I shall face her without shame when He is
pleased to reunite us! That is my secret, Mr. Colmore, and whilst I
live I leave it in your keeping."