"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 door 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 mid-day 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.
[Illustration: "SIR JOHN BOLLAMORE WAS SITTING AT HIS STUDY TABLE."]
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 far-away 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, paralyzed, 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. When I returned she lay
actually in the throes of death. And with her last breath--the very
last that she breathed upon earth--she whispered this message into it,
a message to strengthen my resolves and to retain her influence upon my
actions. Into her ear I whispered that twice a day for ever afterwards
I should listen to her dear voice, and so, smiling at the success of
her plan, she passed gently away.
"So now you have my secret, Mr. Colmore, and you understand why this
japanned box and that which it contains is more to me than all my
ancestral home. I trust you, and I believe you to be worthy of my
trust. But after this the sight of you would be painful to me, and so
good-bye! You will find no cause to regret having left my service, but
you will understand that we must never meet again."
So this was the last time that I was ever destined to see Sir John
Bollamore, and I left him standing in his library, with his hand upon
the instrument which brought him that ever-recurring, intangible, and
yet intimate reminder from the woman whom he loved. You may have read
about his death in a carriage accident last Midsummer. I do not fancy
that it was a very unwelcome event to him.
[Illustration]
_Illustrated Interviews._