by Ellen Wood
“And has the house been vacant ever since?” asked John.
“No, sir. At first it was let furnished, then unfurnished. But it had been vacant some little time when I applied to Mr. Bone. I concluded he thought it better to let it at a low rent than for it to stand empty.”
“It must cost you incessant care and trouble, Miss Gay, to conduct a house like this — when you are full,” remarked Lady Whitney.
“It does,” she answered. “One’s work seems never done — and I cannot, at that, give satisfaction to all. Ah, my lady, what a difference there is in people! — you would never think it. Some are so kind and considerate to me, so anxious not to give trouble unduly, and so satisfied with all I do that it is a pleasure to serve them: while others make gratuitous work and trouble from morning till night, and treat me as if I were just a dog under their feet. Of course when we are full I have another servant in, two sometimes.”
“Even that must leave a great deal for yourself to do and see to.”
“The back is always fitted to the burden,” sighed Miss Gay. “My father was a farmer in this county, as his ancestors had been before him, farming his three hundred acres of land, and looked upon as a man of substance. My mother made the butter, saw to the poultry, and superintended her household generally: and we children helped her. Farmers’ daughters then did not spend their days in playing the piano and doing fancy work, or expect to be waited upon like ladies born.”
“They do now, though,” said Lady Whitney.
“So I was ready to turn my hand to anything when hard times came — not that I had thought I should have to do it,” continued Miss Gay. “But my father’s means dwindled down. Prosperity gave way to adversity. Crops failed; the stock died off; two of my brothers fell into trouble and it cost a mint of money to extricate them. Altogether, when father died, but little of his savings remained to us. Mother took a house in the town here, to let lodgings, and I came with her. She is dead, my lady, and I am left.”
The silent tears were running down poor Miss Gay’s cheeks.
“It is a life of struggle, I am sure,” spoke Lady Whitney, gently. “And not deserved, Miss Gay.”
“But there’s another life to come,” spoke John, in a half-whisper, turning to Miss Gay from the large bay-window. “None of us will be overworked there.”
Miss Gay stealthily wiped her cheeks. “I do not repine,” she said, humbly. “I have been enabled to rub on and keep my head above water, and to provide little comforts for mother in her need; and I gratefully thank God for it.”
The bells of the churches, ringing out at eight o’clock, called us up in the morning. Lady Whitney was downstairs, first. I next. Susannah, who waited upon us, had brought up the breakfast. John followed me in.
“I hope you have slept well, my boy,” said Lady Whitney, kissing him. “I have.”
“So have I,” I put in.
“Then you and the mother make up for me, Johnny,” he said; “for I have not slept at all.”
“Oh, John!” exclaimed his mother.
“Not a wink all night long,” added John. “I can’t think what was the matter with me.”
Susannah, then stooping to take the sugar-basin out of the side-board, rose, turned sharply round and fixed her eyes on John. So curious an expression was on her face that I could but notice it.
“Do you not think it was the noise, sir?” she said to him. “I knew that room would be too noisy for you.”
“Why, the room was as quiet as possible,” he answered. “A few carriages rolled by last night — and I liked to hear them; but that was all over before midnight; and I have heard none this morning.”
“Well, sir, I’m sure you would be more comfortable in a backroom,” contended Susannah.
“It was a strange bed,” said John. “I shall sleep all the sounder to-night.”
Breakfast was half over when John found he had left his watch upstairs, on the drawers. I went to fetch it.
The door was open, and I stepped to the drawers, which stood just inside. Miss Gay and Susannah were making the bed and talking, too busy to see or hear me. A lot of things lay on the white cloth, and at first I could not see the watch.
“He declares he has not slept at all; not at all,” Susannah was saying with emphasis. “If you had only seconded me yesterday, Harriet, they need not have had this room. But you never made a word of objection; you gave in at once.”
“Well, I saw no reason to make it,” said Miss Gay, mildly. “If I were to give in to your fancies, Susannah, I might as well shut up the room. Visitors must get used to it.”
The watch had been partly hidden under one of John’s neckties. I caught it up and decamped.
We went to church after breakfast. The first hymn sung was that one beginning, “Brief life.”
“Brief life is here our portion; Brief sorrow, short-lived care. The life that knows no ending, The tearless life, is there.”
As the verses went on, John touched my elbow: “Miss Gay,” he whispered; his eyelashes moist with the melody of the music. I have often thought since that we might have seen by these very moods of John — his thoughts bent upon heaven more than upon earth — that his life was swiftly passing.
There’s not much to tell of that Sunday. We dined in the middle of the day; John fell asleep after dinner; and in the evening we attended church again. And I think every one was ready for bed when bedtime came. I know I was.
Therefore it was all the more surprising when, the next morning, John said he had again not slept.
“What, not at all!” exclaimed his mother.
“No, not at all. As I went to bed, so I got up — sleepless.”
“I never heard of such a thing!” cried Lady Whitney. “Perhaps, John, you were too tired to sleep?”
“Something of that sort,” he answered. “I felt both tired and sleepy when I got into bed; particularly so. But I had no sleep: not a wink. I could not lie still, either; I was frightfully restless all night; just as I was the night before. I suppose it can’t be the bed?”
“Is the bed not comfortable?” asked his mother.
“It seems as comfortable a bed as can be when I first lie down in it. And then I grow restless and uneasy.”
“It must be the restlessness of extreme fatigue,” said Lady Whitney. “I fear the journey was rather too much for you my dear.”
“Oh, I shall be all right as soon as I can sleep, mamma.”
We had a surprise that morning. John and I were standing before a tart-shop, our eyes glued to the window, when a voice behind us called out, “Don’t they look nice, boys!” Turning round, there stood Henry Carden of Worcester, arm-in-arm with a little white-haired gentleman. Lady Whitney, in at the fishmonger’s next door, came out while he was shaking hands with us.
“Dear me! — is it you?” she cried to Mr. Carden.
“Ay,” said he in his pleasant manner, “here am I at Pumpwater! Come all this way to spend a couple of days with my old friend: Dr. Tambourine,” added the surgeon, introducing him to Lady Whitney. Any way, that was the name she understood him to say. John thought he said Tamarind, and I Carrafin. The street was noisy.
The doctor seemed to be chatty and courteous, a gentleman of the old school. He said his wife should do herself the honour of calling upon Lady Whitney if agreeable; Lady Whitney replied that it would be. He and Mr. Carden, who would be starting for Worcester by train that afternoon, walked with us up the Parade to the Pump Room. How a chance meeting like this in a strange place makes one feel at home in it!
The name turned out to be Parafin. Mrs. Parafin called early in the afternoon, on her way to some entertainment at the Pump Room: a chatty, pleasant woman, younger than her husband. He had retired from practice, and they lived in a white villa outside the town.
And what with looking at the shops, and parading up and down the public walks, and the entertainment at the Pump Room, to which we went with Mrs. Parafin, and all the rest of it, we felt uncommonly sleep
y when night came, and were beginning to regard Pumpwater as a sort of Eden.
“Johnny, have you slept?”
I was brushing my hair at the glass, under the morning sun, when John Whitney, half-dressed, and pale and languid, opened my door and thus accosted me.
“Yes; like a top. Why? Is anything the matter, John?”
“See here,” said he, sinking into the easy-chair by the fireplace, “it is an odd thing, but I have again not slept. I can’t sleep.”
I put my back against the dressing-table and stood looking down at him, brush in hand. Not slept again! It was an odd thing.
“But what can be the reason, John?”
“I am beginning to think it must be the room.”
“How can it be the room?”
“I don’t know. There’s nothing the matter with the room that I can see; it seems well-ventilated; the chimney’s not stopped up. Yet this is the third night that I cannot get to sleep in it.”
“But why can you not get to sleep?” I persisted.
“I say I don’t know why. Each night I have been as sleepy as possible; last night I could hardly undress I was so sleepy; but no sooner am I in bed than sleep goes right away from me. Not only that: I grow terribly restless.”
Weighing the problem this way and that, an idea struck me.
“John, do you think it is nervousness?”
“How can it be? I never was nervous in my life.”
“I mean this: not sleeping the first night, you may have got nervous about it the second and third.”
He shook his head. “I have been nothing of the kind, Johnny. But look here: I hardly see what I am to do. I cannot go on like this without sleep; yet, if I tell the mother again, she’ll say the air of the place does not suit me and run away from it — —”
“Suppose we change rooms to-night, John?” I interrupted. “I can’t think but you would sleep here. If you do not, why, it must be the air of Pumpwater, and the sooner you are out of it the better.”
“You wouldn’t mind changing rooms for one night?” he said, wistfully.
“Mind! Why, I shall be the gainer. Yours is the better room of the two.”
At that it was settled; nothing to be said to any one about the bargain. We did not want to be kidnapped out of Pumpwater — and Lady Whitney had promised us a night at the theatre.
Two or three more acquaintances were made, or found out, that day. Old Lady Scott heard of us, and came to call on Lady Whitney; they used to be intimate. She introduced some people at the Pump Room. Altogether, it seemed that we should not lack society.
Night came; and John and I went upstairs together. He undressed in his own room, and I in mine; and then we made the exchange. I saw him into my bed and wished him a good-night.
“Good-night, Johnny,” he answered. “I hope you will sleep.”
“Little doubt of that, John. I always sleep when I have nothing to trouble me. A very good-night to you.”
I had nothing to trouble me, and I was as sleepy as could be; and yet, I did not and could not sleep. I lay quiet as usual after getting into bed, yielding to the expected sleep, and I shut my eyes and never thought but it was coming.
Instead of that, came restlessness. A strange restlessness quite foreign to me, persistent and unaccountable. I tossed and turned from side to side, and I had not had a wink of sleep at day dawn, nor any symptom of it. Was I growing nervous? Had I let the feeling creep over me that I had suggested to John? No; not that I was aware of. What could it be?
Unrefreshed and weary, I got up at the usual hour, and stole silently into the other room. John was in a deep sleep, his calm face lying still upon the pillow. Though I made no noise, my presence awoke him.
“Oh, Johnny!” he exclaimed, “I have had such a night.”
“Bad?”
“No; good. I went to sleep at once and never woke till now. It has done me a world of good. And you?”
“I? Oh well, I don’t think I slept quite as well as I did here; it was a strange bed,” I answered, carelessly.
The next night the same plan was carried out, he taking my bed; I his. And again John slept through it, while I did not sleep at all. I said nothing about it: John Whitney’s comfort was of more importance than mine.
The third night came. This night we had been to the theatre, and had laughed ourselves hoarse, and been altogether delighted. No sooner was I in bed, and feeling dead asleep, than the door slowly opened and in came Lady Whitney, a candle in one hand, a wineglass in the other.
“John, my dear,” she began, “your tonic was forgotten this evening. I think you had better take it now. Featherston said, you know —— Good gracious!” she broke off. “Why, it is Johnny!”
I could hardly speak for laughing, her face presented such a picture of astonishment. Sitting up in bed, I told her all; there was no help for it: that we had exchanged beds, John not having been able to sleep in this one.
“And do you sleep well in it?” she asked.
“No, not yet. But I feel very sleepy to-night, dear Lady Whitney.”
“Well, you are a good lad, Johnny, to do this for him; and to say nothing about it,” she concluded, as she went away with the candle and the tonic.
Dead sleepy though I was, I could not get to sleep. It would be simply useless to try to describe my sensations. Each succeeding night they had been more marked. A strange, discomforting restlessness pervaded me; a feeling of uneasiness, I could not tell why or wherefore. I saw nothing uncanny, I heard nothing; nevertheless, I felt just as though some uncanny presence was in the room, imparting a sense of semi-terror. Once or twice, when I nearly dozed off from sheer weariness, I started up in real terror, wide awake again, my hair and face damp with a nameless fear.
I told this at breakfast, in answer to Lady Whitney’s questions: John confessed that precisely the same sensations had attacked him the three nights he lay in the bed. Lady Whitney declared she never heard the like; and she kept looking at us alternately, as if doubting what could be the matter with us, or whether we had taken scarlet-fever.
On this morning, Friday, a letter came from Sir John, saying that Featherston was coming to Pumpwater. Anxious on the score of his son, he was sending Featherston to see him, and take back a report. “I think he would stay a couple of days if you made it convenient to entertain him, and it would be a little holiday for the poor hard-worked man,” wrote Sir John, who was just as kind-hearted as his wife.
“To be sure I will,” said Lady Whitney. “He shall have that room; I dare say he won’t say he cannot sleep in it: it will be more comfortable for him than getting a bed at an hotel. Susannah shall put a small bed into the back-room for Johnny. And when Featherston is gone, I will take the room myself. I am not like you two silly boys — afraid of lying awake.”
Mr. Featherston arrived late that evening, with his grey face of care and his thin frame. He said he could hardly recall the time when he had had as much as two days’ holiday, and thanked Lady Whitney for receiving him. That night John and I occupied the back-room, having conducted Featherston in state to the front, with two candles; and both of us slept excellently well.
At breakfast Featherston began talking about the air. He had always believed Pumpwater to have a rather soporific air, but supposed he must be mistaken. Any way, it had kept him awake; and it was not a little that did that for him.
“Did you not sleep well?” asked Lady Whitney.
“I did not sleep at all; did not get a wink of it all night long. Never mind,” he added with a good-natured laugh, “I shall sleep all the sounder to-night.”
But he did not. The next morning (Sunday) he looked grave and tired, and ate his breakfast almost in silence. When we had finished, he said he should like, with Lady Whitney’s permission, to speak to the landlady. Miss Gay came in at once: in a light fresh print gown and black silk apron.
“Ma’am,” began Featherston, politely, “something is wrong with that bedroom overhead. What is it?”
“I don’t know,” answered Featherston; “I thought perhaps you could tell me: any way, it ought to be seen to. It is something that scares away sleep. I give you my word, ma’am, I never had two such restless nights in succession in all my life. Two such strange nights. It was not only that sleep would not come near me; that’s nothing uncommon you may say; but I lay in a state of uneasy, indescribable restlessness. I have examined the room again this morning, and I can see nothing to induce it, yet a cause there must undoubtedly be. The paper is not made of arsenic, I suppose?”
“The paper is pale pink, sir,” observed Miss Gay. “I fancy it is the green papers that have arsenic in them.”
“Ay; well. I think there must be poison behind the paper; in the paste, say,” went on Featherston. “Or perhaps another paper underneath has arsenic in it?”
Miss Gay shook her head, as she stood with her hand on the back of a chair. Lady Whitney had asked her to sit down, but she declined. “When I came into the house six months ago, that room was re-papered, and I saw that the walls were thoroughly scraped. If you think there’s anything — anything in the room that prevents people sleeping, and — and could point out what it is, I’m sure, sir, I should be glad to remedy it,” said Miss Gay, with uncomfortable hesitation.
But this was just what Featherston, for all he was a doctor, could not point out. That something was amiss with the room, he felt convinced, but he had not discovered what it was, or how it could be remedied.
“After lying in torment half the night, I got up and lighted my candle,” said he. “I examined the room and opened the window to let the cool breeze blow in. I could find nothing likely to keep me awake, no stuffed-up chimney, no accumulation of dust, and I shut the window and got into bed again. I was pretty cool by that time and reckoned I should sleep. Not a bit of it, ma’am. I lay more restless than ever, with the same unaccountable feeling of discomfort and depression upon me. Just as I had felt the night before.”