A Bottomless Grave
Page 17
‘There is something sitting there,’ he whispered.
The lantern had been shivered to atoms in the fall, and, as we were standing single file behind each other on account of the narrowness of the passage, it took a minute or two before one of the lights in the rear could be got to the front. The cellar itself, being lighted only by a small opening above the door, was practically pitch-dark. I thought that second lantern was never coming. When it came at last this is what I saw.
Against the wall, opposite the door, was piled a layer of firewood, which the former possessor of the cellar must have left behind him; blotches of mildew and clumps of tiny yellow fungus had formed themselves upon the wood. In the middle of the cellar stood the block on which the firewood is split—a shapeless black lump. Upon this lump, there sat a human figure, sunk, as it were, into itself, the head low on the breast, the left hand—the one towards the doorway—resting on the knee, the right arm hanging straight down. The figure was in shirt-sleeves. I tore the lantern out of the hand of the soldier who was holding it and went a few steps nearer. The man sitting on the block had high boots on and grey trousers, of the sort worn by officers’ servants. On the floor beside him lay his blue coat, carefully folded up and neatly smoothed out, lining uppermost; the cap lay on the top. A thick, white spot was sticking to the block, close beside the figure—a patch of melted tallow in which the last remnant of the burnt-down wick lay all aslant. As I stepped up quite close a small dark object dropped from the block to the floor and slipped away noiselessly among the piled up firewood—a rat. I now perceived that the dead man’s right hand, which hung straight down, was grasping some object. Holding the lantern a little nearer I saw that it was a revolver, an awkward-looking old-fashioned revolver. The shirt was wide-open ; and the left side of the chest half-shot to pieces. The features of the man’s face were not clearly recognisable, owing to the lowered position of the head, but the clothes and the revolver were proofs , enough for me that the man sitting here was none other than the lost Baryuk.
It was Captain Wertel who spoke first:—‘Don’t touch him,’ he said quickly. ‘Don’t touch a thing about him: we have done all that we have to do here, the rest must be left to a new commission.’
It scarcely required the Captain’s appeal to make us all gladly beat our retreat from the cellar. Two lancers were posted on guard at the door, where they stood pale as death staring into each other’s horror-stricken faces; the rest of us hurried up to daylight, and I went straight to the Colonel with my report.
That same afternoon the facts of the case were put on paper. In my character of officer on inspection, I again accompanied the commission appointed for this purpose, and for the third time that day descended to the cellar-region. The inquiry brought to light the following circumstances ; the revolver had originally been loaded with seven bullets, six of which had been fired, while the seventh was still in its place.
I took the weapon from the dead man’s hand in the presence of the commission and examined it minutely. Then I lifted the dead man’s head and counted the bullet-wounds on his chest, and found they tallied exactly; five shots were planted round about the heart, it was the sixth one only that had gone clean through it. The man had sat himself down there with the deliberate intention of shooting himself through the heart, but his anatomical knowledge not being such as to enable him to hit the right mark at once, he had failed five times; the sixth time at last, his perseverance had been crowned with success. He must have watched for some favourable moment to abduct the key of the cellar-entrance from the guard-room, must then have unlocked the door and conscientiously returned the key to its place, after which he methodically set about carrying his plan into effect. The thickness of the old walls had completely deadened all echo of the shots.
There followed the formal identification of Baryuk, at which Captain Stigler had to be present, and with a verdict of ‘Suicide from unknown motives’, the commission finally dispersed.
To me, a compatriot of Baryuk’s, these motives are, however, not ‘unknown’, but, on the contrary, perfectly clear. I have called attention to them at the opening of this narrative. It was neither remorse for a crime committed, nor the fear of its consequences, nor was it a love sorrow which had played any part here—it was nothing but the big town which had killed this honest, slow-thinking, narrow-mined man. He had not had enough spirit of enterprise for desertion, but he had had the horribly stubborn energy to shoot himself gradually to death with Captain Stigler’s ridiculous old revolver.
It is this bent figure on the wood-block that returns to haunt me in my nightmares.
A Life-Watch
by GEORGINA C. CLARK
Regrettably, I can find out nothing at all about our next female contributor, which is unfortunate, for her story should have perpetuated the name of Georgina C. Clark. First published in the Belgravia Annual, 1867, this is a very odd piece indeed with extremely sinister undertones running below the florid Victorian style. I imagine it must have made a bit of a stir when it first appeared, for people just didn’t do things like this in those days (or now, thank goodness).
We do many foolish things in early life. I did what the world esteems a very foolish thing-married for love. Harry and I were equally poor, and the affronted world turned its back upon us. The wealthy heads of both houses, determining to give us leisure to repent after having married in haste, left us to ourselves. Harry obtained, through an old friend of the family, a situation as clerk in a mercantile house in the City. The salary was a small one, and many a shift and contrivance was endured by us in those days. And yet we were very happy. Like an obstinate fond young couple, we refused to. learn the lesson our offended elders set us, and we would not repent, but struggled on through the battle of life in the ranks with the rest. Yes, I am proud to say that we fought and conquered. Now that our mansion is built in the favoured locality of the West; now that I rumble along streets in my carriage that I have trodden once burdened with goloshes and umbrella when the weather would not smile, however much we smiled at Fate; now that, amongst not a few good and true and tried friends, many throng to our gay parties who would not then have codes-cended to cross our threshold—now I can look back and call to mind many an incident of our early life with pleasure. There is one story, however, mixed up with those days that is fraught with inexplicable horror. And that is the story I have promised to relate. I must promise that we considered it—in those early and struggling days—a rise in life when we took a small cottage at Hampstead, with woodbine growing over the door, and resolved to eke out the very moderate rent by the assistance of a lodger. It was a rise because we had previously occupied apartments, and one who has not experienced similar feelings can hardly fancy with what joy we hailed the idea of dwelling at last under a roof of our own.
We entered into possession of our cottage, and then came our lodger, through the ready intervention of the Times, in the shape of a lady, and a singular one. We took her to be about fifty years of age. She was a tall fine woman, but distinguished unpleasantly by remarkable rigidity in her movements. Her step was slow, measured, and dull, and as she trod her foot never seemed to leave the floor. There was no rebound, no pliancy in her gait, which seemed rather that of a statue on wheels than of a creature throbbing with the pulses of life., Her hair was thick, but entirely grey; she arranged it simply and neatly, without ornament and without a cap, but also with a total absence of style. Her face was ashen pale and deeply lined. She came late at night in a cab, and my one servant remarked to me how curious it was that she, being evidently a lady, rode outside next the driver. I thought it very extraordinary, but the fact soon glided out of my memory as too trivial to retain a place in it. When I say ‘glided out of my memory’ I am using an incorrect expression. It rather slid into some remote, unused corner, to be furbished out again at any distant time, like the present, when it might be wanted as one of the small coloured bits that fit into the puzzle of my eccentric lodger’s horrible story.
She had given no name when answering our advertisement, but simply forwarded a stamped envelope addressed to ‘Alpha, Post Office, Dover’. Kitty, the servant girl, asked if she would like some tea, and also by what name she should address her.
‘I will take tea, thank you,’ was the reply, in a half absent, slow, inward tone peculiar to her. ‘My name is of no consequence. What am I to call you?’
‘Kitty, if you please.’
‘Very well then, Kitty, you will have occasion to address me in no other manner than as “madam” or, as you will pronounce it, “ma’am!”’ And with that she gave Kitty a month’s rent and asked for a receipt. ‘Money is better than a name,’ she added, in her listless, slow way, muttering to herself. ‘What is my name to them? What is my name?’
As it appeared to vex her, and really did not matter to us, we asked the question no more, but spoke of her as ‘the lady upstairs’. She was evidently eccentric. Sometimes she would walk round the garden in the twilight, covered with her gauze veil, and holding it in a tight, nervous grasp with a gloved hand, as she did the night when she came, her eyes apparently seeking the window of her room with a suspicious restlessness, which seemed to be a part of her eccentricity.
It appeared that the lady’s portmanteau contained only a change of linen, originally fine and trimmed with costly lace, but now most elaborately yet neatly mended. But for this, a thimble, scissors, needle and thread, and the dress she came in, our lodger might have been destitute. Yet the large heavy box must contain something. Still, though the object of so much solicitude, we could never discover that she opened it. It was placed in such a position as to be visible from both rooms. During the day she always sat upon it. In the morning, when Kitty took in her can of hot water, the lady was ever awake, lying on her side, with her eyes fixed upon her precious box.
When first this quiet but eccentric inmate entered our house she had with her a roll of bank-notes and a case of valuable jewels. Although she barely allowed herself the necessaries of life, the former were changed away one by one, until at last, at her request, Harry procured a purchaser for her trinkets, at a fair price, through the intervention of a friend.
The budding months blossomed into years and fructified into the seed that is sown in the eternity of the past, and we knew that the means thus procured were exhausted. We felt deeply interested in our tenant, in spite—perhaps because—of her strange habits, and fell into a custom of conversing together about her as if she had been a friend. If these jewels were her last possessions, what was to become of her? What was a woman of her age to do?
Her age? That was a question. We felt some doubts about her age. Kitty, who saw most of her, thought she had not passed so many years in the world as we at first supposed. She appeared to have no friends or acquaintances. No letters came, no visitors called, no post-bag was troubled on her account.
Well! There was that mysterious chest. Our conjectures and anxieties on her behalf always found a refuge and a consolation in that. It must contain something. It was the hope, the Ultima Thule of our fancies—the sword with which we cut the Gordian knot of our perplexities.
‘Depend upon it,’ Harry remarked, ‘the box holds plate—you remember how heavy it was. Or perhaps it contains diamonds of greater value and more in number than those I sold some time ago.’
Our speculations regarding the age of the lady were set at rest by the arrival of the census. Armed with the formidable paper, I rapped gently at the drawing-room door.
‘Come in,’ responded the low, dull, measured voice.
I entered and explained my errand. ‘Shall I leave the paper with you?’ I suggested.
‘My writing might be——’ She commenced as if thinking aloud, and stopping suddenly upon remembering that she was no longer alone. Turning on me her eyes—peculiar grey eyes, that looked as if she never slept or wept—she added, ‘Will you have the goodness to add the particulars for me?’
‘The name?’ I inquired, dipping a pen in the ink.
‘What is yours?’ was the counter question.
‘Mary Herbert.’
‘Write Martha Herbert, then; that will do.’
I looked inquiringly. ‘You know there is a penalty?’
‘Yes; but the name is of little consequence—the name of a lone woman. I have given you a name; will you not write it?’
I said no more, but inscribed the paper as directed. But the appella- . tion was evidently feigned.
‘Your age?’
‘Twenty-eight’
The pen actually dropped from my hand as she said twenty-eight; and I looked up very quickly.
‘Nay,’ she replied, meeting my gaze, and without altering her monotonous tone, ‘that is the simple truth. Are you very surprised? I suppose with my grey hair I look an old woman.’
‘I can hardly believe, my dear madam, that you are not mistaken,’ I ventured to remonstrate.
‘I have given you reasons to doubt me, perhaps; but I have answered your query with regard to age truly. I am but eight-and-twenty—barely eight-and-twenty.’
Good heaven! thought I, what can have been the circumstances of your life that your hair is grey, your face thus lined, yourself all. but turned from a being of flesh and blood to a thing of stone?—that you are thus self-immured and solitary, that you shun our society and have refused all our efforts at kindness? We had gathered even from her scanty denials of our offers of amusement that she was a linguist, a musician, an artist; and yet there she sat all day, on that chest, nursing her hands, or at most adding a darn to her worn linen.
The census further told me that she was born in the parish of St George, Hanover-square, and was a widow. Harry and I talked about ( her more than ever. We knew that she had spent all the money obtained for the jewels, even on her frugal wants. For two weeks she had paid no rent, ordered no food. We knew not what to do; whether or not to speak to her, or, if we spoke, what to propose.
It was Monday morning, and we were seated at breakfast when Kitty hurried in and told us that the lady upstairs was in a fit. I ran up, begging Harry himself to hasten for a doctor. The girl had spoken truly. The fit was not fatal; but the poor woman lay unconscious for days. When her reason returned, it was evident that she was rapidly sinking. The doctor informed us she had only a few hours to live. There were no friends to summon; and vain were my persuasions to induce her to see a clergyman, to confess any faith, or acknowledge connection with any church or sect. I sat by the bedside I had not quitted day or night since her illness. After lying quiet some time with her hand in mine, she at last said feebly, ‘Open my portmanteau and take out the book.’ I took the key she offered, and obeyed by bringing to her bedside a common clasped account-book, the only one I saw.
‘You have shown me kindness. You have appeared interested in me. I have yearned to make you my friend. But my secrets are such as during li
fe could be confided to none. I have written them there for you. Promise me not to open that book till I am dead.’
I gave my word, and, in obedience to her request, put the book into my pocket.
‘My grey hair, my wrinkled face, my twenty-eight years—you will understand them; but will you feel pity?’
She was sinking rapidly, like the sun at eventide; and I pressed upon her again my request to read from my Bible the words of One whose mercy and forgiveness were more needed than mine.
She consented. I read for some time, and thought the words were comforting, when she started up, her manner wild, her eyes startling, ‘Look! look! look!’ she cried, pointing with her forefinger and white-draped arm to the iron-bound chest, ‘look! look! look!’ and with a low cry the poor lady sank back on her couch dying. The struggle was soon over, and all was quiet.
‘Look! look ! look !’ What had she seen? What vision had fancy, or conscience, or sudden delirium roused before her? I know not. I saw only the large dark chest in the place where it had ever rested—dull, shabby, and cumbrous.
We were worn out and tired, and glad to retire early to bed. I do not know how long Harry and I had been asleep when we were startled by a heavy noise in the room underneath. Harry sprang up and seized the night-light. Surely it is the lid of the heavy chest suddenly slammed, and there are thieves in the house, thought I, as I ran after my spouse, lest there might be danger for him alone, and just as if a feeble woman in her night array, like myself, could be any protection. In moments of sudden fear we do not stay to reason, but act upon impulse. In another moment we stood in the double chamber below. It was untenanted, save by the dead. The great box stood as I had last seen it. I tried the lock; it was quite secure. We called up Kitty, and searched the house; bolts, bars, and locks were all intact. Then we began to reason how absurd we had been to suppose that thieves would slam a box-lid, or make a noise loud enough to wake the inmates of the house, had they entered. We could not sleep any more that night, but dressed ourselves and sat up watching; and Kitty lighted a fire, prepared some tea, and shared our folly. The truth is, we had all been fagged and distressed, and our nerves were unstrung. As for the noise, it was one of those mysterious sounds never accounted for, but. cast amongst ‘things not generally known’ even to the inquiring mind of a Timbs.