William muttered something under his breath which was not a blessing, and added aloud:
“You are better here, sir, I think, at any rate. I’ll be back in less than half an hour.”
Left to himself, young Coulton took off his coat, and shifting the settle a little, hung it over the end to dry. With his handkerchief he rubbed some of the wet out of his hair; then, perfectly exhausted, he lay down before the fire and, pillowing his head on his arm, fell fast asleep.
He was awakened nearly an hour afterwards by the sound of someone gently stirring the fire and moving quietly about the room. Starting into a sitting posture, he looked around him, bewildered for a moment, and then, recognising his humble friend, said laughingly:
“I had lost myself; I could not imagine where I was.”
“I am sorry to see you here, sir,” was the reply; “but still this is better than being out of doors. It has come on a nasty night. I brought a rug round with me that, perhaps, you would wrap yourself in.”
“I wish, at the same time, you had brought me something to eat,” said the young man, laughing.
“Are you hungry, then, sir?” asked William, in a tone of concern.
“Yes; I have had nothing to eat since breakfast. The governor and I commenced rowing the minute we sat down to luncheon, and I rose and left the table. But hunger does not signify; I am dry and warm, and can forget the other matter in sleep.”
“And it’s too late now to buy anything,” soliloquised the man; “the shops are all shut long ago. Do you think, sir,” he added, brightening, “you could manage some bread and cheese?”
“Do I think – I should call it a perfect feast,” answered Graham Coulton. “But never mind about food to-night, William; you have had trouble enough, and to spare, already.”
William’s only answer was to dart to the door and run downstairs. Presently he reappeared, carrying in one hand bread and cheese wrapped up in paper, and in the other a pewter measure full of beer.
“It’s the best I could do, sir,” he said apologetically. “I had to beg this from the landlady.”
“Here’s to her good health!” exclaimed the young fellow gaily, taking a long pull at the tankard. “That tastes better than champagne in my father’s house.”
“Won’t he be uneasy about you?” ventured William, who, having by this time emptied the coals, was now seated on the inverted basket, looking wistfully at the relish with which the son of the former master was eating his bread and cheese.
“No,” was the decided answer. “When he hears it pouring cats and dogs he will only hope I am out in the deluge, and say a good drenching will cool my pride.”
“I do not think you are right there,” remarked the man.
“But I am sure I am. My father always hated me, as he hated my mother.”
“Begging your pardon, sir; he was over fond of your mother.”
“If you had heard what he said about her to-day, you might find reason to alter your opinion. He told me I resembled her in mind as well as body; that I was a coward, a simpleton, and a hypocrite.”
“He did not mean it, sir.”
“He did, every word. He does think I am a coward, because I– I –” and the young fellow broke into a passion of hysterical tears.
“I don’t half like leaving you here alone,” said William, glancing round the room with a quick trouble in his eyes; “but I have no place fit to ask you to stop, and I am forced to go myself, because I am night watchman, and must be on at twelve o’clock.”
“I shall be right enough,” was the answer. “Only I mustn’t talk any more of my father. Tell me about yourself, William. How did you manage to get such a big house, and why are you leaving it?”
“The landlord put me in charge, sir; and it was my wife’s fancy not to like it.”
“Why did she not like it?”
“She felt desolate alone with the children at night,” answered William, turning away his head; then added, next minute; “Now, sir, if you think I can do no more for you, I had best be off. Time’s getting on. I’ll look round to-morrow morning.”
“Good night,” said the young fellow, stretching out his hand, which the other took as freely and frankly as it was offered. “What should I have done this evening if I had not chanced to meet you?”
“I don’t think there is much chance in the world, Master Graham,” was the quiet answer. “I do hope you will rest well, and not be the worse for your wetting.”
“No fear of that,” was the rejoinder, and the next minute the young man found himself all alone in the Old House in Vauxhall Walk.
II
Lying on the settle, with the fire burnt out, and the room in total darkness, Graham Coulton dreamed a curious dream. He thought he awoke from deep slumber to find a log smouldering away upon the hearth, and the mirror at the end of the apartment reflecting fitful gleams of light. He could not understand how it came to pass that, far away as he was from the glass, he was able to see everything in it; but he resigned himself to the difficulty without astonishment, as people generally do in dreams.
Neither did he feel surprised when he beheld the outline of a female figure seated beside the fire, engaged in picking something out of her lap and dropping it with a despairing gesture.
He heard the mellow sound of gold, and knew she was lifting and dropping sovereigns. He turned a little so as to see the person engaged in such a singular and meaningless manner, and found that, where there had been no chair on the previous night, there was a chair now, on which was seated an old, wrinkled hag, her clothes poor and ragged, a mob cap barely covering her scant white hair, her cheeks sunken, her nose hooked, her fingers more like talons than aught else as they dived down into the heap of gold, portions of which they lifted but to scatter mournfully.
“Oh! my lost life,” she moaned, in a voice of the bitterest anguish. “Oh! my lost life – for one day, for one hour of it again!”
Out of the darkness – out of the corner of the room where the shadows lay deepest – out from the gloom abiding near the door – out from the dreary night, with their sodden feet and the wet dripping from their heads, came the old men and the young children, the worn women and the weary hearts, whose misery that gold might have relieved, but whose wretchedness it mocked.
Round that miser, who once sat gloating as she now sat lamenting, they crowded – all those pale, sad shapes – the aged of days, the infant of hours, the sobbing outcast, honest poverty, repentant vice; but one low cry proceeded from those pale lips – a cry for help she might have given, but which she withheld.
They closed about her, all together, as they had done singly in life; they prayed, they sobbed, they entreated; with haggard eyes the figure regarded the poor she had repulsed, the children against whose cry she had closed her ears, the old people she had suffered to starve and die for want of what would have been the merest trifle to her; then, with a terrible scream, she raised her lean arms above her head, and sank down – down – the gold scattering as it fell out of her lap, and rolling along the floor, till its gleam was lost in the outer darkness beyond.
Then Graham Coulton awoke in good earnest, with the perspiration oozing from every pore, with a fear and an agony upon him such as he had never before felt in all his existence, and with the sound of the heart-rending cry – “Oh! my lost life” – still ringing in his ears.
Mingled with all, too, there seemed to have been some lesson for him which he had forgotten, that, try as he would, eluded his memory, and which, in the very act of waking, glided away.
He lay for a little thinking about all this, and then, still heavy with sleep, retraced his way into dreamland once more.
It was natural, perhaps, that, mingling with the strange fantasies which follow in the train of night and darkness, the former vision should recur, and the young man ere long found himself toiling through scene after scene wherein the figure of the woman he had seen seated beside a dying fire held principal place.
He
saw her walking slowly across the floor munching a dry crust – she who could have purchased all the luxuries wealth can command; on the hearth, contemplating her, stood a man of commanding presence, dressed in the fashion of long ago. In his eyes there was a dark look of anger, on his lips a curling smile of disgust, and somehow, even in his sleep, the dreamer understood it was the ancestor to the descendant he beheld – that the house put to mean uses in which he lay had never so far descended from its high estate, as the woman possessed of so pitiful a soul, contaminated with the most despicable and insidious vice poor humanity knows, for all other vices seem to have connection with the flesh, but the greed of the miser eats into the very soul.
Filthy of person, repulsive to look at, hard of heart as she was, he yet beheld another phantom, which, coming into the room, met her almost on the threshold, taking her by the hand, and pleading, as it seemed, for assistance. He could not hear all that passed, but a word now and then fell upon his car. Some talk of former days; some mention of a fair young mother – an appeal, as it seemed, to a time when they were tiny brother and sister, and the accursed greed for gold had not divided them. All in vain; the hag only answered him as she had answered the children, and the young girls, and the old people in his former vision. Her heart was as invulnerable to natural affection as it had proved to human sympathy. He begged, as it appeared, for aid to avert some bitter misfortune or terrible disgrace, and adamant might have been found more yielding to his prayer. Then the figure standing on the hearth changed to an angel, which folded its wings mournfully over its face, and the man, with bowed head, slowly left the room.
Even as he did so the scene changed again; it was night once more, and the miser wended her way upstairs. From below, Graham Coulton fancied he watched her toiling wearily from step to step. She had aged strangely since the previous scenes. She moved with difficulty; it seemed the greatest exertion for her to creep from step to step, her skinny hand traversing the balusters with slow and painful deliberateness. Fascinated, the young man’s eyes followed the progress of that feeble, decrepit woman. She was solitary in a desolate house, with a deeper blackness than the darkness of night waiting to engulf her.
It seemed to Graham Coulton that after that he lay for a time in a still, dreamless sleep, upon awakening from which he found himself entering a chamber as sordid and unclean in its appointments as the woman of his previous vision had been in her person. The poorest labourer’s wife would have gathered more comforts around her than that room contained. A four-poster bedstead without hangings of any kind – a blind drawn up awry – an old carpet covered with dust, and dirt on the floor – a rickety washstand with all the paint worn off it – an ancient mahogany dressing table, and a cracked glass spotted all over – were all the objects he could at first discern, looking at the room through that dim light which oftentimes obtains in dreams.
By degrees, however, he perceived the outline of someone lying huddled on the bed. Drawing nearer, he found it was that of the person whose dreadful presence seemed to pervade the house. What a terrible sight she looked, with her thin white locks scattered over the pillow, with what were mere remnants of blankets gathered about her shoulders, with her claw-like fingers clutching the clothes, as though even in sleep she was guarding her gold!
An awful and a repulsive spectacle, but not with half the terror in it of that which followed. Even as the young man looked he heard stealthy footsteps on the stairs. Then he saw first one man and then his fellow steal cautiously into the room. Another second, and the pair stood beside the bed, murder in their eyes.
Graham Coulton tried to shout – tried to move, but the deterrent power which exists in dreams only tied his tongue and paralysed his limbs. He could but hear and look, and what he heard and saw was this: aroused suddenly from sleep, the woman started, only to receive a blow from one of the ruffians, whose fellow followed his lead by plunging a knife into her breast.
Then, with a gurgling scream, she fell back on the bed, and at the same moment, with a cry, Graham Coulton again awoke, to thank heaven it was but an illusion.
III
“I hope you slept well, sir.” It was William, who, coming into the hall with the sunlight of a fine bright morning streaming after him, asked this question: “Had you a good night’s rest?”
Graham Coulton laughed, and answered:
“Why, faith, I was somewhat in the case of Paddy, ‘who could not slape for dhraming’. I slept well enough, I suppose, but whether it was in consequence of the row with my dad, or the hard bed, or the cheese – most likely the bread and cheese so late at night – I dreamt all the night long, the most extraordinary dreams. Some old woman kept cropping up, and I saw her murdered.”
“You don’t say that, sir?” said William nervously.
“I do, indeed,” was the reply. “However, that is all gone and past. I have been down in the kitchen and had a good wash, and I am as fresh as a daisy, and as hungry as a hunter; and, oh, William, can you get me any breakfast?”
“Certainly, Master Graham, I have brought round a kettle, and I will make the water boil immediately. I suppose, sir” – this tentatively – “you’ll be going home to-day?”
“Home!” repeated the young man. “Decidedly not. I’ll never go home again till I return with some medal hung to my coat, or a leg or arm cut off. I’ve thought it all out, William. I’ll go and enlist. There’s a talk of war; and, living or dead, my father shall have reason to retract his opinion about my being a coward.”
“I am sure the admiral never thought you anything of the sort, sir,” said William. “Why, you have the pluck of ten!”
“Not before him,” answered the young fellow sadly.
“You’ll do nothing rash, Master Graham; you won’t go ‘listing, or aught of that sort, in your anger?”
“If I do not, what is to become of me?” asked the other. “I cannot dig – to beg I am ashamed. Why, but for you, I should not have had a roof over my head last night.”
“Not much of a roof, I am afraid, sir.”
“Not much of a roof!” repeated the young man. “Why, who could desire a better? What a capital room this is,” he went on, looking around the apartment, where William was now kindling a fire; “one might dine twenty people here easily!”
“If you think so well of the place, Master Graham, you might stay here for a while, till you have made up your mind what you are going to do. The landlord won’t make any objection, I am very sure.”
“Oh! nonsense; he would want a long rent for a house like this.”
“I daresay; if he could get it,” was William’s significant answer.
“What do you mean? Won’t the place let?”
“No, sir. I did not tell you last night, but there was a murder done here, and people are shy of the house ever since.”
“A murder! What sort of a murder? Who was murdered?”
“A woman, Master Graham – the landlord’s sister; she lived here all alone, and was supposed to have money. Whether she had or not, she was found dead from a stab in her breast, and if there ever was any money, it must have been taken at the same time, for none ever was found in the house from that day to this.”
“Was that the reason your wife would not stop here?” asked the young man, leaning against the mantelshelf, and looking thoughtfully down on William.
“Yes, sir. She could not stand it any longer; she got that thin and nervous no one would have believed it possible; she never saw anything, but she said she heard footsteps and voices, and then when she walked through the hall, or up the staircase, someone always seemed to be following her. We put the children to sleep in that big room you had last night, and they declared they often saw an old woman sitting by the hearth. Nothing ever came my way,” finished William, with a laugh; “I was always ready to go to sleep the minute my head touched the pillow.”
“Were not the murderers discovered?” asked Graham Coulton.
“No, sir; the landlord, Miss Tynan’s brother
, had always lain under the suspicion of it – quite wrongfully, I am very sure – but he will never clear himself now. It was known he came and asked her for help a day or two before the murder, and it was also known he was able within a week or two to weather whatever trouble had been harassing him. Then, you see, the money was never found; and, altogether, people scarce knew what to think.”
“Humph!” ejaculated Graham Coulton, and he took a few turns up and down the apartment. “Could I go and see this landlord?”
“Surely, sir, if you had a hat,” answered William, with such a serious decorum that the young man burst out laughing.
“That is an obstacle, certainly,” he remarked, “and I must make a note do instead. I have a pencil in my pocket, so here goes.”
Within half an hour from the dispatch of that note William was back again with a sovereign; the landlord’s compliments, and he would be much obliged if Mr. Coulton could “step round.”
“You’ll do nothing rash, sir,” entreated William.
“Why, man,” answered the young fellow, “one may as well be picked off by a ghost as a bullet. What is there to be afraid of?”
William only shook his head. He did not think his young master was made of the stuff likely to remain alone in a haunted house and solve the mystery it assuredly contained by dint of his own unassisted endeavours. And yet when Graham Coulton came out of the landlord’s house he looked more bright and gay than usual, and walked up the Lambeth road to the place where Wiliam awaited his return, humming an air as he paced along.
“We have settled the matter,” he said. “And now if the dad wants his son for Christmas, it will trouble him to find him.”
“Don’t say that, Master Graham, don’t,” entreated the man, with a shiver; “maybe after all it would have been better if you had never happened to chance upon Vauxhall Walk.”
“Don’t croak, William,” answered the young man; “if it was not the best day’s work I ever did for myself I’m a Dutchman.”
The Mammoth Book of Haunted House Stories (Mammoth Books) Page 11