Kitabı oku: «Tom Ossington's Ghost», sayfa 2

CHAPTER II
THERE'S A CONSCIENCE!

Madge had been taken so wholly unawares that for a moment she remained stock-still-and voiceless. Then she followed the woman to the door.

"You have come to do what?"

"I've come to see the house."

"And pray who are you?"

"What affair is that of yours? Don't I tell you I've come to see the house?"

"But I don't understand you. What do you mean by saying you've come to see the house?"

For only answer the woman, turning her back on her, walked another step or two along the little passage. She exclaimed, as if addressing the staircase, which was in front of her, in what seemed a tone of intense emotion-

"How his presence is in all the place! How he fills the air!"

Madge felt more bewildered than she would have cared to admit. Was the woman mad? Mad or sane, she resolved that she would not submit tamely to such another irruption as the last. She laid her hand upon the woman's shoulder.

"Will you be so good as to tell me, at once, to whom I have the pleasure of speaking, and what business has brought you here?"

The woman turned and looked at her; as she did so, Madge was conscious of a curious sense of discomfort.

She was of medium height, slender build, and apparently between forty and fifty years of age. Her attire was not only shabby, it was tawdry to the last degree. Her garments were a heterogeneous lot; one might safely swear they had none of them been made for the wearer. One and all were shocking examples of outworn finery. The black chip hat which she wore perched on her head, with an indescribable sort of would-be jauntiness, was broken at the brim, and the one-time gorgeous ostrich feathers were crushed and soiled. A once well-cut cape of erstwhile dark blue cloth was about her shoulders. It was faded, stained, and creased. The fur which had been used to adorn the edges was bare and rusty. It had been lined with silk-as she moved her arms one perceived that of the lining there was nothing left but rags and tatters. Her dress, once the latest fashionable freak in some light-hued flimsy silk, had long since been fit for nothing else than cutting into dusters. She wore ancient patent-leather shoes upon her feet, and equally ancient gloves upon her hands-the bare flesh showing through holes in every finger.

If her costume was strange, her face was stranger. It was the face of a woman who had once been beautiful-how long ago, no one who chanced on her haphazard could with any certainty have guessed. It might have been five, ten, fifteen, twenty years ago-and more than that-since hers had been a countenance which charmed even a casual beholder. It was the face of a woman who had been weak or wicked, and maybe both, and who in consequence had been bandied from pillar to post, till this was all that there was left of her. Her big blue eyes were deep set in careworn caverns; her mouth, which had once been small and dainty, was now blurred and pendulous, the mouth of a woman who drank; her cheeks were sunk and hollow as if she had lost every tooth in her head, the cheek-bones gleaming through the yellow skin in sharp and cruel ridges. To crown it all, her hair was dyed-a vivid yellow. Like all the rest of her, the dye was old and worn. It stood in urgent need of a renewal. The roots were grey, they demonstrated their greyness with savage ostentation. Here and there among the yellow there were grey patches too-in some queer way her attempt at juvenesence had made her look older even than she was.

This was not a pleasant face to have encountered anywhere at any time, being the sort from which good women instinctively shrink back. Just now its unpleasantness was intensified by the fact that it was lit up by some, to Madge, inscrutable emotion; inflamed by some mastering excitement. The hollow eyes gleamed as if they were lighted by inner fires; the lips twitched as if the muscles which worked them were uncontrollable. The woman spoke in short, sharp, angry gusts, as if she were stumbling on the verge of frenzied passion.

"This house is mine," she said.

"Yours?"

"It was his, and mine-and now it's mine."

Madge, persuaded that the woman must be either mad or drunk, felt that perhaps calmness might be her safest weapon.

"Do you mean that you're the landlady?"

"The landlady!" The woman laughed-unmirthfully. "There is no landlady. And the landlord-he's a ghost. He's in it now-don't you feel that he is in it?"

She spoke with such singular intensity that, in spite of herself, Madge shuddered. She was feeling more and more uncomfortable-wishing heartily that some one might come, if it was only the mysterious stranger who had previously intruded.

The woman went on-her excitement seeming to grow with every word she uttered.

"The house is full of ghosts-full! They're in every corner, every nook and cranny-and I know them every one. Come here-I'll show you some of them."

She caught the girl by the arm. Madge, yielding to her strange frenzy, suffered herself to be led into the sitting-room. Once inside, the woman loosed her hold. She looked about her. Then crossed to the fireplace, standing in the centre of the hearthrug.

"This is where I struck him." She pointed just in front of her. "He was sitting there. I had asked him for some money. He would not let me have any. He always clung to his money-always! I swear it-always!" She raised her hands, as if appealing to the ceiling to bear her witness. "He said that I was ruining him. Ruining him? bah! I knew better than that. He would let no one ruin him-he was not of that kind. I told him I must have money. He said he'd given me five pounds last week. 'Five pounds!' I cried; 'what are five pounds?' Then we quarrelled-he said things, I said things. Then I flew into a rage; my temper has been the curse of my whole life. I caught up a decanter of whisky which was on the table, and struck him with it on the head. The bottle broke, the whisky went all over him-how it smelt! Can't you smell it? – and he went tumbling down, down, on to the floor. He's lying there now-can't you see him lying there?" She turned to Madge with a gesture which seemed to make the girl's blood run colder. "Can't you see the ghost?"

She moved a little to one side.

"Just here is where I knelt down, and asked him to forgive me. That was after-I'd been carrying on with some fellow I'd met at a dance, and he had found me out. I cried and cried as if my heart would break, and at last he came and put his hand upon my head-when I set myself to do it, and stuck at it, I could twist him round my finger! – and he began to stroke my hair-I'd lovely hair then, no woman ever had lovelier, and he was always one to stroke it when I'd let him! – and he said, 'My girl, how often shall I have to forgive you?' Listen! Can't you hear him saying it now? Can't you see the ghost?"

She went to where the modest sideboard stood.

"This is where we had our sideboard too-it was a bigger one than this; all our things were good. I was standing here, leaning against it just like this, the first time he saw me drunk. He'd been out all the evening on some sort of business, and I'd been left in the house alone with the girl, and I hadn't liked it, and I'd been sulking. And at last I got to the whisky and I started to drink, drink, drink. I always had been fond of drink long before that, but I'd never let him find it out. But that time I was that sulky I didn't seem to care, and by the time I might have cared I couldn't care-I was too far gone. I had to keep on drinking. There wasn't much in the bottle; when I got to the end of it I started on another. Then I got to the sideboard, and stood leaning over it, lolly fashion, booze, booze, boozing. All of a sudden the door opened, and he came into the room. I turned to have a look at him, the bottle in one hand and the glass in the other. Directly I got clear of the sideboard I went flop on the floor, and the bottle and the glass went with me, and there I had to lie. He rushed towards me, and as soon as he had had a look at me he saw how it was. Then he fell on his knees at my side, and put his hands up to his face, and began to cry. My God, how he did cry! – not like me. His sobs seemed tearing him to pieces, and his life's blood seemed coming from him with every tear. Drunk as I was, it made me cry to hear him. Listen! Can't you hear him crying now? Can't you see the ghost?"

The woman's words and manner were so realistic, and despite-or perhaps because of-her seeming frenzy, she had such an eerie capacity of conjuring up the picture as her memory painted it, that Madge listened spellbound. She was as incapable of interrupting the other's flow of language as if the conscience haunted wretch had cast on her some strange enchantment.

The sea of visions went to the table, and, bending over it, beckoned to Madge to draw closer. As if she found the invitation irresistible, Madge approached. The woman's outstretched finger pointed to a particular place about the centre of one side of the table. Her excitement all at once subsided; her voice grew softer. Her manner became more human, more womanly.

"See! – this is where my little baby died-my little child-the only one I ever had. It was a girl; we called it Lily-my name's Lily" – she glanced up with a grin, as if conscious of how grotesquely inappropriate, in her case, such a name was now; "it was such a little thing-I didn't want it when it came. I never was fond of children, and I wasn't one to play the mother. But, when it did come, it got hold of me somehow-yes, it did! it did! I was fond of it, in my way. As for him, he worshipped it; it was baby, baby, baby! all the time. I was nowhere. It made me wild to hear him, and to see the way that he went on. We fell out because I would have it brought up by hand. He wanted me to let it have my milk-but I wouldn't have it. I wasn't going to be any baby's slave-not likely! I don't think he ever forgave me that. Then he was always at me because he said I neglected it; and that made me worse than ever: I wasn't going to have a crying brat thrust down my throat at every turn, and so I told him. 'Why isn't there a place in which they bring up babies so that they needn't worry their mothers?' I wanted to know. When I said that, how he did look at me, and how he went on! I thought he would have killed me-but I didn't care. He did his share of all the nursing that baby ever had-and perhaps a little more."

Again the woman laughed.

"At last the little thing went wrong. It always was small; it never seemed to grow-except thin. It was the queerest looking little mite, with a serious face like a parson's, and great big eyes which seemed to go right through you, as if it was looking at something which nobody but itself could see. He would have it that it got worse and worse, but he was always making such a fuss that I said he was making a fool of the child. The doctor came and came, but I was pretty often out, and when I wasn't I didn't always choose to see him, so I only heard what he cared to tell me-and I didn't believe the half of that.

"One night I went to a masked ball with Mrs. Sutton-she was a larky one, she was, and led her husband a pretty dance. It was latish when I came back; I hadn't enjoyed myself one bit, and left in a temper and came off home by myself I let myself in at the front door, and when I came into this room, on the table just here" – she pointed with her finger-"there was a pillow, and on the pillow was the baby, and he was kneeling on the floor in front, his elbows on the table, and his face on his hands, and the tears streaming down his cheeks as if they'd never stop. I'd been to the ball as a ballet girl-though he hadn't known it, and I hadn't meant that he should, but the sight took me so aback that, without thinking, I dropped my cloak and stood before him just as I was. 'What's the matter now?' I cried; 'what's the child down here at this time of the night for?' I expected that he'd let fly at me, and perhaps send me packing out of the house right there and then. But, instead, he just glanced my way as if he hardly saw me, or wanted to, and said, 'Baby's dying.' When he said that, it was as if he had run something right into my heart. 'Dying,' I cried, 'stuff!' I ran to the table and bent over the pillow. I had never seen anybody dying before, and knew nothing at all about it, but directly I looked at it, I seemed to know that what he said was true, and that the child was dying. My heart stopped beating-I couldn't breathe, I couldn't speak, I couldn't move, I could only stare like a creature who had lost her wits-it was as if a hand had been stretched right out of Heaven to strike me a blow. There he was on one side of the table-and there was me leaning right over the other, both of us motionless, neither of us speaking a word; and there was the baby lying on the pillow between us, stiller than we were. How long we stopped like that I don't know; it seemed to me as if it was hours-but I daresay it was only a few minutes. All at once the baby-my baby-gave a little movement with its little arms-a sort of trembling. He moved his arm, and put one of his fingers into its tiny hand; the baby seemed to fasten on to it. 'Give it one of your fingers,' he said, sobbing as if his heart would break. 'It'll like to feel your finger as it goes!' Hardly knowing what I was doing, I stretched out one of my fingers; it was the first finger of my right hand-this one." She held up the finger in question in its ragged casing. "And I put it in the mite's wee hand. It took it-yes, it took it. It closed its fingers right round it, and gave it quite a squeeze-yes, quite a squeeze. Then it loosened its hold. It was dead. Dead upon the pillow. – And it's there now. Can't you see it lying on the pillow, with a smile on its face? a smile! Can't you see the ghost?"

Stooping, the woman made pretence to kiss the lips of some one who was lying just beneath her. It might have been that to her the thing was no pretence, and that, as in a vision, the dead lips did indeed touch hers. Then, drawing herself erect again, she broke into another of her discordant laughs. Throwing out her arms on either side of her, she exclaimed in strident tones:

"Ghosts! Ghosts! The place is full of them-I see them everywhere. I touch them, hear them all the time. They've been with me all through the years, wherever I've been-and where haven't I been? My God-in heaven and hell! crowds and crowds of them, more and more as the years went on. And do you think that I can't see them here-in their house, and mine! Can't you see them too?"

Madge replied between set lips-she had been forming her own conclusions while the woman raved:

"No, I do not see them. Nor would you were you not under the influence of drink."

The woman stared at her in what seemed genuine surprise.

"Under the influence of drink! Me? No such luck! I wish I were." Again she gave one of those bursts of laughter which so jarred on Madge's nerves. "When I'm drunk I can't see ghosts-it's only when I'm sober. I've had nothing to eat since I don't know when, let alone to drink. I'm starving, starving! That's the time when I see ghosts. They point at me with their fingers and say, 'Look at us and look at you-this is what it's come to!' They make me see what might have been. He made me come to-day; I didn't want to, but he made me. And now he's in all the house. – Listen! He's getting out of bed in the room upstairs-that's his bedroom. Can't you hear his lame foot moving about the floor? How often I've thrown that lame foot in his face when I've been wild! – can't you hear it hobble-hobble?"

"You are mad! How dare you talk such nonsense? There's no one in the house but you and I."

The woman seemed to believe so implicitly in the diseased imaginings of her conscience-haunted brain, that Madge felt that unless she made a resolute effort her own mental equilibrium might totter. On the other's face there came a look of shrewd, malignant cunning.

"Isn't there! That's all you know, – I'm no more mad than you are. And I tell you what-he's not the only thing that's in the house. There's something else as well. It was his, and now it's mine. And don't you think to rob me."

"Rob you? – I."

"Yes, you. There's others after it as well as you-I know! I'm not the simpleton that some may think. But I won't be robbed by all the lot of you-you make no error. It was his, and now it's mine."

"If there really is anything in the house to which you have the slightest shadow of a claim, which I very much doubt, and let me know what it is, and where it is, I'll see that you have it without fail."

A look of vacancy came on the woman's face. She passed her hand across her brow.

"That's it-I don't know just where it is. He comes and tells me, almost, but never quite. He says it's in the house, but he doesn't say exactly where. But he never lies-so I do know it's in the house, and I won't be robbed."

"I have not the slightest idea of what you mean-if you really do mean anything at all. I don't know if you know me-or are under the impression that I know you; if so, I can only assure you that I don't. I have not the faintest notion who you are."

The woman, drawing nearer, clutched Madge's arm with both her hands.

"Don't you know who I am? I'm the ghost's wife!"

Her manner was not only exceedingly unpleasant; it was, in a sense, uncanny-so uncanny that, in spite of herself, Madge could not help a startled look coming into her face. The appearance of this look seemed to amuse her tormentor. She broke into a continuous peal of unmelodious laughter.

"I'm the ghost's wife!" she kept repeating. "I'm the ghost's wife."

Madge Brodie prided herself on her strength of nerve, and as, a rule, not without cause. But, on that occasion, almost for the first time in her life it played her false. She would have been glad to have been able to scream and flee; but she was incapable even of doing that. The other seemed to hold her spellbound; she was conscious that her senses were reeling-that, unless something happened soon, she would faint.

But from that final degradation she was saved.

"Madge," exclaimed a voice, "who is this woman?"

It was Ella Duncan, and with her was Jack Martyn. At the sound of the voice, the woman released her hold. Never before had Madge been sensible of such a spasm of relief. She rushed to Ella with a hysterical sob.

"Oh, Ella!" she cried, "how thankful I am you've come."

Ella looked at her with surprise.

"Madge! – who is this woman?"

The woman in question spoke for herself. She threw up her arms.

"I'm the ghost's wife!" she shrieked, "I'm the ghost's wife!"

Before they had suspected her purpose, or could say anything to stop her, she had rushed out of the room and from the house.

CHAPTER III
TWO LONE, LORN YOUNG WOMEN

Ella and Jack eyed each other. Madge took refuge in a chair, conscious of a feeling of irritation at her weakness now that the provocation had passed. Ella regarded her curiously.

"What's the matter with you, Madge? What's happened?"

"It's nothing-only that horrible woman has upset me."

"Who is she? and what's she been doing? and what's she want?"

"I don't know who she is, or what she wants, or anything at all about her. I only know that she's prevented me getting anything for your tea."

"That's all right-we've got something, haven't we, Jack?" Jack waved a parcel. "But whatever did you let such an extraordinary-looking creature into the house for? and whatever did she mean by screaming out that she's a ghost's wife? Is she very mad?"

"I think she is-and I didn't let her in."

Then, while they were preparing tea, the tale was told, or at least a part of it. But even that part was enough to make Jack Martyn grave. As the telling proceeded, he grew graver and graver, until, at the end, he wore a face of portentous gloom. When they seated themselves to the meal he made precisely the remark which they had expected him to make. He rested his hands on his knees, and he solemnly shook his head.

"This comes of your being alone in the house!"

Ella laughed.

"There! now you've started him on his own particular crotchet; he'll never let you hear the last of this."

Jack went on.

"I've said before, and I say again, and I shall keep on saying, that you two girls ought not to live alone by yourselves in a house in this out-of-the-way corner of the world."

"Out-of-the-way corner of the world! – on Wandsworth Common!"

"For all practical intents and purposes you might as well be in the middle of the Desert of Sahara; you might shriek and shriek and I doubt if any one would hear you. This agreeable visitor of Madge's might have cut her throat from ear to ear, or chopped her into mincemeat, and she would have been as incapable of summoning assistance as if she had been at the top of Mont Blanc."

"That's it. Jack-pile it on!"

"I don't think it's fair of you to talk like that, Ella; I'm not piling it on; I'm just speaking the plain and simple truth. Honestly, Madge, when you've been alone in the house all day long, haven't you felt that you were at the mercy of the first evil-disposed person who chose to come along; or, if you haven't felt it before, don't you think you'll feel it now?"

"No-to both your questions."

"Supposing this woman comes back again to-morrow?"

Madge had to bite her lip to repress a shudder; the idea was not a pleasant one.

"She won't come back."

"But suppose she does? – and from what you say I think it very probable that she will; if not to-morrow, then the day after."

"If she comes the day after to-morrow she'll find me out; I shall be out all day."

"There's a confession! It's only because you know that you will be out that you're able to face the prospect with equanimity."

"You are not entitled to infer anything of the kind."

Ella interposed, perceiving that the girl was made uncomfortable by the man's persistence.

"Don't do quite so much supposing, Jack; let me do a little for a change. Suppose we lived in one of those flats in the charming neighbourhood of Chancery Lane or Bloomsbury, after which-vicariously-your soul so hankers, how much better off should we be there?"

"You would, at any rate, be within the reach of assistance."

"No more so than we are now, because, quite probably, the kind of neighbours we should be likely to have in the sort of flat we should be able to afford would be worse-much worse-than none at all. The truth is that two lonely, hard-up girls-desperately hard-up girls-will be lonely wherever they are. We are quite prepared for that. Only we intend to choose the particular kind of loneliness which we happen to prefer-don't we, Madge?"

"Of course we do."

"It makes me wild to hear you say such things. Rather than you should feel like that, I'd marry on nothing."

"Thank you, but I wouldn't. I find it quite hard enough to be single on nothing."

"You know what I mean; I don't mean actually on nothing. I was reckoning it up the other night. My income-"

"Your income's like mine, Jack-capable of considerable increment. And would you be so kind as to change the subject?"

But the thing was easier said than done. Jack's thoughts had been started in a groove, and they kept in it; the conversation was continually reverting to the subject of the girls' loneliness. His last words as he left the room were on the familiar theme.

"I grant that there are advantages in having a pretty little place like this all to yourselves, especially when you get it at a peppercorn rent; and that it's nice to be your own mistresses, and all that kind of thing. But in the case of you two girls the disadvantages are so many and so serious, that I wonder you don't see them more clearly for yourselves. Anyhow, Madge has had her first peep at them to-day, and I sincerely hope it will be her last; though I am persuaded that before very long you will discover that, as a place of residence for two lone, lorn young women. Clover Cottage has its drawbacks."

When Ella returned from saying farewell to Mr. Martyn in the hall, she glanced at Madge and laughed.

"Jack's in his prophetic mood."

"I shouldn't be surprised if his prophecy's inspired."

Her tone was unexpectedly serious. Ella stared.

"What do you mean?"

"What I say."

"You're oracular, my dear. What do you say?"

"That I think it quite possible that we shall find that residence at Clover Cottage has its drawbacks; I've lighted on one or two of them already."

Ella leaned against the edge of the table, regarding the speaker with twinkling eyes and smiling lips.

"My dear, you don't mean to say that that crazy creature has left such an impression on your mind?"

"You see, my dear Ella, I haven't told you all the story. I felt that I had given Mr. Martyn a sufficient handle against us as it was; so I refrained."

"Pray what else is there to tell? To judge from your looks and manner one would think that there was something dreadful."

"I don't know about dreadful, but there certainly is something-odd. To begin with, that wretched woman was not my only visitor."

Then the rest of the tale was told-and this time the whole of it. Ella heard of the stranger who had intruded on the pretence of seeking music lessons: of his fear of the seedy loafer in the street; of his undignified exit through the back door; and the whole of his singular behaviour.

"And you say he could play?"

"Play! He played like an-I was going to say an angel, but I'll substitute artist."

"And he looked like a gentleman?"

"Certainly, and spoke like one."

"But he didn't behave like one?"

"I won't go so far as to say that. He said or did nothing that was positively offensive when he was once inside the house."

"But you called him a thief?"

"Yes; but, mind you, I didn't think he was one. I felt so angry."

"I should think you did. I should have felt murderous. And you don't think the man in the road was a policeman?"

"Not he. He was as evil-looking a vagabond as ever I saw."

"It doesn't follow merely on that account, my dear, that he wasn't a policeman."

There was malice in the lady's tones.

"Not at all; but even a policeman of that type would hardly have jumped out of his skin with fright at the sight of that horrible woman. He knew her, and she knew him. There's a mystery somewhere."

"How nice!"

"Nice? You think so? I wish you had interviewed her instead of me. My dear Ella, she-she was-beyond expression."

Ella came and seated herself on a stool at Madge's feet. Leaning her arms on her knees she looked up at her face.

"Poor old chap! It wasn't an agreeable experience."

Madge's answer was as significant as it was curt.

"It wasn't."

She gave further details of what the woman had said and done, and of how she had said and done it-details which she had omitted, for reasons of her own, in Mr. Martyn's presence. By the time she had finished the listener was as serious as the narrator.

"It makes me feel creepy to hear you."

"It would have made you creepy to have heard her. I felt as if the house was peopled with ghosts."

"Madge, don't! You'll make me want to sleep with you if you go on like that. Poor old chap! I'm sorry if I seemed to chaff you." She reflected before she spoke again. "I can see that it can't be nice for you to be alone in the house while I'm away in town all day, earning my daily bread-especially now that the days are drawing in. If you like, we'll clear out of this, this week-we could do it at a pinch- and we'll return to the seething masses."

Madge reflected, in her turn, before she answered.

"Nothing of the sort has happened before, and nothing may happen again. But I tell you frankly, that, if my experiences of to-day do recur, it won't take much to persuade me that I have an inclination towards the society of my fellows, and that I prefer even the crushes of Petticoat Lane to the solitudes of Wandsworth Common."

"Well, in that case, it shall be Petticoat Lane."

There was silence. Presently Madge stretched herself-and yawned.

"In the meantime," suggested Ella, putting her hand up to her own lips, "what do you say to bed?" And it was bed. "Would you like me to sleep with you," inquired Ella as they went upstairs; "because if you would like me to very much, I would."

"No," said Madge, "I wouldn't. I never did like to share my bed with any one, and I never shall. I like to kick about, and I like to have plenty of room to do it in."

"Very good-have plenty of room to do it in. Ungrateful creature! If you're haunted, don't call to me for aid."

As it happened, Madge did call to her for aid, after a fashion; though it was not exactly because she was haunted.