by W.E. Norris.
Originally published in The Witching Time: Tales for the Year's End edited by Henry Norman. (D. Appleton & Co.; 1887).
I always rather liked old Lady Strathannan. She was not universally popular, it is true; I have heard her accused of being worldly and grasping; many people declared that she had been a bad mother; and there was a general vague impression that she had not behaved particularly well to her nephew, Bob Innes. But when one came to examine into these charges, what did they amount to? Worldly she may have been: so are a great many other amiable and agreeable persons. Whether she was grasping or not I really could not say; but if, in her capacity of co-executrix and trustee under her late husband's will, she was doing her best to set an encumbered estate free, and to ensure for her only son the prospect of a handsome fortune when his long minority should terminate, that, I take it, was no more than her bounden duty, and ought to go far toward clearing her from the imputation of being a bad mother. Is a bad mother one who displays perseverance and ingenuity in marrying her numerous daughters to men of rank and wealth? It all depends upon the point of view. Lady Strathannan had succeeded in doing what most ladies in her position endeavor to do, and what few, in these hard times, can achieve; this, perhaps, might account for a certain degree of envy and jealousy on the part of the disappointed ones. As for her daughters, they have not, to the best of my knowledge and belief, objected to the husbands selected for them. With regard to Bob Innes, all that was known for certain was that he had once been engaged in an informal sort of way to his cousin, Lady Janet, and that the old lady had put a stop to the engagement. Perhaps she disapproved of first-cousin marriages; the disapproval is a plausible and by no means an uncommon one. In any case, Bob—who, though the best fellow in the world, is only a clerk in a government office, and is notoriously straitened as to income—could not reasonably complain, as it seemed to me, when he was sent about his business.
To set against these alleged shortcomings, Lady Strathannan had some attractive qualities. When in London, she entertained a good deal in an unostentatious but agreeable way; the beauty for which her daughters were celebrated must, I imagine, have been inherited from her, for at the age of sixty or thereabouts she was a very handsome and venerable-looking lady, with an abundance of gray hair, which, together with her waxen complex ion, gave her a resemblance to an old miniature. Her manners were suave and amiable when she chose; and that she did not always choose to make them so rendered her civility all the more flattering to those who were favored by it. To me she had always been kind and polite, which seemed to be a proof of disinterestedness, since she must have been perfectly well aware that my means were not such as to make me a conceivable candidate for the hand of the only unmarried member of her family. Therefore, when she was so good as to send me an invitation to spend a week at Strathannan Castle, I wrote and accepted forthwith, although it is not everybody who could induce me to travel into the depths of Scotland in the middle of the winter.
To tell the truth, it was not for the sake of this old woman, agreeable though I had always found her, nor for the sake of Lady Janet, who was also agreeable, but who had never troubled herself to notice my existence particularly, nor for that of any of the people whom I was likely to meet there, that I decided to visit Strathannan. The house is one in which I had always wished very much to stay. That it possessed a ghost was in no way remarkable; all old houses of any respectability possess a ghost. But what made the Strathannan specter so peculiarly awe-inspiring was that it was said only to manifest itself to those who had some undiscovered crime upon their conscience—an attribute which, I should think, must have made many of the late Lord Strathannan's guests feel exceedingly uncomfortable. The legend connected with it was that it had first revealed itself to a certain disloyal Lord Strathannan, whose feelings were so worked upon by the apparition that he straightway made full confession of his treachery, and requested that he might be put to death, in accordance with his deserts. His request was complied with (at all events, it seems certain that there was a Lord Strathannan whose head was cut off in the early part of the fourteenth century); and, encouraged by this really striking success, the specter, it was said, had continued to show itself at intervals to other guilty persons, whether belonging to the family or not, who came within its reach. As an indirect testimony to the integrity of my acquaintances, I am glad to be able to add that not one of them had set eyes upon this grewsome thing, though all professed to have heard it pattering about the corridors at night. That was nothing when you were used to it, they said; the Innes family were no more perturbed by it than by the inexplicable bursting open of doors every now and again, accepting such manifestations merely as a salutary warning that they had better behave themselves. However, I was cautioned that Lady Strathannan, who was a nervous woman, did not like the subject to be spoken of in her presence.
Bob Innes and I are old friends and old schoolfellows. If we do not meet quite as often as we once did, that is because our respective avocations do not happen to throw us together. We are very glad to see one another when we do meet, and, as chance would have it, I encountered him at the club on the day previous to that named in my invitation to Strathannan. Bob is a good-looking, good-tempered young fellow, of six or seven and twenty. He has carried about a somewhat gloomy countenance since his disappointment in the matter of Lady Janet; but he has not withdrawn himself from society, where I believe that he is a great favorite; nor is he given to talking about his troubles. He had never mentioned the affair to me, although I suppose I know him about as well as anybody. When, however, I told him that I was about to spend a few days in the cradle of his race, he became pensive, and for the first time alluded to what I had hitherto imagined that he wished to treat as a forbidden topic.
"You'll see Janet," he said, with a sigh. "Give her my love, will you, old chap ??and tell her that I haven't changed."
"All right," I answered, hesitatingly; for I don't much fancy such commissions. "Do you think I had better give her your love, though?"
"Oh, you needn't unless you like," he returned. "I dare say she will ask you whether you've seen me, that's all. She doesn't need any messages, really. She trusts me just as much as I trust her, and she knows well enough that neither of us will change our minds at this time of day."
"But I thought it was all off," I said; because I divined that lie would not be displeased if I questioned him a little.
Bob blew a cloud of smoke, and remained silent for a minute or two before replying.
"It's all off in one sense. The old cat represented to me that we were too poor to marry, which I couldn't deny, and of course I was bound to say that Janet was free, so far as I was concerned; but you can't force a girl to accept her freedom if she don't choose to accept it. I told Janet she might throw me over if she liked; I didn't think it my duty to throw her over. So there it is. I've been perfectly square with the old cat; there's no correspondence, no meeting on the sly—nothing of that sort. Only Janet considers herself engaged to me, and I consider myself engaged to her."
"It seems a poor lookout for both of you," I remarked.
"Very," he replied, laconically.
After a short pause, he resumed: "There's just this to be said, that her father didn't forbid the engagement. He thought there was no reason why we should not marry some day, and, indeed, we might have married if—if he had carried out what he always told me were his intentions. I don't know whether you are aware that he used to allow me three hundred a year—most people seem to be aware of it."
I said I had not heard.
"Well, he did. He said he considered me entitled to that, because my father hadn't had all the money left to him that he expected to get. The fact is, that my grandfather spent every penny he could lay hands on, and didn't leave enough personalty to pay his debts or his legacies either. My uncle managed to get things moderately straight in process of time; he laid by a certain amount every year, and, I believe, paid off some of the mortgages. He was an awfully good old fellow. Of course he wasn't obliged to make me an allowance, but he thought he was, and he used to apologize because he couldn't see his way to increasing it. However, he told me over and over again that I should get ten thousand pounds when he died; so that I was naturally rather astonished and rather disappointed when it turned out that I wasn't even mentioned in his will. It was a very old will, dated the year of his marriage. Nobody disputed the fact of his having made a second one; only, as it wasn't forthcoming—why, I was left out in the cold. My own belief was that that old aunt of mine had made away with it, and I had the bad manners to tell her so."
"Really," said I, "I think that was rather bad manners, and rather bad judgment into the bargain."
"Very likely. At all events she and I are not the best of friends nowadays, as you may imagine. If you want to give her pleasure, you might tell her that I've taken to drink, or play, or some other little vice of that kind. Then she'll repeat it to Janet, who won't believe her, and so you'll have made your hostess happy, without doing anybody any harm."
I observed that making away with a will was a serious matter, and ventured to add that by all accounts a member of the Innes family who should commit such an offence would be exposed to perils which do not threaten the ordinary felon.
Bob laughed a little uneasily. In these days few people like to confess their faith in anything which does not admit of mathematical demonstration, although, for some reason or other, it seems to be considered less ridiculous to believe in hobgoblins than in a revealed religion.
"Oh," he said, "there's a lot of nonsense talked about the old place. You'll hear footsteps, I dare say. I've heard them myself scores of times—easily explained, no doubt. There is only one room which is supposed to be haunted, and you're not likely to be put into that, or to see anything startling if you are."
He changed the subject at once, and did not allude again to my approaching visit to Strathannan until just before we parted, when he said, rather wistfully: "You might drop me a line from Scotland, if it wasn't too much trouble. I won't ask you to give any message to Janet; perhaps it's better not; but there couldn't be much harm in your just letting me know how she is looking—and that sort of thing."
I was not cruel enough to refuse so modest a request; nor did I deem it incumbent upon me to mention what Bob may already have known, namely, that Lady Janet was, by common report, likely to become betrothed ere long to young Hopley, the eldest son of the rich brewer who had recently been raised to the peerage as Lord Trent. I was sorry for Bob; but it seemed to me that he was slightly unreasonable. When people can't afford to marry, and when there is no prospect of their being able to do so, the lady's relatives are surely justified in breaking off the match. As for the destruction of the late Lord Strathannan's will, everything pointed to the probability that it had been effected by his own hands. He would not be the first old gentleman who has promised to provide for needy collaterals and has thought better of his benevolent intentions, reflecting that charity begins at home.
It was, therefore, by no means as a strong partisan of my friend Bob's that I betook myself to Strathannan Castle; yet I admit that, after I had seen Lady Janet, I felt much more able to sympathize with him. Logically, of course, the fact that she was so pretty and looked so good did not alter the situation; but nobody, thank Heaven! can compel us to be logical, and I suppose it will be allowed that if Lady Janet had been a young woman like the ordinary run of fashionable young women, neither Bob nor anybody else would have incurred an irreparable loss in resigning her. It was as one among a number of fashionable young women that I had hitherto seen her, and I had not noticed anything distinctive about her, except that, like all her family, she had a beautiful complexion. Now, however, having a reason for being interested in her, I observed the wistful expression of her soft brown eyes, and her pleasant voice, and what I fancied was a look of quiet determination about the lower part of her face. I could well imagine her capable of holding her own in a gentle, persistent way.
It was she who received me, on my arrival, in a vast saloon which modern furniture had not availed to deprive of the somewhat gloomy and forbidding aspect which characterized the whole building. She did not ask any questions about Bob Innes; so that I was not tempted to deliver the message which that luckless individual had authorized me to give or withhold. After a few minutes, Lady Strathannan came in, followed by a number of her guests, among whom I recognized Mr. Hopley, a commonplace, good-humored-looking youth, of the type commonly described as "cheery," and frequently—perhaps rather too frequently for some people's taste—to be met with in country houses. One had only to look at him to be convinced that, upon very small provocation, he would arrange a skillful booby-trap over one's bedroom door, and take the first opportunity of playing some humorous trick with one's gun. I had a slight acquaintance with him, but, for the reasons above hinted at, did not encourage familiarity on his part, and I was glad to note that he had been provided with a few kindred spirits upon whom to vent the exuberance of his vitality.
Strathannan Castle looks a large house from the outside, but will not, I believe, accommodate a very large party. About twenty of us sat down to dinner; and my neighbor informed me that we were au grand complet.
"I should not be much surprised," she added, rather maliciously, in an undertone, "if they had quartered you in the ghost-room. I suppose you know there is a ghost-room?"
I replied that I had been told so, but had understood that the ghost only disturbed the slumbers of the guilty; consequently, I felt no anxiety on my own score. At the same time, I should be glad to know what authority she had for stating that I was to invade its special domain.
"If I tell you," said she, "will you promise not to breathe a word to Lady Strathannan?" And, on receiving the required pledge, she continued: "Well, my maid heard the housekeeper say to one of the housemaids that she would be obliged to put you in the south wing, because the room which you were to have occupied has been made uninhabitable by a dead rat, but that this was on no account to be mentioned to her ladyship. Are you afraid, Mr. Hervey? Do yon believe in ghosts?"
"I am not afraid," I answered, "and I am not at present a believer, though open to conviction by the evidence of my own senses. Novel experiences are always interesting; so I trust that if there is a disembodied spirit about the premises he won't fail to look me up in the course of the night."
Must I confess that, despite these brave words, I did not altogether relish the idea of passing the night in a so-called haunted apartment? Certainly, I do not believe in ghosts. Upon the face of it,nothing can be more childishly ridiculous than to suppose that an immortal soul, after quitting this body, may have no better employment assigned to it than to linger about the scenes of its earthly pilgrimage and scare posterity with undignified gibberings; yet, as everybody knows, theory and practice are two different things, and neither in belief nor in disbelief is poor humanity prone to be consistent. I may sum up my sentiments upon the subject, by saying that I was willing to believe in a ghost when I saw one, but that I was not in the least anxious to see one.
Later in the evening, when I entered the smoking-room, where I found Hopley and his friends, together with some of my fellow-guests who were of more advanced years, I discovered, somewhat to my disgust, that the surmise of the lady whom I had taken in to dinner was shared by them. No member of the family being present, they were free to question me as to the whereabouts of my room, and, after I had accurately described its position, Hopley slapped his leg and cried:
"By George, then, it's the room! I thought as much! I remember old Strathannan telling me exactly where it was, and he said he had never dared to put any friend of his into it. This is grand sport! Now we shall know what the Specter looks like. Tell you what, Hervey, I'll sit up all night with you, if you like."
"Many thanks," I answered—for this jocularity seemed to me to be rather misplaced—"but, all things considered, I think I should prefer the specter. There will be a good big jug of cold water at his service when he comes, anyhow."
These last words were spoken with deliberate emphasis; because I did not doubt my young friend's capacity for playing bogey upon occasion, and I trusted that the prospect of a shower-bath on a December night would be found uninviting, even by the most hardened of practical jokers.
But Hopley returned, "If that's meant for me you may set your mind at rest, my dear fellow. I wouldn't venture into your part of the house after other people had gone to bed for any money. I believe most people who see that specter either drop down dead or go mad; but you've got plenty of pluck, and I dare say you may pull through. You won't find me stirring the thing up, though."
"In that case," said I, "I shall probably have a quiet night. But I shall keep the cold water handy, all the same."
I was as good as my word. I placed the water-jug by my bedside, and, as I was not in the least sleepy when I retired to rest, I read a pamphlet about Free Trade until my ideas were agreeably confused. Then I blew out the candle, turned over on the other side, and closed my eyes.
I don't know how many hours after this it was that I awoke with a start, and with a horrible conviction that I was not alone. Although I was frightened—why should I not admit it? everybody who wakes with a start must be frightened—I thought at once of Hopley, and lay as still as a mouse, waiting to see what would happen. The room was not quite dark, for the embers of the wood fire which had been burning in the old-fashioned grate when I went to sleep diffused a glow, by the light of which I could distinguish a shadowy white form bending over me. That the memory of sundry by-gone peccadilloes flashed across my mind I will not deny; but I had the self-control to abstain from any articulate confession of them. Suddenly the apparition stretched out its arm, flicked away my pillow from under my head, and noiselessly vanished.
Not quite noiselessly, however, for I distinctly heard the click of a closing lock, and that sound dispelled all my fears. A ghost worthy of the name can not possibly be under any obligation to open or shut doors. I was out of bed in a trice, and grasping my water-jug I rushed out into the long corridor; but never a sign could I discover of Hopley and his boon companions. Retiring at length to my room, somewhat discomfited, I struck a light, and then for the first time my eyes fell upon a door-handle close to the head of my bed. The door to which it belonged was not paneled, but was papered all over, like the rest of the wall; so that my having failed to notice it was not very astonishing. I opened it now without any hesitation, and passing through it, found myself in an untenanted room very like my own, only rather longer. That it was untenanted I satisfied myself by careful investigation presumably Hopley, or whoever my nocturnal visitant had been, had escaped through it to the corridor, and was now safe on the other side of the house, whither pursuit was out of the question. There was nothing for it but to go back to bed; so to bed I went, and prepared to finish the night as comfort ably as I could without a pillow. It was annoying that I should have failed to drench the fellow, but I derived a good deal of comfort from the conviction that my rest had been disturbed by a being of flesh and blood. Ghosts are immaterial or they are nothing; and I do not believe that a member of the Society for Psychical Research would go so far as to affirm that a ghost is capable of picking up a material object like a pillow and marching off with it under his arm. With my nerves soothed by these reflections, I soon dropped asleep, and was not molested again until my servant came to wake me in the morning.
When I went down to breakfast I noticed that several of the men who had been in the smoking-room on the previous evening regarded me with an eager curiosity, to which I took care that my features should convey no response; but the innocent unconsciousness of Hopley staggered me a little. He looked up as I entered, and nodded to me, but was to all appearance engrossed in conversation with Lady Janet, who was pouring out the tea, and to whom he was making love after the manner of his kind—that is to say, with a frank openness as bewildering in its way as Prince Bismarck's diplomacy. It was difficult to believe that a man who advertised his sentiments so publicly could have serious intentions, yet I was assured in the course of the day that Mr. Hopley was quite in earnest, and, moreover, that Lady Janet fully intended to accept him.
Her demeanor at breakfast did not lead me to share that conviction. She was civil and unembarrassed with her neighbor, but did not seem to be paying much attention to what he said; and after I had taken the vacant place on the other side of her, she honored me with the greater share of her conversation. Her mother, she told me, was unable to come down, as she was suffering from one of the bad neuralgic headaches to which she was subject.
"Mamma is always having headaches here," Lady Janet said. "I don't think the air of Strathannan suits her; and, indeed, a great many people complain of it at first. I hope it hasn't given you a headache, Mr. Hervey."
Now the truth was that I had rather a headache, owing to my having lain for several hours with my head a great deal too low; but I replied that I thought the air of Strathannan delightful, and that I had slept capitally.
This I said for the benefit of Hopley, who grinned, as if he had suddenly remembered that a different report might have been expected. "Oh, you did, eh? No specters, then?" he asked.
Lady Janet looked slightly annoyed. There was some laughter, under cover of which I noticed she bent forward and said something in a low voice to Hopley; and I overheard his hasty rejoinder: "Oh, no! it's all right. I didn't mean anything—only chaff, you know."
Some shooting took place during the morning in the coverts near the house; but the results were not magnificent, and were loudly murmured at by Mr. Hopley, who, being the son of a brewer, was naturally accustomed to better things. "The old girl has let the place go down disgracefully," he confided to me, just before luncheon. "Gets her rents paid pretty regularly, I believe; but, dash it all! rents ain't everything, you know."
Lady Strathannan may have deemed it wise—and probably it was wise—to economize in the matter of gamekeepers, but it does not cost much money to have the ice on your lake swept; and as it had been freezing hard for more than a week, we had a capital afternoon's skating. Lady Janet was a skillful and graceful performer. I watched her evolutions with great interest for some time, and was surprised to notice that she kept her eyes pretty steadily on me; for I could not flatter myself that this was due to any display of skill or grace on my part. She was closely attended by Hopley, of whom, however, she managed at length to get rid by persuading him to join in a curling match which had been arranged; and the first use that she made of her freedom was to come skimming across the smooth, glassy surface toward the humble writer of these pages.
"Mr. Hervey," said she, when, with an ease which I envied, she had whisked round, and brought herself to a stand-still beside me, "I want to ask you a question."
"Delighted to answer any question, Lady Janet," I declared, guessing what it was likely to be.
But my powers of divination proved less accurate than I had supposed, and it was not the name of Bob Innes that fell from her lips when she opened them again. "I wanted to know," she said, with a little hesitation, "whether—whether you saw anything last night?"
"Since you ask me," replied I, "I did. But it wasn't a ghost. Somebody came into my room in the dead of the night and snatched my pillow from under my head. In all probability it was Mr. Hopley. I was rather startled for the moment, so he made his escape; but I think I may promise to give him a more fitting reception if he turns up again to-night."
Lady Janet did not smile. "I never heard of any thing of that kind happening before," said she, gravely; "I don't understand it. What object could there be in taking your pillow away?"
"The object," I answered, laughing, "was no doubt an amiable wish to frighten me; but it wasn't a conspicuous success, because I heard the door shut; and, without knowing much about ghosts, I will venture to say that they are not in the habit of opening and shutting doors."
"Oh, but indeed they are!" she rejoined; "that is exactly what so often occurs. Of course, though, you would think it all superstitious nonsense, and I am very glad that you are not frightened. It was only this after noon that I found out where Mrs. Menzies had put you, and I was very angry with her about it. Still, if you really don't mind?"
I assured her that I didn't mind in the least—rather liked it, in fact.
"Then," she said, "would it be asking too much if I begged you not to mention to my mother what room you are in? She would be so displeased if she knew; and—and, to tell you the truth, there isn't another vacant room in the house."
I had only just had time to give the promise requested of me when our interview was interrupted by Hopley, who wanted Lady Janet to come and see what a first-rate hand he was at curling; so that I was unable to make the inquiries about the haunted chamber which I should have liked to make. When all is said and done, we mortals are an uncertain and, to a large extent, irresponsible race. Who will dare to boast that his judgment is superior to the accidents of time, place, and health? For my own part, I would rather not write my self down an ass, but honesty constrains me to avow that I am not quite the same man in the dark as I am in broad daylight. Few things are more utterly absurd and groundless than the fear of ghosts, specters, and goblins. One knows exactly how such superstitions arise, one understands that they are inevitable in a low state of civilization; and when one is walking down Pall Mall, or sitting in the club, one can smile at them easily enough. Yet if one be the occupant of a room reputed to be haunted, in a lonely Scotch castle, one's flesh may quite as easily be made to creep by unexplained nocturnal noises. I speak, of course, of my own flesh; but I imagine that there are many other people like me.
The fact is that I slept very badly that night, and that I heard innumerable noises for which I was unable to account—footsteps, whisperings, even subdued sighs or moans. It may have been the wind; it may have been rats or bats or fifty things: all I know is that I spent a very long and very disagreeable night, and that neither specter nor practical joker appeared to bring my vague disquietude to a climax. When my man came in, in the morning, it occurred to me to tell him of the trick which had been played upon me, and which had not been repeated.
"Williams," said I, "the night before last one of the young gentlemen came into my room and ran away with my pillow. It has been replaced, I see. Do you happen to know where it was discovered?"
Williams, I believe, prides himself upon his impassibility; yet it seemed to me that just the suggestion of a smile flitted across his face as he replied: "Found in Lady Strathannan's room, yesterday morning, sir, I understand."
Really this was a little startling. Lady Strathannan, as I knew, had been bad with neuralgia all day, and had not got up until just before the dinner hour. It was impossible to suppose that she herself had robbed me of my pillow. How in the world, then, had it found its way into her room? I frowned at Williams, to repress any ill-timed merriment on his part, and remarked that jokes of that kind were not only very silly, but in extremely bad taste, to which he replied, "Yes, sir."
Williams, though a good servant, is a most aggravating man. I perceived from his manner that he had something more to say; but I did not choose to question him, because I make it a rule never to encourage any repetition of servants'-hall gossip. After all, the very best answer to a practical joke is to take no notice of it until yon see your way to reprisals.
The succeeding day was marked by no event worthy of record. Lady Strathannan, recovered from her neuralgia, joined us at breakfast and made herself extremely agreeable to everybody—as, indeed, she usually does. Personally I had no opportunity of talking with her until the evening, when she created an opportunity by leading me to the picture-gallery to show me the famous Guido, which is considered to be one of the chief treasures of Strathannan. That this was a mere pretext she candidly avowed as soon as I had seated myself beside her on the old oak settle which faced the celebrated canvas in question.
"Mr. Hervey," said she, "I brought you here because I am very anxious to have a few words with you about my nephew Robert. I know you are a great friend of his, and most likely he has told you all about his troubles."
She paused for me to make a sign of assent, and continued: "I dare say he has said some disagreeable things to you about me, too; but that is of no consequence. I am sorry that he should think badly of me; but I must do my duty, and I should think that I was acting very wrongly if I allowed his silly half-engagement to dear Janet to go on. At the same time, one can not but admit that he has some reason to consider himself unlucky. Perhaps you think so."
I replied that, without imputing the smallest blame to anybody, I was disposed to regard that as a simple matter of fact.
"Exactly so; and these family quarrels are so very painful, are they not? That is why I have made up my mind to offer Robert an allowance. I shouldn't feel justified in making it quite as much as he used to receive from his uncle; but I think I could manage two hundred a year. Now, dear Mr. Hervey, will you do me a great favor, and try to arrange this for me?"
"Of course I can deliver any message that you are pleased to intrust me with, Lady Strathannan," I answered; "but wouldn't it be shorter to write to Bob yourself?"
"Well, no," she said; "because, unfortunately, he is so prejudiced against me that he would be quite sure to refuse by return of post. And then I must tell you that I wish to add a little condition to this offer. I want him to promise me upon his honor that he will give up all thought of marrying Janet, and that he will say as much distinctly to her herself. Then we could be friends again, and I would undertake to find him a nice girl with a little money of her own before long, who would make quite as good a wife for him as Janet or anybody else. Now you know, Mr. Hervey—don't you?—that it really doesn't matter in the least, after a year or two, whether a man has happened to be in love with his wife when he married her or not."
I was unable to divine why she should attribute any such knowledge as this to a bachelor; but she went on to speak in such flattering terms of my well-known tact, and the amiability of my disposition and so forth, that I ended by accepting the mission thrust upon me, though I gave her fair warning that I did not expect to be successful. Bob Innes, I suspected, was incorruptible, and even if he had been open to a bribe, two hundred pounds a year is not a very high price to set upon a man's self-respect. For the obvious meaning of all this was that Lady Janet would not consent to enter the noble family of Hopley until her cousin should not only have set her free but renounced her.
However, I like to get on with people as pleasantly as I can, so I assured my hostess that I would do what in me lay to bring about the reconciliation which she had so much at heart, and forbore to inquire whether she had noticed such a thing in her bedroom on the previous morning as a pillow which did not belong to her. She retired almost immediately after we had re-entered the drawing-room, complaining of a return of her neuralgia, and leaving Lady Janet to entertain the company.
Hopley and his young friends were very jocular about the specter that night in the smoking-room. Concealment is not very difficult; but to conceal the fact that you have something to conceal is a higher branch of art, and they evidently either knew or suspected that I had not related the whole truth with regard to my experience in the haunted chamber. In any case, I was determined that I would not allow myself to be drawn. I baffled their queries; I submitted imperturbably to their chaff, and I patiently sat them out—one consequence of which was that when at length I reached my bedroom I was dead tired. Ghost or no ghost, I could not go through a second vigil; and I suppose I had not been in bed five minutes before I was sound asleep.
I awoke precisely as I had done on the previous occasion, with a shuddering conviction that something or somebody was near me. As before, the room was not quite dark, there being still a glow from the dying fire, and, as before, that shadowy white figure was bending over me. I don't in the least mind admitting that my heart beat hard and fast; I believe that the motion of anybody's heart would have become accelerated under the circumstances; and I did what I think was quite the best thing to do, in lying perfectly still, and waiting for the apparition—whoever or whatever it might be—to make the next move. But when for the second time a hand—a most distinct, prehensile hand—was stretched forward and plucked at my pillow, common sense on a sudden re-asserted itself. It is contrary to all reason, and beyond the limits of the most credulous assertion, that a ghost can have hands capable of grasping pillows. That dim white figure was Hopley, or, if not Hopley, some other human being with whom I was resolved to deal as he deserved. Unluckily, I had forgotten to place the water-jug beside me; but with a sudden bound I sprang up and stood erect upon the bed.
At the same instant, to my utter amazement, my ghostly visitant collapsed upon the floor, and lay there in a huddled heap, uttering moans of the extremest terror and anguish. I don't know whether my nerves might not have been shaken by this unexpected exhibition, if presently the moans of the prostrate one had not resolved themselves into more or less coherent entreaties, and if I had not recognized, beyond all doubt, the voice of Lady Strathannan.
"Mercy! mercy!" she shrieked. "Oh, I knew this would happen to me some day! I ought never to have entered your room! I will do anything you tell me—I will give back the ten thousand pounds—anything! Fool that I was! I was beginning to disbelieve in you! Oh, why, why, why have you appeared to me!"
What a thing it is to have presence of mind! With the rapidity of a flash of lightning, the whole situation became clear to me. Lady Strathannan had robbed her nephew; I was the specter, and it was my mission to make her disgorge her ill-gotten gains. I threw myself into the part with a readiness for which I do think that I deserve the greatest credit. Many years ago, when I was a boy, I took a few lessons in ventriloquism, and learned, if not to ventriloquize, at least to disguise my voice. It was in hollow accents, which, at such an hour and in such a place, would have struck terror into the stoutest heart, that I uttered the words: "Woman, confess your crime!"
"But not publicly!" she groaned. "Ah, don't make me do that! For my poor children's sake, spare me! It was for my children's sake that I burned the will. It was wrong, I know; but I acted for the best, and—and for Janet's happiness. I shall be sent to prison if I confess, and others will suffer quite as much as I shalL You wouldn't bring such misery upon an innocent family!"
"Yes, I would," I replied; it was rather a colloquial fashion of expressing myself, but she was too much scared to notice that. "Wrong must be set right, and stolen money must be restored."
"It shall be; I promise it—I swear it!" she gasped out eagerly. "The money shall be paid to him as soon as ever I can realize it."
"That is not all," I continued solemnly, after a short pause. "You have defrauded your nephew of more than money, and you must make amends to him. You must consent to his marriage with your daughter."
All this time Lady Strathannan was groveling on the ground, and, as far as I could see, had her face hidden in her hands. She made no articulate reply; but, listening intently, I heard her mutter between her teeth, "I won't!"
Without an instant's hesitation I responded. "You will not obey?" I asked. "Die, then!" It was rather a bold threat, because, in the first place, I could not kill her, and, in the second, there are a good many people who would prefer death to disgrace. Fortunately, however, it appeared that Lady Strathannan was not one of these.
"No, no!" she shrieked, "I will obey, indeed I will! Only give me time! I acted for the best. I didn't think it was for her happiness to marry that man, and I don't think so now—I can't think so. Still, I will give my consent, if I must."
"You must!" I replied from the pit of my stomach.
Now this was all very satisfactory, so far as it went; but the question was, how on earth was I to conclude the interview? I ought, of course, to have faded slowly away, but it was altogether out of my power to fade away; besides which, I really couldn't trust the old woman. It was essential that I should extort some tangible pledge from her, otherwise courage might return to her with the return of day; and it was exceedingly improbable that I should have a second chance of frightening her out of her wits. It was a ticklish situation, and I fully realized the risk of detection that I was running, but I had to make the best of it.
"Go to your room," quoth I, in sepulchral accents, "take pen and paper and write as follows: 'I, Elizabeth, Countess of Strathannan, hereby acknowledge that I have defrauded my nephew, Robert Innes, of ten thousand pounds, left to him by his uncle in a will which I feloniously destroyed; and, in consideration of his clemency in sparing me public exposure, I engage to pay him the said sum as the marriage-portion of my daughter, Janet Innes, and to welcome him as my son-in-law and the husband of the said Janet.' When you have written and signed this paper, bring it back and leave it here. It will have disappeared in the morning; and, unless you prove false to it, no mortal eye ever will see it."
I had a moment of intense anxiety after I had thus delivered myself. It was obvious that no specter who understood his business would ask for a signed engagement, yet, as I said before, I had to make the best use I could of my opportunity, and I imagine that her ladyship was too much delighted at the prospect held out to her of immunity from public disgrace to cavil at details. She bleated out a lachrymose assent, scrambled to her feet and trotted away, without so much as glancing at me.
Then I had another painful minute—five minutes, indeed, I should think—of suspense. Would she ever come back again? When once she had reached her own room, would she not, like a sensible woman, reflect that no apparition had ever shown itself to her there, and that by the simple expedient of avoiding the specter's special hunting-grounds, she might hope to avoid all future molestation? It was true that I had received a distinct admission of guilt from her, and that I might hold this over her in terrorem, but then there was nothing to prevent her from meeting my assertion with a point-blank denial, nor anything to convince a cold and skeptical world that I had not been the victim of a nightmare.
I don't know when I have felt so thankful in my life as when I heard the pattering of her returning feet in the adjoining room. In she came, bearing a folded paper in her hand, and the instant that she was within my reach, I made a grab at it and secured it. So overjoyed was I at my success, that I really did not notice the circumstance that she had brought a candle with her. But when, instead of a grisly phantom, she found herself confronted with a gentleman of the nineteenth century, appareled in the customary nocturnal garb of the period, she realized the heartless deception which had been practiced upon her, and protested against it with not unnatural warmth.
"You wretch!" she ejaculated. "You infamous, wicked wretch!"
I am a very modest man by nature. I hopped deftly into bed and covered myself up, taking care, however, to keep a firm hold upon the paper. "My dear Lady Strathannan," said I, "let us not call one another hard names. After what you have told me, I might say some uncomplimentary things to you; but I won't. I am persuaded that you have repented of your sin, and you have bound yourself down to make reparation for it. More than that no charitable fellow-sinner would wish to exact, and you may be sure that, so long as you observe the terms of our agreement, neither the strong arm of the law nor the censure of society will fall upon you."
"Of course," she returned sullenly, after a few seconds of consideration, "I am in your power, and I must obey your orders. You have extorted information by a most disgraceful and ungentlemanlike trick; but I suppose you are not likely to feel ashamed of yourself. As a matter of curiosity, though, I should like to hear how you found your way into this room."
"Well, do you know, Lady Strathannan," I returned, "that is the very question that I was thinking of putting to you. How did you find your way into this room? And, without for one moment permitting myself to speak about disgraceful and unladylike tricks, may I ask what your object is in plucking my pillow from under my head and running off with it? Because, after all, it is my pillow for the time being; and, for the time being, this is also my bedroom."
"What!" she cried. "Do you mean to tell me that this is the room they gave you when you arrived?"
"It is, indeed," I answered; "and if you don't believe me, you can look in the wardrobe and the chest of drawers, and you will find all my things there."
"Menzies shall have a month's warning to-morrow," muttered Lady Strathannan.
"I hope you will not punish Mrs. Menzies," I said. "I believe she was much distressed at having to put me here; but it seems that the room originally destined for me has a leak in the roof, or a dead rat behind the wainscot, or something; and really I think you had better say nothing to her about it, because, if you do, she will want to know how you found out the truth, which, as I need hardly point out to you, might give rise to scandal. And now that I have satisfactorily accounted for my presence, may I once more venture to inquire—"
"Oh, bother!" she interrupted. And then, after a short pause: "Well, if you want to know, I can't sleep without a pile of pillows when I have these neuralgic headaches, and so I sometimes collect them from this room and the next one, which communicates with mine. If Menzies had put you into the next room, all this would have been avoided; but, unfortunately, she did once put an old gentleman in there—who snored, and I told her that such a thing must not occur again. Why didn't you speak when I helped myself to your pillow the first time?"
"To tell you the truth," I replied, "I took you for the family specter. You returned the compliment tonight, so we may cry quits."
"Mr. Hervey," said Lady Strathannan, changing her manner all of a sudden, and speaking in the dulcet tones which I had always hitherto been accustomed to associate with her, "I see that I was wrong in suspecting you of a deliberate design, and I hope you will overlook anything disagreeable that I may have said in the heat of the moment. Of course, I have treated Robert Innes badly. I won't attempt to justify myself; but, as you so truly say, I have repented, and I am going to make reparation. And now, will you kindly give me back that slip of paper, which you snatched from me?"
"Most certainly I will, Lady Strathannan," answered I. "I will give it back to you on Bob's wedding-day."
And I kept my word. She received the written confession of her fraud one day in the following June, at the conclusion of a largely-attended ceremony in a fashionable London church, and after I had taken care to ascertain that Bob's £10,000 had been duly paid over to him. Everybody said that Lady Strathannan had behaved so nicely about it, and had provided so much more handsomely for her daughter than could have been expected.
Such, I believe, is the view taken by Bob himself, who has become reconciled with his mother-in-law, and who tells me that she is really not at all a bad old woman in her way. With what feelings her ladyship regards me I do not know, for she is rather clever at concealing her feelings. She is extremely civil to me when we meet, but she has not asked me to stay with her in Scotland again, and it seems highly probable that I shall go down to my grave without having had a second opportunity of finding out whether the celebrated Specter of Strathannan is a myth or not.