The Ghost It Was

by Richard Hull

  There remained two more members of the family. Henry Malcolm, the only child of Jacynth, who so nearly was called Jerusalem, and Emily, the daughter of his only brother, John. Both of them were orphans, neither of them had any money, and both of them might reasonably hope to inherit from him. He had therefore made the old mistake of keeping them both under his eye with the intention that, if he had to leave his money to either of them, he would at least get what he could out of them in service and in a free right to be as rude to them as often as he liked during his lifetime. Henry could act as his agent and secretary; Emily could keep house for him. They could have their keep and some pocket money and consider themselves lucky.

  That Emily, a weak, shy, rather incompetent person with no belief in her capabilities, should accept, was not surprising. The world is not too easy for women in her position. At the age of twenty-seven, she was already beginning to look faded. She had never been very strong or very attractive to look at, and life with James Warrenton would have been enough to have worn down a stronger spirit than hers. Meanwhile she existed, was fed, had a roof over her head and tried not to remind herself, because it was wicked, that Uncle James was sixty-five and did himself too well. Alone of all people in this world, she was quite confident that her uncle would ultimately do the right thing by her.

  But Henry Malcolm was more of a puzzle.

  A broadly built red-headed man of thirty-five, slightly freckled, he usually had a puzzled look in his eyes as if he was trying to make out why so many people resented what he did. He nearly always had quite good motives for his actions. At least they seemed so to him, and he would have been surprised if he had been told that, really, he had considered whatever the question was solely from his own point of view and with a complete, though frequently accidental, disregard for the rights of others, and that he had moreover spoken about it with an absence of tact that almost amounted to genius.

  Then when his adversary — and people frequently became his adversaries almost automatically and unconsciously — failed to see reason, his quick temper would rise. He probably had more quarrels a day than most people had in a week, and thereby provided the only reason why his uncle continued to employ him at — ultimately — almost an adequate salary. James Warrenton liked having someone about who could be relied on sooner or later to cross swords with everyone with whom he came in contact, and with whom, if he failed to provide that source of amusement, he could frequently quarrel himself. Indeed, when on several occasions, Malcolm had announced that his uncle had insulted him once too often and that he intended to depart at once, it had always been James who had made it up and it was these opportunities which Malcolm had seized to bring his income to the point of being almost adequate. Wherefore James considered his nephew to be a gold-digger.

  But here he was not quite correct. Malcolm was a gold-digger at heart, but he was not quite sufficiently astute to see what good cards he held, and to play them sufficiently well to hold his uncle to an appreciable ransom. And the mixed metaphor is not unsuitable. For Henry Malcolm was the kind of man who might be imagined to dig with cards for a ransom.

  The state of affairs at Amberhurst Place was particularly sultry on the afternoon when Gregory Spring-Benson decided to renew his acquaintance with his uncle.

  The New Light was not a paper which James Warrenton read, and the paragraph referring to him might have passed by unnoticed if Malcolm, with his usual skill, had not called attention to it on the day after its publication, thus reviving it when it might have been decently buried. Probably Malcolm himself would not have noticed it if his cousin Arthur had not pointed it out to him when they had met by chance the evening before.

  Now secretly James Warrenton, like most other people, was flattered and pleased to see his name in the public Press. But partly out of pure perverseness and partly because he had not noticed it first himself, he decided to be angry about it. It was as good an excuse to be angry as any other, and from it he could exercise his talents for annoying Malcolm. Besides, it was tactlessly brought to his notice. It had been done at breakfast, in itself a mistake.

  ‘I saw Arthur last night,’ Henry began, ‘and he showed me such an interesting thing—’

  Behind the teapot, Emily fidgeted. She usually did at breakfast. It took such a long time, and she hated sitting there while her uncle read the paper. She always did fidget when she got nervous and was always reproved for it as if she were a child of twelve. The knowledge that this was likely to happen always made her nervous and so completed the vicious circle. Arthur, she knew, was not a wise subject for conversation. She hoped Uncle James had not heard, but, unfortunately, he had.

  ‘What do you want to see Arthur for? Canting young hypocrite!’ (Arthur was forty-four.) ‘Can’t believe he had anything interesting to say. Put that fork down, Emily, and sit still. Can’t think what’s coming over young people these days.’

  Silence reigned, broken only by the rustle of James’ morning paper. Henry was hurt. Very well, if his news was not going to be appreciated, he would keep it to himself.

  ‘I can’t hear a word you’re saying,’ James suddenly broke out, well aware that no one had spoken, but impelled by curiosity, and seeing that Malcolm had no intention of telling him unless he were forced. ‘What’s this news you’re whispering to your cousin?’

  ‘I never whisper.’ Henry was up in arms at once.

  ‘Yes, you do. Frequently I can’t hear what you say. What is this news? Out with it.’

  Rather sulkily, from his pocket-book, Henry Malcolm produced the paragraph about Amberhurst Place.

  ‘I got a copy and cut it out. Yesterday’s paper.’

  James sniffed at it.

  ‘When did this come out? Yesterday? Why wasn’t I shown it earlier? Monstrous nonsense! Talking about a “legend that the mansion is haunted” and a “ghost”. Writer doesn’t know the first thing about spiritualism. I should like to get him down here and teach him something about it.’

  At this mention of their uncle’s latest hobby, his nephew unfortunately smiled, and his niece regarded her empty plate — she had finished her orange juice and dry toast long ago — with an absorbed attention.

  ‘Oh, I see,’ went on James, ‘that’s the idea, is it. Try and poke fun at me and at everything connected with spiritualism. Well, I’m only a beginner, but I see already that there’s a great deal more in it than your thick heads can understand. As for Emily, she gets her silly ideas from that psalm-smiting rector down here. The Reverend Cyprian Thompson indeed! I’ve not seen him often, but I can tell what sort of a fellow he is. Good Easter offering and plenty of cheques, possibly for the poor of the parish but certainly not forgetting the rector — that’s all he wants out of me. But, of course, Emily thinks him a perfect saint! As for you, Henry, you ought to know better than to jeer at what you don’t understand. Did I tell you the paragraph they quoted in one of these spiritualist papers the other day — from Paley’s Evidence it was “There is a principle which is a bar to human progress and which cannot fail, where adopted, to keep man in everlasting ignorance—”’

  ‘“And that is contempt prior to investigation”. Yes, I’m beginning to know it by heart too.’

  For once in his life James found himself not having quite the best of the argument with his nephew, and accordingly flounced out of the room.

  As the door closed behind him, Emily looked up.

  ‘Henry,’ she began timidly, ‘do you mind not starting difficult subjects at breakfast — and don’t mention Cousin Arthur at all if possible.’

  Perhaps the tactlessness of the family was not confined to the male side.

  The situation, slightly, but not unusually, strained as it already was, was not improved by the representative of the Periton and District Gazette who, considering that Amberhurst was included in the district, and having also seen the paragraph in The New Light, had decided to obtain an interview for next week’s issue from the new owner of Amberhurst Place. Had he done it on the
day that the paragraph appeared in The New Light instead of waiting a day, he might have had a less violently unfriendly reception than he did, but in no case would he have been likely to have been really well received.

  Warrenton, though not feeling quite so strongly about privacy as the previous owner, had decided for the present, at any rate, to keep the public very much at arm’s, length. Later on, he could make up his mind. If he wanted to keep everyone out permanently, he had not prejudiced his position, but if, ultimately, he decided to be only reasonably strict, he would at least get credit for allowing people to walk through his property — an attribute which after all was rational enough, even in an age when people are apt to think that other people’s landed possessions belong more to themselves than to their owners.

  But be that as it may, Young, who had been taken over with the estate, was told still to keep the lodge gates locked, and to admit no one who did not seem to have real business. The order had the additional advantage that it gave Young an occupation which would keep him tiresomely tied to his house and so at one stroke spoil any arrangements to amuse himself that he might have made, and any plans for productive work for which Malcolm might have had a mind to use him.

  The representative of the Periton and District Gazette was accordingly denied admission, but being also a persistent man, he also refused to take ‘no’ as an answer, and like Gregory Spring-Benson, but in advance of him, proceeded up the road until he came to the fallen branch of the oak tree. From there he made his way with considerable skill to the French window of James’ own study.

  He got very little farther. As soon as James found out who he was he had him marched out of the park as quickly as possible. Even so, he collected enough material for a very breezy column, drawn mainly from imagination, but sufficiently based on fact to be really irritating.

  Apart from that, his arrival had two consequences. In the first place, Young and one of the assistant keepers were told off to see that no other reporters obtained admission, and with a fine judgment of ground succeeded in catching Gregory red-handed by the exercise of the minimum amount of effort.

  Secondly, James became convinced that some member of his household had written the offending paragraph and he determined to tax them all with it. The very process of accusing them ought, in his opinion, to afford some sport, and despite a complete absence of evidence, he decided to do so. Had he known it, in the offices of The New Light, Linnell, with better evidence but less determination or interest, was pursuing a similar inquiry.

  4

  The Long Library

  The long library at Amberhurst Place ought to have been a comfortable room, but undoubtedly it was not. Three of its sides were covered from floor to ceiling with books, save for the doorway in one of the short walls and where the centre of one long wall contained a fire-place. The fourth side consisted entirely of a great window with a cushioned ledge inside it, looking out over the lawn which led down to the lake which lay on the east of the house and rather to the right of the library; all of which should have made it attractive.

  But the outlook was almost due North and from that fact started the slight feeling that the room was not quite at its ease. The sun hardly ever shone through the big window, and never penetrated to the far end of the room which was in any case rather too long for its breadth. In one way that was an advantage, since at any rate the backs of the bindings of the books were not constantly fading. No doubt in the days of its old owners, the long library, though it could never have been a cheerful room, had acquired an air of comfort and repose in which the books themselves had played a great part.

  But James Warrenton cared little for books. He had seen indeed that it was necessary to put volumes of some sort on the shelves, since taking away the bookcases and providing some other decoration might cost almost as much, and bare shelves would obviously look unpleasant, but it seemed to him of little importance what those books were.

  ‘Supposing,’ he said to Emily, ‘all those shelves were full, do you think you could read all of them, just once in a lifetime?’

  ‘Oh yes! If they were books I wanted to read.’

  ‘I’m not talking about “wanting to read”. I’m talking practical sense. Let’s think. It’s a long room. Forty-five feet, I should think. You can get’ — he produced a tape measure unexpectedly from his waistcoat pocket and measured a few of the books which at that time sparsely filled the long shelves — ‘about eight books to a foot. That’s three hundred and sixty books to a row and there are twelve layers from top to bottom, that’s — two and carry seven — four thousand three hundred and twenty books. Double it for the other side and say that the end makes up for the fireplace and the divisions in the shelves and anything like that — that gives eight thousand six hundred and forty books. Call it nine thousand because the end is bigger than the fireplace. Now, then, how many pages a book on an average?’

  ‘Well, it varies, uncle.’

  ‘Of course, it varies. What sort of a fool do you take me for? I said “on an average”. We’ll, say, five hundred. How much is five hundred times nine thousand?’

  Emily had thought for a minute.

  ‘Forty-five something,’ was all she had weakly managed to say.

  ‘Forty-five million?’ Uncle James wilfully misheard her. ‘Of course, it isn’t! Can’t think what sort of education they give young people nowadays. Four and a half million of course. Now where was I when you interrupted? Oh yes, I know. Four and a half million pages! Fancy saying you could read nearly five million pages in a lifetime. Ridiculous. They ought not to allow so much to be printed! Why, if you read a hundred pages a day — which is more than anyone ought to read — that would be thirty-five thousand a year — say a hundred thousand in three years, a million in thirty years. If you started to read on the day you were born you would have read this library — just once, mind you — when you were between a hundred and twenty and a hundred and fifty years old. Fiddlesticks.’

  ‘All the same, uncle, I should like to choose some of the books. I mean I might read some, and other people might read others. There are so many things I should like to see here. If I could help choose them—’

  ‘Nonsense. Wasting your time, like that. I shall buy them wholesale. Bright-looking ones for preference. Red and green backs to them. You can arrange them according to colours, if you like.’

  Quite how he had done it, Emily had never found out, but in due course van loads of books had arrived and been unpacked by those who had brought them, and shoved regardless of sequence, coherence, or order into any shelf that came handy. Naturally enough, the contractor, having been told to deliver nine thousand assorted volumes, the only specification as to which having been that they must mainly have bright covers and weigh in all not less than eight and a half tons (Uncle James having indulged in a fresh set of calculations to make sure that he was not jobbed off with an insufficient bulk), had not worried much about the contents; nor had his men troubled unduly about keeping sets together, or even putting them in the shelves the right way up.

  But Emily Warrenton did mind. She was constantly running up to corners of the room or standing on chairs and trying to reach top shelves in order to save a school arithmetic book or a treatise on astronomy as imagined in late Victorian days, or Who’s Who for 1910 from standing on their heads.

  But even worse, from her point of view, were the sets which had become separated. There was, for instance, a most admirable series of books, profusely illustrated, and fully answering to the requirements as to bright covers, describing foreign countries which, even if perhaps originally intended for the young, and in any case now slightly out of date, were the most readable things in the collection. But to Emily they were a constant source of worry. She had got fifty-three volumes — including duplicates — cornered together in one place, but she was constantly finding fresh volumes and having to move something else to make room for them. They were to her mind even more troublesome than the final remainders of an
unsuccessful detective story which the contractor had used as the ultimate makeweight. As she found each successive copy, she carefully added it to the others in an upper and rather remote shelf. So far, she had collected twenty-seven.

  There was no denying, however, that Warrenton’s method had filled the shelves, but it had failed to provide the atmosphere which the books of a library should convey. They radiated an atmosphere of falsity, and failed entirely to relieve the gloom of the north light and the shadow that fell in the evening from the tower that stood to the left of the library window above a deserted wing that jutted out from the north-west corner of the house, a tower to which there was no access except through a door, invariably locked, at the foot of a separate flight of spiral stairs. It was on the flat roof at the top of this tower that the ghost of Amberhurst Place was alleged to make its appearance.

  Indeed, in many ways the eccentricities of James had made Amberhurst Place a curiously furnished house. Apart from the unsuitability of the library books, and the gaunt barrenness of the tower, the dining room was an uncomfortable room, so ill-lighted that the sideboard was practically in darkness and carving was impossible on it.