More Deadly than the Male

by Graeme Davis

  “‘Just look out for a moment, Hareleigh,’ I said drawing back from the window, ‘there is a man standing under the lamp I want you to notice.’

  “‘I see no man,’ answered Sir Harry, and when I looked out again neither did I.

  “As in my dream, however, I had beheld the stranger at different stages of our journey, so I beheld him at different stages with my waking eyes.

  “Standing at the hotel at Warweald, I spoke seriously to my companion concerning the mysterious passenger, when to my amazement he repeated the same words I had heard in my dream.

  “‘Now, Hareleigh,’ I said, ‘this is getting past a joke. You know I am not superstitious, or given to take fancies, and yet I tell you I have had a warning about that man and I feel confident he means mischief,’ and then I told Sir Harry my dream, and described to him the inn upon our arrival at which I had invariably awakened.

  “‘There is no such inn anywhere on the road between here and Dulling,’ he answered after a moment’s silence, and then he turned towards the fire again and knit his brow, and there ensued a disagreeable pause.

  “‘If I have offended you,’ I remarked at last.

  “‘My dear friend,’ he replied in an earnest voice, ‘I am not offended, I am only alarmed. When I left the continent I hoped that I had put the sea between myself and my enemy; but what you say makes me fear that I am being dogged to my death. I have narrowly escaped assassination twice within the last three months, and I know every movement of mine has been watched, that there have been spies upon me. Even on board the vessel by which I returned to England I was nearly pitched overboard; at the time I regarded it as an accident, but if your dream be true, that was, as this is, the result of a premeditated plan.’

  “‘Then let us remain here for the night,’ I urged.

  “‘Impossible,’ he answered. ‘I must reach Dulling before to-morrow morning, or otherwise the only woman I ever wanted to marry or ever shall marry will have dropped out of my life a second time.’

  “‘And she,’ I suggested.

  “‘Is the widow of Lord Warweald, and she leaves for India to-morrow with her brother the Honourable John Moffat.’

  “‘Then,’ said I, ‘you can have no difficulty in fulfilling the conditions of Mr. Ralph Hareleigh’s will.’

  “‘Not if she agrees to marry me,’ he answered.

  “At that moment the chaise was announced, and we took our places in it.

  “Over the country roads, along lonely lanes, we drove almost in silence.

  “Somehow Sir Harry’s statement and the memory of my own dream made me feel anxious and nervous. Who could this unknown enemy be? had my friend played fast and loose with some lovely Italian, and was this her nearest of kin dogging him to his death?

  “Most certainly the man who stood under the lamp at Callersfield had no foreign blood in his veins; spite of his complexion, he was English, in figure, habit, and appearance.

  “Could there be any dark secret in Sir Harry’s life? I then asked myself. His reluctance to visit England, his reserve about the earlier part of his existence, almost inclined me to this belief; and I was just about settling in my own mind what this secret might probably be, when the postilion suddenly pulled up, and after an examination of his horses’ feet informed us that one of them had cast a shoe, and that it was impossible the creature could travel the nine miles which still intervened between us and the next stage.

  “‘There is an inn, however,’ added the boy, ‘about a mile from here on the road to Rindon; and if you could make shift to stop there for the night, I will undertake to have you at Dulling Court by nine o’clock in the morning.’

  “Hearing this, I looked in the moonlight at my friend, and Sir Harry looked hard at me.

  “‘It is to happen so,’ he said, and flinging himself back in the chaise, fell into a fit of moody musing.

  “Meanwhile, as the horses proceeded slowly along, I looked out of the window, and once I could have sworn I saw the shadow of a man flung across the road.

  “When I opened the door, however, and jumped out, I could see nothing except the dark trees almost meeting overhead, and the denser undergrowth lying to right and left.

  “It was a fine night when we arrived at our destination, just such a night as I had dreamed was to come—moonlight, but with heavy black clouds drifting across the sky.

  “There was the inn, there swung the sign, the dead leaves swirled about us as we stood waiting while the post-boy hammered for admittance.

  “It all came about as I had dreamt, save that I did not see waking as I had done in my sleep a stealing figure creeping away in the shadow of the house.

  “I saw the figure afterwards, but not then.

  “We ate in the house, but we did not drink—we made a feint of doing so; but we really poured away the liquor upon the hot ashes that lay underneath the hastily replenished fire, though I believe this caution to have been unnecessary.

  “We selected our bed chambers, Sir Harry choosing one which looked out on what our host called the Wilderness, and I selecting another that commanded a view of the garden.

  “There were no locks or bolts to the doors, but we determined to pull up such furniture as the rooms afforded, and erect barricades for our protection.

  “I wanted to remain in the same apartment with my friend, but he would not hear of such an arrangement.

  “‘We shall only delay the end,’ he said stubbornly, in answer to my entreaties, ‘and I have an ounce of lead ready for any one who tries to meddle with me.’ So we bade each other good night, and separated.

  “I had not the slightest intention of going to bed, so I sat and read my favourite poet till, overpowered by fatigue, I dropped asleep in my chair.

  “When I awoke it was with a start; the candle had burnt out, and the moonlight was streaming through the white blind into the room.

  “Was it fancy, or did I hear some one actually try my door? I held my breath, and then I knew it was no fancy, for the latch snicked in the lock, then stealthy footsteps crept along the passage and down the stairs.

  “In a moment my resolution was taken. Opening my window, I crept on to the sill, and closing the casement after me, dropped into the garden.

  “Keeping close against the wall, I crept to the corner of the house, where I concealed myself behind an arbor vitae.

  “A minute afterwards the man I was watching for came round the opposite corner, and stood for a second looking at the window of Sir Harry’s room. There was a pear tree trained against the wall on this side of the house, and up it he climbed with more agility than I should have expected from his appearance.

  “I had my pistol in my hand, and felt inclined to wing him while he was fighting with the crazy fastening, and trying to open the window without noise, but I refrained. I wanted to see the play out; I desired to see his game, and so the moment he was in the room I climbed the pear tree also, and raising my eyes just above the sill, and lifting the blind about an inch, looked in.

  “Like myself, Hareleigh had not undressed, but he lay stretched on the bed with his right hand under his head, and his left flung across his body.

  “He was fast asleep, his pistols lay on a chair beside him, and I could see he had so far followed my advice as to have dragged an ancient secretaire* across the door.

  “By the moonlight I got a good view now of the individual who had for so long a time troubled my dreams. As he stealthily moved the pistols he turned his profile a little towards the window, and then I knew what I already suspected, viz., that the man who had travelled with us from Callersfield was identical with the man who now stood beside Sir Harry meaning to murder him.

  “It was the dream in that hour which seemed the reality, and the reality the dream.

  “For an instant he stooped over my friend, and then I saw him raise his hand to strike, but the same moment I took deliberate aim, and before the blow could fall, fired and shot him in the right shoulder.

 
“There was a shriek and an imprecation, a rush to the window, where we met, he trying to get out, I striving to get in.

  “I grappled with him, but having no secure foothold the impetus of his body was too much for me, and we both fell to the ground together. The force of the fall stunned me, I suppose, for I remember nothing of what followed till I found myself lying on a sofa in the inn, with Hareleigh sitting beside me.

  “‘Don’t talk! for God’s sake don’t talk!’ he entreated. ‘We shall be out of this in five minutes’ time if you think you can bear the shaking. I have made the landlord lend us another horse, and we shall be at Dulling in two hours’ time. There you shall tell me all about it.’

  “But there I never told him all about it. Before we reached our next stage I was far too ill to travel further, and for weeks I lay between life and death at the ‘Green Man and Still,’ Aldney.

  “When I was strong enough to sit up with him, Harry and Lady Hareleigh came over from Dulling to see me, but it was months before I could bear to speak of the events of that night, and though I never dreamed my dream again, it left its traces on me for life.

  “Till the day of his death, however, Sir Harry always regarded me as his preserver, and the warmest welcome to Dulling Court was given by his wife to one whom she honoured by calling her dearest friend.

  “When Sir Harry died, he left me joint guardian with Lady Hareleigh of his children. So carefully worded a will, I never read—in the event of the death of his children without issue, he bequeathed Dulling Court to various charitable institutions.

  “‘A most singular disposition of his property,’ I remarked to his lawyer.

  “‘Depend upon it, my dear sir, he had his reasons,’ that individual replied.

  “‘And those—’ I suggested.

  “‘I must regard as strictly private and confidential.’

  “The most singular part of my narrative has yet to come,” Mr. Dwarris continued after a pause.

  “Many years after Sir Harry’s death, it chanced I arrived at a friend’s house on the evening before the nomination day of an election, which it was expected would be hotly contested.

  “‘Mr. Blair’s wealth of course gives him a great advantage,’ sighed my hostess, ‘and we all do dislike him so cordially—I would give anything to see him lose.’

  “Accustomed to such thoroughly feminine and logical sentiments, I attached little importance to the lady’s remarks, and with only a very slight feeling of interest in the matter, next morning accompanied my friend to the county town where the nomination was to take place.

  “We were rather late in starting, and before our arrival Mr. Blair had commenced his harangue to the crowd.

  “He was talking loudly and gesticulating violently with his left hand when I first caught sight of him. He was telling the free and independent electors that they knew who he was, what he was, and why he supported such and such a political party.

  “At intervals he was interrupted by cheers and hisses, but at the end of one of his most brilliant perorations, I who had been elbowing my way through the crowd, shouted out at the top of my voice—

  “‘How about the man you tried to murder at the “Bleeding Heart?’’’

  “For a moment there was a dead silence, then the mob took up my cry—

  “‘How about the man you tried to murder at the “Bleeding Heart?”’

  “I saw him look round as if a ghost had spoken, then he fell suddenly back, and his friends carried him off the platform.

  “My hostess had her wish, for his opponent walked over the course, and a few weeks afterwards I read in the papers—

  “Died—At Hollingford Hall, in his forty-sixth year, George Hareleigh Blair, Esq., nephew of the late Ralph Hareleigh, Esq., of Dulling Court.

  “‘He married a Miss Blair, I presume,’ I said to my host.

  “‘Yes, for her money,’ was the reply, ‘she had two hundred thousand pounds.’

  “‘So the mystery of the Bleeding Heart was cleared up at last; but on this side the grave I do not expect to understand how I chanced to dream of a man I had never seen—of places I had never visited—of events of which I was not then cognizant—of conversations which had then still to take place.”

  *An archaic term for a writing desk.

  THE PORTRAIT

  by Margaret Oliphant

  1885

  Margaret Oliphant Wilson was born in Musselburgh, near Edinburgh. Her first novel, Passages in the Life of Mrs. Margaret Maitland, was published in 1849 when she was twenty-one, and her second, Caleb Field, three years later, in 1851. That was the year when she met the publisher William Blackwood in Edinburgh and was invited to contribute to his prestigious Blackwood’s Magazine: she would go on to write over a hundred articles for that magazine alone.

  In 1852 she married Frank Oliphant, a cousin on her mother’s side (becoming Margaret Oliphant Wilson Oliphant) and moved to London. Her life was dogged by tragedy: three of her six children died in infancy, and in 1859 Frank died of tuberculosis in Rome, where they had moved for the sake of his health. Left without resources, Margaret moved back to England with her three surviving children and strove to support them with her writing. In 1864 her daughter Maggie died in Rome, and was buried in her father’s grave. Margaret’s brother returned from Canada after suffering financial ruin there, adding his support and that of his children to Margaret’s burdens.

  Her two remaining sons, Cyril and Francis, entered Eton and Margaret moved to Windsor to be closer to them. For more than thirty years, she kept writing, but when Cyril died in 1890 and Francis in 1894, she lost interest in life and began a decline that resulted in her own death in 1897.

  Mrs. Oliphant, as she was credited in most of her works, was a remarkably prolific writer. Her bibliography includes novels, histories, travelogues, and literary criticism as well as countless articles on a wide range of topics. Her horror stories include “The Open Door” and “The Library Window,” both great favorites of anthologists, and several others that are less well known. One of these is “The Portrait.” Part ghost story and part morality tale, it takes up a common Victorian theme—the uncomfortable relationship between profit and conscience—as a young man becomes the unwilling medium in a dispute between his businesslike father and his long-dead mother.

  At the period when the following incidents occurred I was living with my father at The Grove, a large old house in the immediate neighbourhood of a little town. This had been his home for a number of years; and I believe I was born in it. It was a kind of house which, notwithstanding all the red and white architecture, known at present by the name of Queen Anne, builders nowadays have forgotten how to build. It was straggling and irregular, with wide passages, wide staircases, broad landings; the rooms large but not very lofty; the arrangements leaving much to be desired, with no economy of space: a house belonging to a period when land was cheap, and, so far as that was concerned, there was no occasion to economise. Though it was so near the town, the clump of trees in which it was environed was a veritable grove. In the grounds in spring the primroses grew as thickly as in the forest. We had a few fields for the cows, and an excellent walled garden. The place is being pulled down at this moment to make room for more streets of mean little houses,—the kind of thing, and not a dull house of faded gentry, which perhaps the neighbourhood requires. The house was dull, and so were we, its last inhabitants; and the furniture was faded, even a little dingy,—nothing to brag of. I do not, however, intend to convey a suggestion that we were faded gentry, for that was not the case. My father, indeed, was rich, and had no need to spare any expense in making his life and his house bright if he pleased; but he did not please, and I had not been long enough at home to exercise any special influence of my own. It was the only home I had ever known; but except in my earliest childhood, and in my holidays as a schoolboy, I had in reality known but little of it. My mother had died at my birth, or shortly after, and I had grown up in the gravity and silence of
a house without women. In my infancy, I believe, a sister of my father’s had lived with us, and taken charge of the household and of me; but she, too, had died long, long ago, my mourning for her being one of the first things I could recollect. And she had no successor. There was, indeed, a housekeeper and some maids,—the latter of whom I only saw disappearing at the end of a passage, or whisking out of a room when one of “the gentlemen” appeared. Mrs. Weir, indeed, I saw nearly every day; but a curtsey, a smile, a pair of nice round arms which she caressed while folding them across her ample waist, and a large white apron, were all I knew of her. This was the only female influence in the house. The drawing-room I was aware of only as a place of deadly good order, into which nobody ever entered. It had three long windows opening on the lawn, and communicated at the upper end, which was rounded like a great bay, with the conservatory. Sometimes I gazed into it as a child from without, wondering at the needlework on the chairs, the screens, the looking-glasses which never reflected any living face. My father did not like the room, which probably was not wonderful, though it never occurred to me in those early days to inquire why.

  I may say here, though it will probably be disappointing to those who form a sentimental idea of the capabilities of children, that it did not occur to me either, in these early days, to make any inquiry about my mother. There was no room in life, as I knew it, for any such person; nothing suggested to my mind either the fact that she must have existed, or that there was need of her in the house. I accepted, as I believe most children do, the facts of existence, on the basis with which I had first made acquaintance with them, without question or remark. As a matter of fact, I was aware that it was rather dull at home; but neither by comparison with the books I read, nor by the communications received from my school-fellows, did this seem to me anything remarkable. And I was possibly somewhat dull too by nature, for I did not mind. I was fond of reading, and for that there was unbounded opportunity. I had a little ambition in respect to work, and that too could be prosecuted undisturbed. When I went to the university, my society lay almost entirely among men; but by that time and afterwards, matters had of course greatly changed with me, and though I recognised women as part of the economy of nature, and did not indeed by any means dislike or avoid them, yet the idea of connecting them at all with my own home never entered into my head. That continued to be as it had always been, when at intervals I descended upon the cool, grave, colourless place, in the midst of my traffic with the world: always very still, well-ordered, serious—the cooking very good, the comfort perfect—old Morphew, the butler, a little older (but very little older, perhaps on the whole less old, since in my childhood I had thought him a kind of Methuselah), and Mrs. Weir, less active, covering up her arms in sleeves, but folding and caressing them just as always. I remember looking in from the lawn through the windows upon that deadly-orderly drawingroom, with a humorous recollection of my childish admiration and wonder, and feeling that it must be kept so for ever and ever, and that to go into it would break some sort of amusing mock mystery, some pleasantly ridiculous spell.