The Haunted House

by Hilaire Belloc

  “Yes, Master John,” answered Corton very seriously. “The room that’s panelled with oak which I hear is derived from the wrecks of the Spanish Armada, as is also that in the dining-room.”

  “That’s right,” said John cheerfully. “That’s where the ghost’s going to be. For I am the ghost, and I know. There’s just room between the tapestry on the wall and the red damask hangings at the head of the four-post bed.” Then he added oddly, “I wish I hadn’t gone in for it. It feels mean. But I had to take his appetite away, Corton. I don’t want those millions to eat up Rackham.”

  “You’ll make me despise you, Jacko,” said Bo, with the cruelty of her sex. “What you want is to make the old brute roaring crazy. If you don’t, I shall.”

  “I’ll go through with it, Bo,” said Jacko simply. “But I do pity the old boy all the same. You see, I have had nerves myself—when I was a child.”

  “And you’ll have them again to-night, if there’s a mirror in the room and you squint through a button-hole,” Bo answered. “Now, Corton, all this is bright and right?”

  “Perfectly, miss, absolutely,” said Corton.

  “Well, then, I’ll be getting back and helping some more with this lil’ haunting; and I’ll go coach Lovey-Lad. I know how to make him whine and shiver.”

  So did these conspirators part.

  * * * * *

  Still at her desk, the telephone relinquished, the Esthonian for a moment silenced, Hilda Maple jotted away.

  If she sold for £40,000 she could live modestly and freely for the rest of her life; she had gone into the prices of annuities at her age, and she knew what the £20,000 extra when all was paid off could buy.

  If she could sell for £50,000, with a balance of £30,000 over for an annuity—well and good. Or rather, well and better.

  But time pressed; even if she hooked one of her two fish, she must have something in writing by the morrow.

  She was a determined woman, and a clear-headed woman; and also by nature as hopeful as she was decided. She said to herself, as she jotted figures slowly down on the paper before her, that if she played her cards at all properly she would have her competing offers before the evening was out. Then in the morning before her guests went away she would get a brief note from the firm bidder. She would say it was more regular, and whoever it was that had promised wouldn’t be able to refuse that small formality. Then she could breathe again with something to take up to town on the Tuesday. She would play her cards first with Bruvvish—there was margin to play with in the devotion of Lord Hellup. She must take Bruvvish for a foundation.

  Bruvvish therefore she boarded, taking him aside immediately after she had given him tea, as the sacrificial victim is taken aside after a draught of honeyed wine. She got him into the library, alone, and fired a broadside under which he reeled, and from which he could not recover. She told him that she had divined his desire to purchase Rackham; she loyally swore that his wife had never breathed a word of it, but she admitted that Amathea had not been able to conceal her very natural feeling about the place. They were old friends, were they not? and dear friends—or she would not be speaking so frankly.

  Well, as he knew, until quite lately she would have thought that anyone who asked her to sell Rackham was mad. But then, with him and Amathea it was different. And one thing she had always said: if it had to go—and if it really was her duty to the boy that she should sell—at least it should be in the hands of friends, and for the sake of friends, still more for the sake of feeling that the old place was still in the same kind of hands, she would take what she would certainly take from no one else.

  All the great spirit of the Huggins blood rose at that moment, and before the fatal figures could be uttered, before the foot could be slipped into the open door, the initiative had passed from Hilda to the enemy. The mighty man of business spoke. These things have to be done as with an axe—once, and decisively. He had always read that of the millionaires in the papers. And since he had become a millionaire himself he had been determined to live up to it. He settled his head well down, shortening still further his short neck; he put on the sullen expression which he associated with financial mastery, and he said these words:

  “I’ad thort o’ going to £30,000.”

  Hilda Maple was worthy of herself, and of the occasion.

  “Yes,” she said simply—and then, as though no one had spoken, “as you say. It is most strange to me how long it takes me to make up my mind. I will be straightforward with you, Lord Mere. When I was offered sixty thousand all those years ago …”

  “Sixty thousand!” gasped Lord Mere de Beaurivage.

  Hilda Maple waved her hand impatiently.

  “Sixty thousand, I said. Well, when I was offered it all those years ago I refused it. Not for the money, mind you—I thought it was a very fair price, especially as I had not added anything to speak of in those days. But I could not bear to think of selling the place. They might have offered me sixty million and it would have been the same. But now it’s another matter. You know, dear Lord Mere de Beaurivage” (he quailed beneath her eye), “… that I’m saying it to you because it is you—you and dearest Amathea. One can’t have many close friends in this world. And you know too that I’m thinking of the boy. If I knew that I could get even fifty thousand guineas now, and leave it in safe hands.… Why … Yes …” again she sighed. “I suppose I should yield.”

  “Fifty thousand!” almost shouted Lord Mere de Beaurivage.

  “Yes,” nodded his handsome friend. “Fifty thousand guineas. That’s it. It’s too little, I know. I know what you’re feeling for me—but can’t beat up a price. I can’t haggle. I never could bear the details of business. And if I must suffer, why, it’s like an operation … I want something quick, clean, and done with.… So I’d take even that.”

  It was on the tip of his lordship’s tongue to utter the fatal words, “Yer would, would yer?”—and then her patience would have broken and there would have been a scene. But he stood in sufficient awe of superior culture to be restrained in time. All he said was:

  “Well, ma’am—Ilda, I mean—honest and square like … come … I do think when you say fifty thousand pounds …”

  “Guineas,” murmured Hilda Maple.

  “Ho? Guineas?” he muttered savagely. “You’re fair coming it over me! That’s wot you are, strite—altogether coming it over me!”

  “Oh!” moaned Hilda Maple wearily. “How I hate all this business talk! I don’t want to sell the place. I wish I’d never mentioned it. And if it’s going to interrupt our friendship, for God’s sake let’s say no more about it at all. It’ll be a load off my mind, anyhow, to drop the whole thing. And there I shall be in Rackham, where I’ve always been. And it’s my soul’s home. And with John … here as I grow old … to inherit it all from me,” she added, with beautiful sentiment.

  “Don’t misunderstand me, Ilda, don’t misunderstand me,” said the great man. “We need to be friendly in business, same as in everythink else. Don’t we? Now s’posin we talk it over quiet-like. Here have I been talkin’ thirty thousand pounds. Well, I tell ye’ strite, that was just bargaining. You wouldn’t have me not bargain, would yer? Yer’d think less of me, wouldn’t yer?”

  “Oh, I’m tired … tired, tired!” exclaimed the lady, in tragic tones, higher than she had yet used, and alarming to the financier, who was always terrified of women’s whims. “I can’t go into it any more, George” (she did not often call him George—but she called him George now). “Really I can’t. I tell you …” She got up and moved as though she would go.

  “Stye a bit. Wite a bit, Ilda, do!” he cried, hoisting himself out of his chair. “I’ve got ter tell Mattie somethin, yer know. Now, let’s be reasonable. We was saying fifty thousand pounds, that’s what you and I was saying …”

  “Guineas,” I said. “No! no! I can’t go on,” burst forth Hilda Maple, making for the door in her agitation. Then she turned back suddenly and frankly took his hands.
“We won’t quarrel, George, will we? Only don’t let us talk business any more.”

  And then she was gone.

  His lordship sank back into the big chair from which he had so painfully raised himself for that moment, and he grumbled to himself half aloud:

  “All Mattie’s doin’; she’s that keen on the place! Fifty thousand! Well, it’s a ramp. But now she’s broke off! What am I to say to Mattie?”

  * * * * *

  Hilda Maple, singularly composed after her recital, not unlike King Lear or any other tragic figure when it gets off into the wings for its pot of beer, had two things clearly fixed in her mind: first, she had established her fifty thousand—guineas; there was no doubt of that at all. She had laid her foundation. Secondly, Lord Hellup would be spending the time between tea and dressing, as he always did, in the little Red Room, reading Motley’s Dutch Republic—it was astonishing, she thought, how that great man could read and re-read Motley’s Dutch Republic. But it argued a stable mind. Anyhow, he would be there, in the little Red Room. And therefore to the little Red Room did Hilda Maple steal.

  * * * * *

  For once in his life Lord Hellup did not mind being interrupted in his re-reading for the fiftieth time of the Monstrous Alva, the Divine William of Orange, the heroic Dutch and the villainous Dagoes. He put down his book with a snap; he was on his feet at once; he had put a winning look into his face, and was about to put a winning tone into his voice to greet her, when Hilda forestalled him.

  “Lord Hellup,” she said, “I have come to ask your advice. No one would give it more freely or more generously than you, and I would trust your judgment beyond that of any living person.”

  “Is that so?” replied the peer, with pleasure ringing through the quiet words.

  “Lord Hellup, I have made up my mind to sell Rackham.”

  “You don’t say?” repeated her guest, in the same courteous intonation. “That was what I felt scared about when you were talking just now in the garden. Well, well, so you want to sell Rackham?”

  “Yes. But I come to you—I shall be quite frank, because you can help me as no one else can …”

  “Help—how?” said his lordship courteously.

  “Why, with your advice, Lord Hellup.”

  His face admitted his relief.

  “You can tell me more justly, and I would trust you more completely—as I have said—than any living man. Tell me honestly, what ought I to ask?”

  “If I were making the offer, Mrs. Maple,” said her friend, word by word and carefully, “I say if I were, or if I were buying for a friend, say …” Then he broke off. “Or, see here, put it this way. If I were asked what it would fetch at an auction in a free market——” He paused and took up another line, and began again almost affectionately, “Or, see here, if I were trying to get the best price for you …”

  Hilda Maple became impatient.

  “Lord Hellup, it would be much the same figure in any case, wouldn’t it?”

  “Why, no,” he said thoughtfully. “You see, if I were buying that would be one thing, and if I were selling for you, that would be another thing. Then if I were bidding at an auction …”

  Hilda Maple thought, not unwisely, that this might go on for ever. During all their growing intimacy she had more and more regarded Lord Hellup as a man of few terse phrases. It seemed there was another side to him—and this would never do.

  “Lord Hellup,” she said simply and swiftly to bring things to a crisis. “Tell me plainly. Do you think that if I ask fifty thousand guineas I am asking too much?”

  “Why, no,” replied the First Baron Hellup, composedly, and weighing his words. “Strictly speaking, you cairn’t ask too much. Same way, they cairn’t offer too little.”

  “I’ve been offered more in the past,” said the lady decisively.

  “Well, if you didn’t take it,” he sympathetically answered, “that means it’s worth more to you than fifty thousand pounds, doesn’t it?”

  “Yes,” she said, “it is. To me, Rackham Catchings is worth untold gold.”

  “Why, then,” said Lord Hellup—and she thought he might have said it earlier, “fifty thousand pounds doesn’t sound too much, does it?”

  “Guineas,” said Hilda Maple.

  “Yes, guineas,” he replied, “it’s all the same to me. If it’s the way you say it is, then fifty thousand pounds—guineas, I mean—can’t be too much, can it?”

  Hilda Maple had come to her conclusion. He was cryptic; he was evasive; but she had heard that the great American masters of finance were always so in the first stages of a bargain. But there could be no doubt about it: fifty thousand guineas had seemed reasonable to this rich man.

  In the silence that followed her mind worked rapidly. He had been shrewd, and she honoured him for being shrewd. He had been cautious; but she had no doubt now that he was a buyer, and that she had heard an authority who would at any rate back her up in her figure of fifty thousand guineas. He had talked of auctions and of acting for her; he had said that guineas and pounds were the same to him; she was content. She felt perhaps a little vaguely that another arrow also had pierced his heart. Well, there was no harm in that.

  But he hadn’t come forward as buyer with any enthusiasm. The purchase money for Rackham must be sought from Lord Mere. But she could in a last resort quote Lord Hellup as having offered. It was stretching a point, but she could risk it. And when old Bruvvish had settled—as he would settle—the purchase money would be something of a dowry to bring even to a man as rich as Hellup was. And anyhow, the market was alive; she had both a bidder and a valuer now.

  She thanked Lord Hellup warmly and sincerely and took his hand and shook it, to impress him with her sincerity. He said with warmth how pleased he had been to be of any service; but not ten minutes later, when Mrs. Maple had left the room and Bo had come in to see her father, he confided to that admirable daughter that Englishwomen were hard to understand.

  “Do you understand them, Bo?” he said.

  “More’n they do me,” said Bo, very truthfully.

  “Now, that woman, Bo—well … I won’t say all I was going to say; but she’s an admirable woman, and she comes here and asks me what she ought to ask for Rackham.”

  “Did you tell her, Pop?” said Bo anxiously.

  “Why,” said her father, in his most genial voice; “I let her talk. I wouldn’t disappoint her. Whatever she wants to sell the place at she’s welcome, for what I care. But she’s an admirable woman, Bo. But these English women are subtle and difficult to understand.”

  “Now see here, Bo,” said the English peer in carefully modulated slow accents, “you women understand what we men sometimes can’t. Least, I can’t. What’s she getting at? What’s it all about?” He paused, and then added in a tone of despair:

  “These Englishwomen are incomprehensible.”

  Bo popped her cigarette out of her mouth between her fingers and spoke short words, “She’s getting at you to buy, Pop!”

  “To buy? What?” said the startled Baron.

  “Why, Rackham Catchings. This.” And with the words the lovely girl struck her right heel sharply against the floor. “All around …” she made a circle with her finger in the air. “Roof and all. Counting the little gadgets.”

  “I don’t want it, Bo,” her father said, sitting up and speaking very earnestly.

  “She wants you to want it,” answered his daughter.

  “What should I do with it?” asked her father in his bewilderment.

  “Don’t you touch it, Pop,” said his daughter decisively. “Leave it on the hook … Now if you want to know who will buy Rackham …”

  But her father was musing, and interrupted her.

  “I did some figuring,” he said, “just to pass the time—as I do. And I make out this place and all the fixings, as it stands, counting the visitors’ book, would stand me in for more ’n two hundred thousand and less than a quarter of a million dollars.”

  Bo ag
reed.

  “I don’t know about that,” she said. “Yes, I do, though” (for a thought had struck her), “I’ve heard what the death duty was—when Henry Maple died, before she’d built on. They paid duty on £20,000. That’s not a quarter of a million; that’s only a hundred thousand.”

  “These Britisher Death Duties are appraised damn low,” mused his lordship. “And there’s been plenty of fixings in the place since then.”

  “You’ll find that she won’t take less than £50,000,” said Bo decisively.

  “Well, she won’t get them from me,” said the devout parent, business side uppermost for the moment.

  Bo nodded her strong little chin at him.

  “That’s right, Pop. Don’t you touch it.”

  “You said you knew who was buying,” said her father. He was full of curiosity now that he was on the scent of a deal.

  “Yep,” answered Bo. “It’ll make you jump. And buying gulfs under fifty too. Oh, some boy!”

  Her father had an incredulous look.

  “Which?” said he.

  She took time to deliver her shot, luxuriously inhaling the smoke of her cigarette; and then told him.

  “Jacko!” she said.

  “Whattt!” cried the millionaire, almost jumping out of his chair.

  “That’s so,” answered Bo, delighted with the effect. “Jacko. Oh, that lad’s all planed down, tongued and grooved.” She shook her head. “No rough lumber.”

  Lord Hellup, as befitted a man who had just been shot, hesitated. He had too much pride to accept orders off hand, and too much snap as well. But he hesitated.

  “See here, Bo,” he began slowly, after a long pause, “I’m not saying a word against Jacko, mind you. That’s your end. I never did believe in worrying young people, but if he can buy real estate like that, why …” There was a tone of admiration creeping into his voice which delighted his daughter’s ear.

  “He’ll buy—settle, and clinch; leave that to him,” she said. “He’s a little Napoleon, is Jacko.”

  “Still, Bo, one doesn’t gaff Rackham Catchings at £20,000.”