“I wonder he can rest in his grave,” said Miss Blake, when at last she began to realize, in a dim sort of way, the position of affairs.
According to the River Hall servants’ version, Mr. Elmsdale did anything rather than rest in his grave. About the time the new mourning had been altered to fit perfectly, a nervous housemaid, who began perhaps to find the house dull, mooted the question as to whether “master walked.”
Within a fortnight it was decided in solemn conclave that master did; and further, that the place was not what it had been; and moreover, that in the future it was likely to be still less like what it had been.
There is a wonderful instinct in the lower classes, which enables them to comprehend, without actual knowledge, when misfortune is coming upon a house: and in this instance that instinct was not at fault.
Long before Mr. Craven had satisfied himself that his client’s estate was a very poor one, the River Hall servants, one after another, had given notice to leave—indeed, to speak more accurately, they did not give notice, for they left; and before they left they took care to baptize the house with such an exceedingly bad name, that neither for love nor money could Miss Blake get a fresh “help” to stay in it for more than twenty-four hours.
First one housemaid was taken with “the shivers”; then the cook had “the trembles”; then the coachman was prepared to take his solemn affidavit, that, one night long after everyone in the house to his knowledge was in bed, he “see from his room above the stables, a light a-shining on the Thames, and the figures of one or more a passing and a repassing across the blind.” More than this, a new page-boy declared that, on a certain evening, before he had been told there was anything strange about the house, he heard the door of the passage leading from the library into the side-road slam violently, and looking to see who had gone out by that unused entrance, failed to perceive sign of man, woman, or child, by the bright moonlight.
Moved by some feeling which he professed himself unable to “put a name on,” he proceeded to the door in question, and found it barred, chained, and bolted. While he was standing wondering what it meant, he noticed the light as of gas shining from underneath the library door; but when he softly turned the handle and peeped in, the room was dark as the grave, and “like cold water seemed running down his back.”
Further, he averred, as he stole away into the hall, there was a sound followed him as between a groan and a cry. Hearing which statement, an impressionable charwoman went into hysterics, and had to be recalled to her senses by a dose of gin, suggested and taken strictly as a medicine.
But no supply of spirituous liquors, even had Miss Blake been disposed to distribute anything of the sort, could induce servants after a time to remain in, or charwomen to come to, the house. It had received a bad name, and that goes even further in disfavour of a residence than it does against a man or woman.
Finally, Miss Blake’s establishment was limited to an old creature almost doting and totally deaf, the advantages of whose presence might have been considered problematical; but, then, as Miss Blake remarked, “she was somebody.”
“And now she has taken fright,” proceeded the lady. “How anyone could make her hear their story, the Lord in heaven alone knows; and if there was anything to see, I am sure she is far too blind to see it; but she says she daren’t stay. She does not want to see poor master again till she is dead herself.”
“I have got a tenant for the house the moment you like to say you will leave it,” said Mr. Craven, in reply. “He cares for no ghost that ever was manufactured. He has a wife with a splendid digestion, and several grown-up sons and daughters. They will soon clear out the shadows; and their father is willing to pay two hundred and fifty pounds a year.”
“And you think there is really nothing more of any use amongst the papers?”
“I am afraid not—I am afraid you must face the worst.”
“And my sister’s child left no better off than a street beggar,” suggested Miss Blake.
“Come, come,” remonstrated Mr. Craven; “matters are not so bad as all that comes to. Upon three hundred a year, you can live very comfortable on the Continent; and—”
“We’ll go,” interrupted Miss Blake; “but it is hard lines—not that anything better could have been expected from Robert Elmsdale.”
“Ah! dear Miss Blake, the poor fellow is dead. Remember only his virtues, and let his faults rest.”
“I sha’n’t have much to burden my memory with, then,” retorted Miss Blake, and departed.
Her next letter to my principal was dated from Rouen; but before that reached Buckingham Street, our troubles had begun.
For some reason best known to himself, Mr. Treseby, the good-natured country squire possessed of a wife with an excellent digestion, at the end of two months handed us half a year’s rent, and requested we should try to let the house for the remainder of his term, he, in case of our failure, continuing amenable for the rent. In the course of the three years we secured eight tenants, and as from each a profit in the way of forfeit accrued, we had not to trouble Mr. Treseby for any more money, and were also enabled to remit some small bonuses—which came to her, Miss Blake assured us, as godsends—to the Continent.
After that the place stood vacant for a time. Various care-takers were eager to obtain the charge of it, but I only remember one who was not eager to leave.
That was a night-watchman, who never went home except in the daytime, and then to sleep, and he failed to understand why his wife, who was a pretty, delicate little creature, and the mother of four small children, should quarrel with her bread and butter, and want to leave so fine a place.
He argued the matter with her in so practical a fashion, that the nearest magistrate had to be elected umpire between them.
The whole story of the place was repeated in court, and the night-watchman’s wife, who sobbed during the entire time she stood in the witness-box, made light of her black eye and numerous bruises, but said, “Not if Tim murdered her, could she stay alone in the house another night.”
To prevent him murdering her, he was sent to gaol for two months, and Mr. Craven allowed her eight shillings a week till Tim was once more a free man, when he absconded, leaving wife and children chargeable to the parish.
“A poor, nervous creature,” said Mr. Craven, who would not believe that where gas was, any house could be ghost-ridden. “We must really try to let the house in earnest.”
And we did try, and we did let, over, and over, and over again, always with a like result, till at length Mr. Craven said to me: “Do you know, Patterson, I really am growing very uneasy about that house on the Thames. I am afraid some evil-disposed person is trying to keep it vacant.”
“It certainly is very strange,” was the only remark I felt capable of making.
We had joked so much about the house amongst ourselves, and ridiculed Miss Blake and her troubles to such an extent, that the matter bore no serious aspect for any of us juniors.
“If we are not soon able to let it,” went on Mr. Craven, “I shall advise Miss Blake to auction off the furniture and sell the place. We must not always have an uninhabited house haunting our offices, Patterson.”
I shook my head in grave assent, but all the time I was thinking the day when that house ceased to haunt our offices, would be a very dreary one for the wags amongst our clerks. “Yes, I certainly shall advise Miss Blake to sell,” repeated Mr. Craven, slowly.
Although a hard-working man, he was eminently slow in his ideas and actions.
There was nothing express about our dear governor; upon no special mental train did he go careering through life. Eminently he preferred the parliamentary pace: and I am bound to say the life-journey so performed was beautiful exceedingly, with waits not devoid of interest at little stations utterly outside his profession, with kindly talk to little children, and timid women, and feeble men; with a pleasant smile for most with whom he came in contact, and time for words of kindly advice which did no
t fall perpetually on stony ground, but which sometimes grew to maturity, and produced rich grain of which himself beheld the garnering.
Nevertheless, to my younger and quicker nature, he did seem often very tardy.
“Why not advise her now?” I asked.
“Ah! my boy,” he answered, “life is very short, yet it is long enough to have no need in it for hurry.”
The same day, Colonel Morris appeared in our office. Within a fortnight, that gallant officer was our tenant; within a month, Mrs. Morris, an exceedingly fine lady, with grown-up children, with very young children also, with ayahs, with native servants, with English servants, with a list of acquaintances such as one may read of in the papers the day after a Queen’s drawing-room, took possession of the Uninhabited House, and, for about three months, peace reigned in our dominions.
Buckingham Street, as represented by us, stank in the nostrils of no human being.
So far we were innocent of offence, we were simply ordinary solicitors and clerks, doing as fully and truly as we knew how, an extremely good business at rates which yielded a very fair return to our principal.
The Colonel was delighted with the place, he kindly called to say; so was Mrs. Morris; so were the grown-up sons and daughters of Colonel and Mrs. Morris; and so, it is to be presumed, were the infant branches of the family.
The native servants liked the place because Mr. Elmsdale, in view of his wife’s delicate health, had made the house “like an oven,” to quote Miss Blake. “It was bad for her, I know,” proceeded that lady, “but she would have her own way, poor soul, and he—well, he’d have had the top brick of the chimney of a ten-story house off, if she had taken a fancy for that article.”
Those stoves and pipes were a great bait to Colonel Morris, as well as a source of physical enjoyment to his servants.
He, too, had married a woman who was not always easy to please; but River Hall did please her, as was natural, with its luxuries of heat, ease, convenience, large rooms opening one out of another, wide verandahs overlooking the Thames, staircases easy of ascent; baths, hot, cold, and shower; a sweet, pretty garden, conservatory with a door leading into it from the spacious hall, all exceedingly cheap at two hundred pounds a year.
Accordingly, at first, the Colonel was delighted with the place, and not the less so because Mrs. Morris was delighted with it, and because it was also so far from town, that he had a remarkably good excuse for frequently visiting his club.
Before the new-comers, local tradesmen bowed down and did worship.
Visitors came and visitors went, carriages appeared in shoals, and double-knocks were plentiful as blackberries. A fresh leaf had evidently been turned over at River Hall, and the place meant to give no more trouble for ever to Miss Blake, or Mr. Craven, or anybody. So, as I have said, three months passed. We had got well into the dog-days by that time; there was very little to do in the office. Mr. Craven had left for his annual holiday, which he always took in the company of his wife and daughters—a correct, but possibly a depressing, way of spending a vacation which must have been intended to furnish some social variety in a man’s life; and we were all very idle, and all very much inclined to grumble at the heat, and length, and general slowness of the days, when one morning, as I was going out in order to send a parcel off to Mrs. Craven, who should I meet coming panting up the stairs but Miss Blake!
“Is that you, Patterson?” she gasped. I assured her it was I in the flesh, and intimated my astonishment at seeing her in hers.
“Why, I thought you were in France, Miss Blake,” I suggested.
“That’s where I have just come from,” she said. “Is Mr. Craven in?” I told her he was out of town.
“Ay—that’s where everybody can be but me,” she remarked, plaintively. “They can go out and stay out, while I am at the beck and call of all the scum of the earth. Well, well, I suppose there will be quiet for me sometime, if only in my coffin.”
As I failed to see that any consolatory answer was possible, I made no reply. I only asked:
“Won’t you walk into Mr. Craven’s office, Miss Blake?”
“Now, I wonder,” she said, “what good you think walking into his office will do me!”
Nevertheless, she accepted the invitation. I have, in the course of years, seen many persons suffering from heat, but I never did see any human being in such a state as Miss Blake was that day.
Her face was a pure, rich red, from temple to chin; it resembled nothing so much as a brick which had been out for a long time, first in the sun and the wind, and then in a succession of heavy showers of rain. She looked weather-beaten, and sun-burnt, and sprayed with salt-water, all at once. Her eyes were a lighter blue than I previously thought eyes could be. Her cheek-bones stood out more prominently than I had thought cheek-bones capable of doing. Her mouth—not quite a bad one, by the way—opened wider than any within my experience; and her teeth, white and exposed, were suggestive of a set of tombstones planted outside a stonemason’s shop, or an upper and lower set exhibited at the entrance to a dentist’s operating-room. Poor dear Miss Blake, she and those pronounced teeth parted company long ago, and a much more becoming set—which she got exceedingly cheap, by agreeing with the maker to “send the whole of the city of London to her, if he liked”—now occupy their place.
But on that especial morning they were very prominent. Everything, in fact, about the lady, or belonging to her, seemed exaggerated, as if the heat of the weather had induced a tropical growth of her mental and bodily peculiarities. Her bonnet was crooked beyond even the ordinary capacity of Miss Blake’s head-gear; the strings were rolled up till they looked like ropes which had been knotted under her chin. A veil, as large and black as a pirate’s flag, floated down her back; her shawl was at sixes and sevens; one side of her dress had got torn from the bodice, and trailed on the ground leaving a broadly-marked line of dust on the carpet. She looked as if she had no petticoats on; and her boots—those were the days ere side-springs and buttons obtained—were one laced unevenly, and the other tied on with a piece of ribbon.
As for her gloves, they were in the state we always beheld them; if she ever bought a new pair (which I do not believe), she never treated us to a sight of them till they had been long past decent service. They never were buttoned, to begin with; they had a wrinkled and haggard appearance, as if from extreme old age. If their colour had originally been lavender, they were always black with dirt; if black, they were white with wear.
As a bad job, she had, apparently, years before, given up putting a stitch in the ends of the fingers, when a stitch gave way; and the consequence was that we were perfectly familiar with Miss Blake’s nails—and those nails looked as if, at an early period of her life, a hammer had been brought heavily down upon them. Mrs. Elmsdale might well be a beauty, for she had taken not only her own share of the good looks of the family, but her sister’s also.
We used often, at the office, to marvel why Miss Blake ever wore a collar, or a tucker, or a frill, or a pair of cuffs. So far as clean linen was concerned, she would have appeared infinitely brighter and fresher had she and female frippery at once parted company. Her laces were always in tatters, her collars soiled, her cuffs torn, and her frills limp. I wonder what the natives thought of her in France! In London, we decided—and accurately, I believe—that Miss Blake, in the solitude of her own chamber, washed and got-up her cambrics and fine linen—and it was a “get-up” and a “put-on” as well.
Had any other woman, dressed like Miss Blake, come to our office, I fear the clerks would not have been over-civil to her. But Miss Blake was our own, our very own. She had grown to be as our very flesh and blood. We did not love her, but she was associated with us by the closest ties that can subsist between lawyer and client. Had anything happened to Miss Blake, we should, in the event of her death, have gone in a body to her funeral, and felt a want in our lives for ever after.
But Miss Blake had not the slightest intention of dying: we were not afrai
d of that calamity. The only thing we really did dread was that some day she might insist upon laying the blame of River Hall remaining uninhabited on our shoulders, and demand that Mr. Craven should pay her the rent out of his own pocket.
We knew if she took that, or any other pecuniary matter, seriously in hand, she would carry it through; and, between jest and earnest, we were wont to speculate whether, in the end, it might not prove cheaper to our firm if Mr. Craven were to farm that place, and pay Miss Blake’s niece an annuity of say one hundred a year.
Ultimately we decided that it would, but that such a scheme was impracticable, because Miss Blake would always think we were making a fortune out of River Hall, and give us no peace till she had a share of the profit.
For a time, Miss Blake—after unfastening her bonnet-strings, and taking out her brooch and throwing back her shawl—sat fanning herself with a dilapidated glove, and saying, “Oh dear! oh dear! what is to become of me I cannot imagine.” But, at length, finding I was not to be betrayed into questioning, she observed:
“If William Craven knew the distress I am in, he would not be out of town enjoying himself, I’ll be bound.”
“I am quite certain he would not,” I answered, boldly. “But as he is away, is there nothing we can do for you?”
She shook her head mournfully. “You’re all a parcel of boys and children together,” was her comprehensive answer.
“But there is our manager, Mr. Taylor,” I suggested.
“Him!” she exclaimed. “Now, if you don’t want me to walk out of the office and never set foot in it again, don’t talk to me about Taylor.”
“Has Mr. Taylor offended you?” I ventured to inquire.
“Lads of your age should not ask too many questions,” she replied. “What I have against Taylor is nothing to you; only don’t make me desperate by mentioning his name.”
I hastened to assure her that it should never be uttered by me again in her presence, and there ensued a pause, which she filled by looking round the office and taking a mental inventory of everything it contained.
The Occult Detective Megapack Page 18
