“Open the door!” bellowed an indignant voice. “Open the door!”
Mrs. Simpson, commanding silence with an uplifted finger, proceeded to carve the beef. A rattle of knives and forks succeeded.
“O-pen-the-door!” said the voice again.
“Not so much noise,” commanded Mr. Cooper. “I can’t hear myself eat.”
“Bob!” said the voice, in relieved accents, “Bob! Come and let me out.”
Mr. Cooper, putting a huge hand over his mouth, struggled nobly with his feelings.
“Who are you calling ‘Bob’?” he demanded, in an unsteady voice. “You keep yourself to yourself. I’ve heard all about you. You’ve got to stay there till my brother-in-law comes home.”
“It’s me, Bob,” said Mr. Simpson— “Bill.”
“Yes, I dare say,” said Mr. Cooper; “but if you’re Bill, why haven’t you got Bill’s voice?”
“Let me out and look at me,” said Mr. Simpson.
There was a faint scream from both ladies, followed by protests.
“Don’t be alarmed,” said Mr. Cooper, reassuringly. “I wasn’t born yesterday. I don’t want to get a crack over the head.”
“It’s all a mistake, Bob,” said the prisoner, appealingly. “I just had a shave and a haircut and — and a little hair-dye. If you open the door you’ll know me at once.”
“How would it be,” said Mr. Cooper, turning to his sister, and speaking with unusual distinctness— “how would it be if you opened the door, and just as he put his head out I hit it a crack with the poker?”
“You try it on,” said the voice behind the door, hotly. “You know who I am well enough, Bob Cooper. I don’t want any more of your nonsense. Milly has put you up to this!”
“If your wife don’t know you, how do you think I can?” said Mr. Cooper. “Now, look here; you keep quiet till my brother-in-law comes home. If he don’t come home perhaps we shall be more likely to think you’re him. If he’s not home by to-morrow morning we — Hsh! Hsh! Don’t you know there’s ladies present?”
“That settles it,” said Mrs. Cooper, speaking for the first time. “My brother-in-law would never talk like that.”
“I should never forgive him if he did,” said her husband, piously.
He poured himself out another glass of beer and resumed his supper with relish. Conversation turned on the weather, and from that to the price of potatoes. Frantic efforts on the part of the prisoner to join in the conversation and give it a more personal turn were disregarded. Finally he began to kick with monotonous persistency on the door.
“Stop it!” shouted Mr. Cooper.
“I won’t,” said Mr. Simpson.
The noise became unendurable. Mr. Cooper, who had just lit his pipe, laid it on the table and looked round at his companions.
“He’ll have the door down soon,” he said, rising. “Halloa, there!”
“Halloa!” said the other.
“You say you’re Bill Simpson,” said Mr. Cooper, holding up a forefinger at Mrs. Simpson, who was about to interrupt. “If you are, tell us something you know that only you could know; something we know, so as to identify you. Things about your past.”
A strange noise sounded behind the door.
“Sounds as though he is smacking his lips,” said Mrs. Cooper to her sister-in-law, who was eyeing Mr. Cooper restlessly.
“Very good,” said Mr. Simpson; “I agree. Who is there?”
“Me and my wife and Mrs. Simpson,” said Mr. Cooper.
“He is smacking his lips,” whispered Mrs. Cooper. “Having a go at the beer, perhaps.”
“Let’s go back fifteen years,” said Mr. Simpson in meditative tones. “Do you remember that girl with copper-coloured hair that used to live in John Street?”
“No!” said Mr. Cooper, loudly and suddenly.
“Do you remember coming to me one day — two days after Valentine Day, it was — white as chalk and shaking like a leaf, and—”
“NO!” roared Mr. Cooper.
“Very well, I must try something else, then,” said Mr. Simpson, philosophically. “Carry your mind back ten years, Bob Cooper—”
“Look here!” said Mr. Cooper, turning round with a ghastly smile. “We’d better get off home, Mary. I don’t like interfering in other people’s concerns. Never did.”
“You stay where you are,” said his wife.
“Ten years,” repeated the voice behind the door. “There was a new barmaid at the Crown, and one night you — —”
“If I listen to any more of this nonsense I shall burst,” remarked Mr. Cooper, plaintively.
“Go on,” prompted Mrs. Cooper, grimly. “One night — —”
“Never mind,” said Mr. Simpson. “It doesn’t matter. But does he identify me? Because if not I’ve got a lot more things I can try.”
The harassed Mr. Cooper looked around appealingly.
“How do you expect me to recognize you—” he began, and stopped suddenly.
“Go back to your courting days, then,” said Mr. Simpson, “when Mrs. Cooper wasn’t Mrs. Cooper, but only wanted to be.”
Mrs. Cooper shivered; so did Mr. Cooper.
“And you came round to me for advice,” pursued Mr. Simpson, in reminiscent accents, “because there was another girl you wasn’t sure of, and you didn’t want to lose them both. Do you remember sitting with the two photographs — one on each knee — and trying to make up your mind?”
“Wonderful imagination,” said Mr. Cooper, smiling in a ghastly fashion at his wife. “Hark at him!”
“I am harking,” said Mrs. Cooper.
“Am I Bill Simpson or am I not?” demanded Mr. Simpson.
“Bill was always fond of his joke,” said Mr. Cooper, with a glance at the company that would have moved an oyster. “He was always fond of making up things. You’re like him in that. What do you think, Milly?”
“It’s not my husband,” said Mrs. Simpson.
“Tell us something about her,” said Mr. Cooper, hastily.
“I daren’t,” said Mr. Simpson. “Doesn’t that prove I’m her husband? But I’ll tell you things about your wife, if you like.”
“You dare!” said Mrs. Cooper, turning crimson, as she realized what confidences might have passed between husband and wife. “If you say a word of your lies about me, I don’t know what I won’t do to you.”
“Very well, I must go on about Bob, then — till he recognizes me,” said Mr. Simpson, patiently. “Carry your mind—”
“Open the door and let him out,” shouted Mr. Cooper, turning to his sister. “How can I recognize a man through a deal door?”
Mrs. Simpson, after a little hesitation, handed him the key, and the next moment her husband stepped out and stood blinking in the gas-light.
“Do you recognize me?” he asked, turning to Mr. Cooper.
“I do,” said that gentleman, with a ferocious growl.
“I’d know you anywhere,” said Mrs. Cooper, with emphasis.
“And you?” said Mr. Simpson, turning to his wife.
“You’re not my husband,” she said, obstinately.
“Are you sure?” inquired Mr. Cooper.
“Certain.”
“Very good, then,” said her brother. “If he’s not your husband I’m going to knock his head off for telling them lies about me.”
He sprang forward and, catching Mr. Simpson by the collar, shook him violently until his head banged against the dresser. The next moment the hands of Mrs. Simpson were in the hair of Mr. Cooper.
“How dare you knock my husband about!” she screamed, as Mr. Cooper let go and caught her fingers. “You’ve hurt him.”
“Concussion, I think,” said Mr. Simpson, with great presence of mind.
His wife helped him to a chair and, wetting her handkerchief at the tap, tenderly bathed the dyed head. Mr. Cooper, breathing hard, stood by watching until his wife touched him on the arm.
“You come off home,” she said, in a hard voice. “You ain
’t wanted. Are you going to stay here all night?”
“I should like to,” said Mr. Cooper, wistfully.
THE THREE SISTERS
Thirty years ago on a wet autumn evening the household of Mallett’s Lodge was gathered round the death-bed of Ursula Mallow, the eldest of the three sisters who inhabited it. The dingy moth-eaten curtains of the old wooden bedstead were drawn apart, the light of a smoking oil-lamp falling upon the hopeless countenance of the dying woman as she turned her dull eyes upon her sisters. The room was in silence except for an occasional sob from the youngest sister, Eunice. Outside the rain fell steadily over the steaming marshes.
“Nothing is to be changed, Tabitha,” gasped Ursula to the other sister, who bore a striking likeness to her although her expression was harder and colder; “this room is to be locked up and never opened.”
“Very well,” said Tabitha brusquely, “though I don’t see how it can matter to you then.”
“It does matter,” said her sister with startling energy. “How do you know, how do I know that I may not sometimes visit it? I have lived in this house so long I am certain that I shall see it again. I will come back. Come back to watch over you both and see that no harm befalls you.”
“You are talking wildly,” said Tabitha, by no means moved at her sister’s solicitude for her welfare. “Your mind is wandering; you know that I have no faith in such things.”
Ursula sighed, and beckoning to Eunice, who was weeping silently at the bedside, placed her feeble arms around her neck and kissed her.
“Do not weep, dear,” she said feebly. “Perhaps it is best so. A lonely woman’s life is scarce worth living. We have no hopes, no aspirations; other women have had happy husbands and children, but we in this forgotten place have grown old together. I go first, but you must soon follow.”
Tabitha, comfortably conscious of only forty years and an iron frame, shrugged her shoulders and smiled grimly.
“I go first,” repeated Ursula in a new and strange voice as her heavy eyes slowly closed, “but I will come for each of you in turn, when your lease of life runs out. At that moment I will be with you to lead your steps whither I now go.”
As she spoke the flickering lamp went out suddenly as though extinguished by a rapid hand, and the room was left in utter darkness. A strange suffocating noise issued from the bed, and when the trembling women had relighted the lamp, all that was left of Ursula Mallow was ready for the grave.
That night the survivors passed together. The dead woman had been a firm believer in the existence of that shadowy borderland which is said to form an unhallowed link between the living and the dead, and even the stolid Tabitha, slightly unnerved by the events of the night, was not free from certain apprehensions that she might have been right.
With the bright morning their fears disappeared. The sun stole in at the window, and seeing the poor earth-worn face on the pillow so touched it and glorified it that only its goodness and weakness were seen, and the beholders came to wonder how they could ever have felt any dread of aught so calm and peaceful. A day or two passed, and the body was transferred to a massive coffin long regarded as the finest piece of work of its kind ever turned out of the village carpenter’s workshop. Then a slow and melancholy cortege headed by four bearers wound its solemn way across the marshes to the family vault in the grey old church, and all that was left of Ursula was placed by the father and mother who had taken that self-same journey some thirty years before.
To Eunice as they toiled slowly home the day seemed strange and Sabbath-like, the flat prospect of marsh wilder and more forlorn than usual, the roar of the sea more depressing. Tabitha had no such fancies. The bulk of the dead woman’s property had been left to Eunice, and her avaricious soul was sorely troubled and her proper sisterly feelings of regret for the deceased sadly interfered with in consequence.
“What are you going to do with all that money, Eunice?” she asked as they sat at their quiet tea.
“I shall leave it as it stands,” said Eunice slowly. “We have both got sufficient to live upon, and I shall devote the income from it to supporting some beds in a children’s hospital.”
“If Ursula had wished it to go to a hospital,” said Tabitha in her deep tones, “she would have left the money to it herself. I wonder you do not respect her wishes more.”
“What else can I do with it then?” inquired Eunice.
“Save it,” said the other with gleaming eyes, “save it.”
Eunice shook her head.
“No,” said she, “it shall go to the sick children, but the principal I will not touch, and if I die before you it shall become yours and you can do what you like with it.”
“Very well,” said Tabitha, smothering her anger by a strong effort; “I don’t believe that was what Ursula meant you to do with it, and I don’t believe she will rest quietly in the grave while you squander the money she stored so carefully.”
“What do you mean?” asked Eunice with pale lips. “You are trying to frighten me; I thought that you did not believe in such things.”
Tabitha made no answer, and to avoid the anxious inquiring gaze of her sister, drew her chair to the fire, and folding her gaunt arms, composed herself for a nap.
For some time life went on quietly in the old house. The room of the dead woman, in accordance with her last desire, was kept firmly locked, its dirty windows forming a strange contrast to the prim cleanliness of the others. Tabitha, never very talkative, became more taciturn than ever, and stalked about the house and the neglected garden like an unquiet spirit, her brow roughened into the deep wrinkles suggestive of much thought. As the winter came on, bringing with it the long dark evenings, the old house became more lonely than ever, and an air of mystery and dread seemed to hang over it and brood in its empty rooms and dark corridors. The deep silence of night was broken by strange noises for which neither the wind nor the rats could be held accountable. Old Martha, seated in her distant kitchen, heard strange sounds upon the stairs, and once, upon hurrying to them, fancied that she saw a dark figure squatting upon the landing, though a subsequent search with candle and spectacles failed to discover anything. Eunice was disturbed by several vague incidents, and, as she suffered from a complaint of the heart, rendered very ill by them. Even Tabitha admitted a strangeness about the house, but, confident in her piety and virtue, took no heed of it, her mind being fully employed in another direction.
Since the death of her sister all restraint upon her was removed, and she yielded herself up entirely to the stern and hard rules enforced by avarice upon its devotees. Her housekeeping expenses were kept rigidly separate from those of Eunice and her food limited to the coarsest dishes, while in the matter of clothes, the old servant was by far the better dressed. Seated alone in her bedroom this uncouth, hard-featured creature revelled in her possessions, grudging even the expense of the candle-end which enabled her to behold them. So completely did this passion change her that both Eunice and Martha became afraid of her, and lay awake in their beds night after night trembling at the chinking of the coins at her unholy vigils.
One day Eunice ventured to remonstrate. “Why don’t you bank your money, Tabitha?” she said; “it is surely not safe to keep such large sums in such a lonely house.”
“Large sums!” repeated the exasperated Tabitha, “large sums! what nonsense is this? You know well that I have barely sufficient to keep me.”
“It’s a great temptation to housebreakers,” said her sister, not pressing the point. “I made sure last night that I heard somebody in the house.”
“Did you?” said Tabitha, grasping her arm, a horrible look on her face. “So did I. I thought they went to Ursula’s room, and I got out of bed and went on the stairs to listen.”
“Well?” said Eunice faintly, fascinated by the look on her sister’s face.
“There was something there,” said Tabitha slowly. “I’ll swear it, for I stood on the landing by her door and listened; something scuffling on the f
loor round and round the room. At first I thought it was the cat, but when I went up there this morning the door was still locked, and the cat was in the kitchen.”
“Oh, let us leave this dreadful house,” moaned Eunice.
“What!” said her sister grimly; “afraid of poor Ursula? Why should you be? Your own sister who nursed you when you were a babe, and who perhaps even now comes and watches over your slumbers.”
“Oh!” said Eunice, pressing her hand to her side, “if I saw her I should die. I should think that she had come for me as she said she would. O God! have mercy on me, I am dying.”
She reeled as she spoke, and before Tabitha could save her, sank senseless to the floor.
“Get some water,” cried Tabitha, as old Martha came hurrying up the stairs, “Eunice has fainted.”
The old woman, with a timid glance at her, retired, reappearing shortly afterwards with the water, with which she proceeded to restore her much-loved mistress to her senses. Tabitha, as soon as this was accomplished, stalked off to her room, leaving her sister and Martha sitting drearily enough in the small parlour, watching the fire and conversing in whispers.
It was clear to the old servant that this state of things could not last much longer, and she repeatedly urged her mistress to leave a house so lonely and so mysterious. To her great delight Eunice at length consented, despite the fierce opposition of her sister, and at the mere idea of leaving gained greatly in health and spirits. A small but comfortable house was hired in Morville, and arrangements made for a speedy change.
It was the last night in the old house, and all the wild spirits of the marshes, the wind and the sea seemed to have joined forces for one supreme effort. When the wind dropped, as it did at brief intervals, the sea was heard moaning on the distant beach, strangely mingled with the desolate warning of the bell-buoy as it rocked to the waves. Then the wind rose again, and the noise of the sea was lost in the fierce gusts which, finding no obstacle on the open marshes, swept with their full fury upon the house by the creek. The strange voices of the air shrieked in its chimneys windows rattled, doors slammed, and even, the very curtains seemed to live and move.
Works of W. W. Jacobs Page 256
