The Mammoth Book of Haunted House Stories (Mammoth Books) (15 page)

“Step upstairs, sir,” entreated the departing tenant; “it’s cold down here, with the door standing wide.”

“Had you the whole house, then, William?” asked Graham Coulton, in some surprise.

“The whole of it, and right sorry I, for one, am to leave it; but nothing else would serve my wife. This room, sir,” and with a little conscious pride, William, doing the honours of his late residence, asked his guest into a spacious apartment occupying the full width of the house on the first floor.

Tired though he was, the young man could not repress an exclamation of astonishment.

“Why, we have nothing so large as this at home, William,” he said.

“It’s a fine house,” answered William, raking the embers together as he spoke and throwing some wood upon them; “but, like many a good family, it has come down in the world.”

There were four windows in the room, shuttered close; they had deep, low seats, suggestive of pleasant days gone by; when, well-curtained and well-cushioned, they formed snug retreats for the children, and sometimes for adults also; there was no furniture left, unless an oaken settle beside the hearth, and a large mirror let into the panelling at the opposite end of the apartment, with a black marble console table beneath it, could be so considered; but the very absence of chairs and tables enabled the magnificent proportions of the chamber to be seen to full advantage, and there was nothing to distract the attention from the ornamented ceiling, the panelled walls, the old-world chimney-piece so quaintly carved, and the fire-place lined with tiles, each one of which contained a picture of some scriptural or allegorical subject.

“Had you been staying on here, William,” said Coulton, flinging himself wearily on the settee, “I’d have asked you to let me stop where I am for the night.”

“If you can make shift, sir, there is nothing as I am aware of to prevent you stopping,” answered the man, fanning the wood into a flame. “I shan’t take the key back to the landlord till to-morrow, and this would be better for you than the cold streets at any rate.”

“Do you really mean what you say?” asked the other eagerly. “I should be thankful to lie here; I feel dead beat.”

“Then stay, Master Graham, and welcome. I’ll fetch a basket of coals I was going to put in the van, and make up a good fire, so that you can warm yourself; then I must run round to the other house for a minute or two, but it’s not far, and I’ll be back as soon as ever I can.”

“Thank you, William; you were always good to me,” said the young man gratefully. “This is delightful,” and he stretched his numbed hands over the blazing wood, and looked round the room with a satisfied smile.

“I did not expect to get into such quarters,” he remarked, as his friend in need reappeared, carrying a half-bushel basket full of coals, with which he proceeded to make up a roaring fire. “I am sure the last thing I could have imagined was meeting with anyone I knew in Vauxhall Walk.”

“Where were you coming from, Master Graham?” asked William curiously.

“From old Melfield’s. I was at his school once, you know, and he has now retired, and is living upon the proceeds of years of robbery in Kennington Oval. I thought, perhaps he would lend me a pound, or offer me a night’s lodging, or even a glass of wine; but, oh dear, no. He took the moral tone, and observed he could have nothing to say to a son who defied his father’s authority. He gave me plenty of advice, but nothing else, and showed me out into the rain with a bland courtesy, for which I could have struck him.”

William muttered something under his breath which was not a blessing, and added aloud:

“You are better here, sir, I think, at any rate. I’ll be back in less than half an hour.”

Left to himself, young Coulton took off his coat, and shifting the settle a little, hung it over the end to dry. With his handkerchief he rubbed some of the wet out of his hair; then, perfectly exhausted, he lay down before the fire and, pillowing his head on his arm, fell fast asleep.

He was awakened nearly an hour afterwards by the sound of someone gently stirring the fire and moving quietly about the room. Starting into a sitting posture, he looked around him, bewildered for a moment, and then, recognising his humble friend, said laughingly:

“I had lost myself; I could not imagine where I was.”

“I am sorry to see you here, sir,” was the reply; “but still this is better than being out of doors. It has come on a nasty night. I brought a rug round with me that, perhaps, you would wrap yourself in.”

“I wish, at the same time, you had brought me something to eat,” said the young man, laughing.

“Are you hungry, then, sir?” asked William, in a tone of concern.

“Yes; I have had nothing to eat since breakfast. The governor and I commenced rowing the minute we sat down to luncheon, and I rose and left the table. But hunger does not signify; I am dry and warm, and can forget the other matter in sleep.”

“And it’s too late now to buy anything,” soliloquised the man; “the shops are all shut long ago. Do you think, sir,” he added, brightening, “you could manage some bread and cheese?”

“Do I think – I should call it a perfect feast,” answered Graham Coulton. “But never mind about food to-night, William; you have had trouble enough, and to spare, already.”

William’s only answer was to dart to the door and run downstairs. Presently he reappeared, carrying in one hand bread and cheese wrapped up in paper, and in the other a pewter measure full of beer.

“It’s the best I could do, sir,” he said apologetically. “I had to beg this from the landlady.”

“Here’s to her good health!” exclaimed the young fellow gaily, taking a long pull at the tankard. “That tastes better than champagne in my father’s house.”

“Won’t he be uneasy about you?” ventured William, who, having by this time emptied the coals, was now seated on the inverted basket, looking wistfully at the relish with which the son of the former master was eating his bread and cheese.

“No,” was the decided answer. “When he hears it pouring cats and dogs he will only hope I am out in the deluge, and say a good drenching will cool my pride.”

“I do not think you are right there,” remarked the man.

“But I am sure I am. My father always hated me, as he hated my mother.”

“Begging your pardon, sir; he was over fond of your mother.”

“If you had heard what he said about her to-day, you might find reason to alter your opinion. He told me I resembled her in mind as well as body; that I was a coward, a simpleton, and a hypocrite.”

“He did not mean it, sir.”

“He did, every word. He does think I am a coward, because I– I –” and the young fellow broke into a passion of hysterical tears.

“I don’t half like leaving you here alone,” said William, glancing round the room with a quick trouble in his eyes; “but I have no place fit to ask you to stop, and I am forced to go myself, because I am night watchman, and must be on at twelve o’clock.”

“I shall be right enough,” was the answer. “Only I mustn’t talk any more of my father. Tell me about yourself, William. How did you manage to get such a big house, and why are you leaving it?”

“The landlord put me in charge, sir; and it was my wife’s fancy not to like it.”

“Why did she not like it?”

“She felt desolate alone with the children at night,” answered William, turning away his head; then added, next minute; “Now, sir, if you think I can do no more for you, I had best be off. Time’s getting on. I’ll look round to-morrow morning.”

“Good night,” said the young fellow, stretching out his hand, which the other took as freely and frankly as it was offered. “What should I have done this evening if I had not chanced to meet you?”

“I don’t think there is much chance in the world, Master Graham,” was the quiet answer. “I do hope you will rest well, and not be the worse for your wetting.”

“No fear of that,” was the rejoinder, and the next minute the young man found himself all alone in the Old House in Vauxhall Walk.

Lying on the settle, with the fire burnt out, and the room in total darkness, Graham Coulton dreamed a curious dream. He thought he awoke from deep slumber to find a log smouldering away upon the hearth, and the mirror at the end of the apartment reflecting fitful gleams of light. He could not understand how it came to pass that, far away as he was from the glass, he was able to see everything in it; but he resigned himself to the difficulty without astonishment, as people generally do in dreams.

Neither did he feel surprised when he beheld the outline of a female figure seated beside the fire, engaged in picking something out of her lap and dropping it with a despairing gesture.

He heard the mellow sound of gold, and knew she was lifting and dropping sovereigns. He turned a little so as to see the person engaged in such a singular and meaningless manner, and found that, where there had been no chair on the previous night, there was a chair now, on which was seated an old, wrinkled hag, her clothes poor and ragged, a mob cap barely covering her scant white hair, her cheeks sunken, her nose hooked, her fingers more like talons than aught else as they dived down into the heap of gold, portions of which they lifted but to scatter mournfully.

“Oh! my lost life,” she moaned, in a voice of the bitterest anguish. “Oh! my lost life – for one day, for one hour of it again!”

Out of the darkness – out of the corner of the room where the shadows lay deepest – out from the gloom abiding near the door – out from the dreary night, with their sodden feet and the wet dripping from their heads, came the old men and the young children, the worn women and the weary hearts, whose misery that gold might have relieved, but whose wretchedness it mocked.

Round that miser, who once sat gloating as she now sat lamenting, they crowded – all those pale, sad shapes – the aged of days, the infant of hours, the sobbing outcast, honest poverty, repentant vice; but one low cry proceeded from those pale lips – a cry for help she might have given, but which she withheld.

They closed about her, all together, as they had done singly in life; they prayed, they sobbed, they entreated; with haggard eyes the figure regarded the poor she had repulsed, the children against whose cry she had closed her ears, the old people she had suffered to starve and die for want of what would have been the merest trifle to her; then, with a terrible scream, she raised her lean arms above her head, and sank down – down – the gold scattering as it fell out of her lap, and rolling along the floor, till its gleam was lost in the outer darkness beyond.

Then Graham Coulton awoke in good earnest, with the perspiration oozing from every pore, with a fear and an agony upon him such as he had never before felt in all his existence, and with the sound of the heart-rending cry – “Oh! my lost life” – still ringing in his ears.

Mingled with all, too, there seemed to have been some lesson for him which he had forgotten, that, try as he would, eluded his memory, and which, in the very act of waking, glided away.

He lay for a little thinking about all this, and then, still heavy with sleep, retraced his way into dreamland once more.

It was natural, perhaps, that, mingling with the strange fantasies which follow in the train of night and darkness, the former vision should recur, and the young man ere long found himself toiling through scene after scene wherein the figure of the woman he had seen seated beside a dying fire held principal place.

He saw her walking slowly across the floor munching a dry crust – she who could have purchased all the luxuries wealth can command; on the hearth, contemplating her, stood a man of commanding presence, dressed in the fashion of long ago. In his eyes there was a dark look of anger, on his lips a curling smile of disgust, and somehow, even in his sleep, the dreamer understood it was the ancestor to the descendant he beheld – that the house put to mean uses in which he lay had never so far descended from its high estate, as the woman possessed of so pitiful a soul, contaminated with the most despicable and insidious vice poor humanity knows, for all other vices seem to have connection with the flesh, but the greed of the miser eats into the very soul.

Filthy of person, repulsive to look at, hard of heart as she was, he yet beheld another phantom, which, coming into the room, met her almost on the threshold, taking her by the hand, and pleading, as it seemed, for assistance. He could not hear all that passed, but a word now and then fell upon his car. Some talk of former days; some mention of a fair young mother – an appeal, as it seemed, to a time when they were tiny brother and sister, and the accursed greed for gold had not divided them. All in vain; the hag only answered him as she had answered the children, and the young girls, and the old people in his former vision. Her heart was as invulnerable to natural affection as it had proved to human sympathy. He begged, as it appeared, for aid to avert some bitter misfortune or terrible disgrace, and adamant might have been found more yielding to his prayer. Then the figure standing on the hearth changed to an angel, which folded its wings mournfully over its face, and the man, with bowed head, slowly left the room.

Even as he did so the scene changed again; it was night once more, and the miser wended her way upstairs. From below, Graham Coulton fancied he watched her toiling wearily from step to step. She had aged strangely since the previous scenes. She moved with difficulty; it seemed the greatest exertion for her to creep from step to step, her skinny hand traversing the balusters with slow and painful deliberateness. Fascinated, the young man’s eyes followed the progress of that feeble, decrepit woman. She was solitary in a desolate house, with a deeper blackness than the darkness of night waiting to engulf her.