Works of Ellen Wood, page 925
“It used to be only a stoop, Mrs. Chaffen. But those things, you know, always get worse with years.”
Mrs. Chaffen nodded. “And gardening work, when one has a natural stoop, is the worst sort of work a man can take to.”
“True,” assented Ann. She had spoken absently all along, and kept glancing round and listening as though ill at ease. One might have fancied she feared a ghost was coming down the staircase.
“What be you a-harkening at?” asked Mrs. Chaffen.
“For fear the baby should cry.”
“The baby’s in a sweet sleep, he is. I wonder whether he’ll get reared, that baby? — he’s very little. Where’s the gentleman?” abruptly inquired Mrs. Chaffen, after a pause.
“What gentleman?”
“Mrs. Grey’s husband. Him we saw here last night.”
If Ann Hopley had been apathetic before, she was fully aroused to interest now, and turned her eyes upon the nurse with a long stare.
“Why what is it that you are talking of?” she asked. “There has been no gentleman here. Mrs. Grey’s husband is abroad.”
“But I saw him,” persisted the nurse. “He stood right at the head of the staircase when me and Dr. Moore was a-going up it. I saw him.”
“I’m sure you didn’t.”
“I’m sure I did.”
Then they went on, asserting and re-asserting.
Nurse Chaffen protesting, by all that was truthful, that she did see the gentleman: Ann Hopley denying in the most emphatic language that any gentleman had been there, or could have been. Poor woman! in her faithful zeal for her master’s safety; in her terrible inward fear lest this might bring danger upon him, she went so far as to vow by heaven that no living soul had been in the house or about it, save her mistress and the infant, herself and Hopley.
The assertion had its effect Nurse Chaffen was not an irreligious woman, though she did indulge in unlimited gossip, and love a glass of beer when she could get it; and she could not believe that a thing so solemnly asserted was a lie. She felt puzzled to death: her eyes were good and had never played her false yet “Have ye got a ghost in the house?” she asked at length, edging a little nearer to the ironing board and to Ann Hopley.
“I have never seen or heard of one.”
“It’s a rare old place this house. Folks said all kinds of queer things about it in Miser Throckton’s time.”
“He left no ghost in it, that I know of,” repeated Ann.
“Well I never! I can’t make it out You might a’most as soon tell me to believe there’s no truth in the Bible. He stood atop o’ the stairs, looking down at me and the doctor. It was dusk, I grant; a’most dark; but I saw him as plain as plain could be. He had got white teeth and a suit of black on; and he went off into that door that’s at the fur end of the passage.”
A keen observer might have detected a sleeping terror in Ann Hopley’s eyes; but she was habitually of calm manner and she showed perfect calmness now, knowing how much was at stake. A great deal had all along depended upon her ready presence of mind, her easy equanimity in warding off suspicion: it depended more than ever on her at this trying time, and she had her wits at hand.
“Your eyes and the dusk must have misled you, Mrs. Chaffen,” she quietly rejoined. “Is it possible — I put it to yourself — that any gentleman could be in this house, and me and Hopley not know it? That night I had run down from my mistress’s room, where she was lying off her head with the fever, and the baby asleep in its little bed by the fire, and was making a drop of gruel in the kitchen here, when the ring at the gate came. I had a great mind to send Hopley to open it: I heard him out yonder putting up his tools for the night: but I should have had to go close up to make him understand, for he’s as deaf as a post; and his knees would have been a long while making their way through the maze. So I went myself: it seemed less trouble; and I let in you and the doctor. As to any soul’s having been in the place, save me and Hopley and the missis and baby, it’s a moral impossibility; and if necessary I could swear to it.”
“Where do that there end door lead to?” questioned Mrs. Chaffen, only half-convinced and that half against her will.
“It leads to nowhere. It’s a sitting-room. Mrs. Grey does not often use it.”
“Well, this beats everything, this do. I’m sure I could have swore that a gentleman was there.”
“It was quite a mistake. Hark! there is the baby.” Nurse Chaffen flew up the stairs. Ann Hopley went on with her ironing; her face, now that she was alone, allowing its terror scope.
“It is so foolish of my master to run risks just at this time, when the house is liable to be invaded by strangers!” she ejaculated wearily. “But who was to foresee the doctor would come bursting in like that! Pray Heaven master doesn’t show himself again like that while the woman’s here!”
Mrs. Chaffen sat in the sick-room, the awakened baby occupying her lap, and the problem her mind. Never in all her life had she felt to be in so entire a mist. Ann Hopley she could not and would not disbelieve: and yet, in her reasoning moments she was as fully persuaded that a gentleman had been there, and that she had seen him, as that the sun shone in the sky.
A day or two went on; and the subject was never out of the woman’s mind. Now leaning to this side of the question, now wavering to that, she could not arrive at any positive conclusion. But, taking one thing with another, she thought the house was rather a strange house. Why did Ann Hopley want to keep her for ever in that one room? — as she evidently did want to — and prevent her from moving freely about the house? An unfortunate doubt took possession of her — was there a gentleman in the house after all; and, for some reason or other, keeping himself concealed? Unfortunate, because it was to bear unpleasant fruit.
“Be whipped if it is not the most likely solution o’ the matter I’ve thought of yet!” cried she, striking her hand on the tall fender. “But how do he manage to hide himself from Ann Hopley? — and how do he get his victuals? Surely she can’t have been deceiving of me — and as good as taking oaths to an untruth! She’d not be so wicked.”
From that time Mrs. Chaffen looked curiously about her, poking and peering around whenever she had the opportunity. One morning in particular, when Mrs. Grey was asleep, and she saw Ann go out to answer the bell, and Hopley was safe at the end of the garden, for she could hear him rolling the path there, Mrs. Chaffen made use of the occasion. She went along the passage to the door where the gentleman had disappeared, and found herself in a dull sitting-room wainscoted with mahogany, its wide, modern window looking to the maze. Keenly Mrs. Chaffers eyes darted about the room: but there was no other outlet that she could see. The dark paneling went from the door to the window, and from the window round to the door again. After that, she made her way into the small angular passages that the house seemed to abound in: two of them were bedrooms with the beds made up, the others seemed to be out of use. None of them were locked; the doors of most of them stood open; but certainly in not one of them was there any trace of a hidden gentleman.
That same day when she had finished her dinner, brought up to her as usual, she hastily put the things together on the tray and darted off with it down stairs. Mrs. Grey feebly called to her; but the nurse, conveniently deaf, went on without hearing. The stair-case was angular, the turnings were short, and Mrs. Chaffen, as she went through the last one, gave the tray an inadvertent knock against the wall. Its plates rattled, its glasses jingled, betraying their approach: and — if ever she had heard a bolt slipped in her life, she felt sure she heard one slipped inside the kitchen door.
“It’s me, Mrs. Hopley, with the tray,” she called out, going boldly on. “Open the door.”
No answer. No signs of being heard. Everything seemed perfectly still. Mrs. Chaffen managed to lodge the tray against the door-post and hold it steady with one hand, while she tried the door with the other. But she could not open it.
“Mrs. Hopley, it’s me with the tray. Please open.” It was opened then. Ann Hopley flung it wide and stood there staring, a saucepan in her hand. “What, have you brought the things down!” she exclaimed in a voice of surprise. “Why on earth couldn’t you have let them be till I came up?”
The nurse carried her tray onwards, and put it on the board under the window. At the table, not having been polite enough to his wife to take off his flapping straw hat in her presence, sat the gardener, munching his dinner as toothless people best can, his back to the light.
“Why did you keep me waiting at the door?” asked the nurse, not pleased.
“Did you wait?” returned Ann Hopley. “I was in the back place there, washing out the saucepans. You might have come in without knocking.”
“The door was bolted.”
“The door bolted! — not it,” disputed Ann. “The latch has got a nasty trick of catching, though.”
“This is fine weather, Mr. Hopley!” said the nurse, leaving the point uncontested, and raising her voice.
He seemed to be, as Ann had formerly expressed it, as deaf as a post. Neither turning his head nor answering, but keeping on at his dinner. Ann bent her head to his ear.
“The nurse, Mrs. Chaffen, spoke to you, Hopley. She says what fine weather it is.”
“Ay, ay, ma’am,” said he; “fine and bright.”
What more might have passed was stopped by the ringing of Mrs. Grey’s bell; a loud, long, impatient peal. The nurse turned to run.
“For pity’s sake don’t leave her again, Mrs. Chaffen!” called out Ann Hopley with some irritation. “If you do, I shall complain to Mr. Moore. You’ll cause the fever to return.”
“I could be upon my oath that she slipped the bolt to keep me out,” thought the nurse, hurrying along. “Drat the cross-grained woman! Does she fear I shall poison her kitchen?”
CHAPTER V.
Watching the House.
MRS. JINKS’S new lodger, Mr. Strange, was making himself at home, not only at Mrs. Jinks’s, but in the village generally, and gradually getting familiar with its stories and its politics. Talking with the men at the station one hour, chatting to the field labourers the next; stepping into the shops to buy tobacco, or paper, or lozenges, or what not, and staying a good twenty minutes before he came out again: Mr. Strange was ingratiating himself with the local world.
But, though he gossiped freely enough without doors and with Mrs. Jinks within, he did not appear anxious to cultivate intimacy with the social sphere; but rather avoided it. The Rev. Mr. Cattacomb, relying on the information that the new lodger was a gentleman reading for Oxford, had taken the initiative and made an advance to acquaintanceship. Mr. Strange, while receiving it with perfect civility, intimated that he was obliged to decline it. His health, he said, left him no alternative, and he had come to the country for entire quiet. As to his reading for Oxford, it was a mistake he hinted. He was reading; but not with a view of going to any college. After that, the gentlemen bowed when they chanced to meet in the passages or out of doors, exchanged perhaps a remark on the fine weather; and there it ended.
The reader has not failed to detect that this “Mr. Strange,” the name caught up so erroneously by Mrs. Jinks, was in reality the shrewd detective officer sent down by Scotland Yard in search of Philip Salter. His instructions were, not to hurry matters to an abrupt conclusion and so miss his game, but to track out Salter patiently and prudently. A case on which he had been recently engaged had been hurried and lost. Circumstances connected with it had caused him to lose sight of his usual prudence: he thought he was justified in doing what he did, and acted for the best: but the result proved him to have been wrong. No fear, with this failure on his mind, and the caution of his masters in his ears, that he would be in over much hurry now. In point of fact he could not if he would, for there was nothing to make hurry over.
For some time not a trace of any kind could Mr. Strange find of Philip Salter. People with whom he gossipped talked to him without any reserve; he was sure of that; and he would artfully lead the conversation and twist it the way he pleased; but he could hear nothing of any one likely to be Salter. The man might as well never have been within a hundred miles of Foxwood; for the matter of that, he might as well never have had existence, for all the trace there was left of him. Scotland Yard, however, was sure that Salter was to be found not far off, and that was enough: Mr. Strange, individually, felt sure of it also.
Knowing what he had been told of the visits of Sir Karl Andinnian to Detective Burtenshaw, and their object, Mr. Strange’s attention was especially directed to Foxwood Court. Before he had been three days in the place, he had won the heart of Giles the footman (much at liberty just then, through the temporary absence of his master and mistress) and treated him to five glasses of best ale at different times in different public-houses. Giles, knowing no reason for reticence, freely described all he knew about Foxwood Court: the number of inmates, their names, their duties, their persons, and all the rest of it. Not the least idea penetrated his brain that the gentleman had any motive for listening to the details, save the whiling away of some of the day’s idle hours. There was certainly no one at the Court that could be at all identified with the missing man; and, so far, Mr. Strange had lost his time and his ale money. Of course he put questions as to Sir Karl’s movements — where he went to in the day, what calls he made, and what he did. But Giles could give no information that was available. Happily, he was ignorant of his master’s visits to the Maze.
In short — from what Mr. Strange could gather from Giles and others, there was no one whatever in or about Foxwood, then or in time past, that at all answered to Philip Salter. He heard Mr. Smith spoken of— “Smith the agent, an old friend of the Andinnian family” — but it did not once occur to him to attempt to identify him with the criminal. Smith the agent (whom by the way Mr. Strange had not chanced yet to see) was living openly in the place, going about amid the tenants on the estate, appearing at church, altogether transacting his business and pursuing his course without concealment: that is not how Salter would have dared to live, and the detective did not give Smith a suspicious thought. No: wherever Salter might be he was evidently in strict concealment: and it must be Mr. Strange’s business to hunt him out of it.
In the meantime, no speculation whatever had been aroused in the village as to Mr. Strange himself. He had taken care to account for his stay there at the first onset, and people’s minds were at rest. The gentleman in delicate health was free to come and go; his appearance in the street, or roads, or fields, excited no more conjecture or observation than did that of the oldest inhabitant. The Reverend Mr. Cattacomb was stared at whenever he appeared, in consequence of the proceedings of St. Jerome’s: Mr. Strange passed along in peace.
Still, he learnt nothing. Sir Karl and Lady Andinnian had returned home long and long ago; he often saw them out (though he took care they should not see him), together or separately as might be, Sir Karl sometimes driving her in a beautiful little pony-chaise: but he could learn no trace of the man he was sent after. Sir Karl heard that some young student was in the village, out of health and reading for Oxford; he somehow caught up the notion that it was only a lad, and as he never chanced to see him, thought no more of him. And whether Mr. Strange might not have thrown up the game in a short time for utter lack of scent, cannot be told. A clue — or what he thought was a clue — arose at last It arose, too, out of a slight misfortune that happened to himself. Entering the house one evening at dusk before the passage lamp was lighted, he chanced to put his foot into a tray of wine-glasses, that the young maid had incautiously placed on the floor outside the parlour-door. In trying to start back and save the glasses, Mr. Strange slipped, went down with his right hand upon the tray, broke a glass or two, and cut his hand in three or four places. Miss Blake was there at the time, helping to catechise some young children: she felt really sorry for the mishap, and kindly went upstairs to the drawing-room to see its extent. The hand was in a bowl of warm water, and Mrs. Jinks was searching for linen to bind it up.
“Why do you put it into warm water, Mr. Strange?” she asked. “It will make it bleed all the more.”
“Some bits of glass may have got in,” he replied.
“Will you have Mr. Moore?”
But he laughed at the notion of sending for a doctor to cut fingers, and he bound up the hand himself, saying it would be all right. The next day, in the afternoon, Miss Blake made her appearance in his room to inquire how the damage was progressing, and found Mrs. Jinks in the act of assisting him to dress it with some precious ointment that she vowed was better than gold, and would not fail to heal the cuts in a day or two.
Miss Blake had previously a speaking acquaintanceship with Mr. Strange, having often met him going in and out. She sat down; and the three were chatting amicably when they were pounced in upon by little Mrs. Chaffen. Happening to call in to see her cousin, and hearing from the maid downstairs what Mrs. Jinks was then engaged upon — dressing the gentleman’s hand — the nurse ran up to offer her more experienced services.
She took the hand out of Mrs. Jinks’s into her own, and dressed it and bound it up as well as Mr. Moore himself could have done. It was nearly over when, by a curious coincidence — curious, considering what was to come of it — the conversation turned upon ghosts. Upon ghosts, of all things in the world! Some noise had been heard in the house the previous night by all the inmates — which noise had not been in any way accounted for. It was like the falling down of a piece of heavy furniture. It had awoke Mr. Cattacomb; it had awoke Mrs. Jinks; it had startled Mr. Strange, who was not asleep. The history of this was being given to Miss Blake, Mr. Strange gravely asserting it could have been nothing but a ghost — and that set Mrs. Chaffen on. She proceeded to tell them with real gravity, not assumed, that she did believe a ghost, in the shape of a gentleman in dinner dress, haunted the Maze: or else that her eyes were taking to see visions.
