III
"KEEP the American!" Miss Searle, in compliance with the
injunction conveyed in her brother's telegram (with something
certainly of telegraphic curtness), lost no time in expressing
the pleasure it would give her that our friend should remain.
"Really you must," she said; and forthwith repaired to the house-
keeper to give orders for the preparation of a room.
"But how in the world did he know of my being here?" my companion
put to me.
I answered that he had probably heard from his solicitor of the
other's visit. "Mr. Simmons and that gentleman must have had
another interview since your arrival in England. Simmons, for
reasons of his own, has made known to him your journey to this
neighbourhood, and Mr. Searle, learning this, has immediately
taken for granted that you've formally presented yourself to his
sister. He's hospitably inclined and wishes her to do the proper
thing by you. There may even," I went on, "be more in it than
that. I've my little theory that he's the very phoenix of
usurpers, that he has been very much struck with what the experts
have had to say for you, and that he wishes to have the
originality of making over to you your share--so limited after
all--of the estate."
"I give it up!" my friend mused. "Come what come will!"
"You, of course," said Miss Searle, reappearing and turning to
me, "are included in my brother's invitation. I've told them to
see about a room for you. Your luggage shall immediately be sent
for."
It was arranged that I in person should be driven over to our
little inn and that I should return with our effects in time to
meet Mr. Searle at dinner. On my arrival several hours later I
was immediately conducted to my room. The servant pointed out to
me that it communicated by a door and a private passage with that
of my fellow visitor. I made my way along this passage--a low
narrow corridor with a broad latticed casement through which
there streamed upon a series of grotesquely sculptured oaken
closets and cupboards the vivid animating glow of the western sun
--knocked at his door and, getting no answer, opened it. In an
armchair by the open window sat my friend asleep, his arms and
legs relaxed and head dropped on his breast. It was a great
relief to see him rest thus from his rhapsodies, and I watched
him for some moments before waking him. There was a faint glow of
colour in his cheek and a light expressive parting of his lips,
something nearer to ease and peace than I had yet seen in him. It
was almost happiness, it was almost health. I laid my hand on his
arm and gently shook it. He opened his eyes, gazed at me a
moment, vaguely recognised me, then closed them again. "Let me
dream, let me dream!"
"What are you dreaming about?"
A moment passed before his answer came. "About a tall woman in a
quaint black dress, with yellow hair and a sweet, sweet smile,
and a soft low delicious voice! I'm in love with her."
"It's better to see her than to dream about her," I said. "Get up
and dress; then we'll go down to dinner and meet her."
"Dinner--dinner--?" And he gradually opened his eyes again. "Yes,
upon my word I shall dine!"
"Oh you're all right!" I declared for the twentieth time as he
rose to his feet. "You'll live to bury Mr. Simmons." He told me
he had spent the hours of my absence with Miss Searle--they had
strolled together half over the place. "You must be very
intimate," I smiled.
"She's intimate with ME. Goodness knows what rigmarole I've
treated her to!" They had parted an hour ago; since when, he
believed, her brother had arrived.
The slow-fading twilight was still in the great drawing-room when
we came down. The housekeeper had told us this apartment was
rarely used, there being others, smaller and more convenient, for
the same needs. It seemed now, however, to be occupied in my
comrade's honour. At the furthest end, rising to the roof like a
royal tomb in a cathedral, was a great chimney-piece of chiselled
white marble, yellowed by time, in which a light fire was
crackling. Before the fire stood a small short man, with his
hands behind him; near him was Miss Searle, so transformed by her
dress that at first I scarcely knew her. There was in our
entrance and reception something remarkably chilling and solemn.
We moved in silence up the long room; Mr. Searle advanced slowly,
a dozen steps, to meet us; his sister stood motionless. I was
conscious of her masking her visage with a large white tinselled
fan, and that her eyes, grave and enlarged, watched us intently
over the top of it. The master of Lackley grasped in silence the
proffered hand of his kinsman and eyed him from head to foot,
suppressing, I noted, a start of surprise at his resemblance to
Sir Joshua's portrait. "This is a happy day." And then turning to
me with an odd little sharp stare: "My cousin's friend is my
friend." Miss Searle lowered her fan.
The first thing that struck me in Mr. Searle's appearance was his
very limited stature, which was less by half a head than that of
his sister. The second was the preternatural redness of his hair
and beard. They intermingled over his ears and surrounded his
head like a huge lurid nimbus. His face was pale and attenuated,
the face of a scholar, a dilettante, a comparer of points and
texts, a man who lives in a library bending over books and prints
and medals. At a distance it might have passed for smooth and
rather blankly composed; but on a nearer view it revealed a
number of wrinkles, sharply etched and scratched, of a singularly
aged and refined effect. It was the complexion of a man of sixty.
His nose was arched and delicate, identical almost with the nose
of my friend. His eyes, large and deep-set, had a kind of auburn
glow, the suggestion of a keen metal red-hot--or, more plainly,
were full of temper and spirit. Imagine this physiognomy--grave
and solemn, grotesquely solemn, in spite of the bushy brightness
which made a sort of frame for it--set in motion by a queer,
quick, defiant, perfunctory, preoccupied smile, and you will have
an imperfect notion of the remarkable presence of our host;
something better worth seeing and knowing, I perceived as I quite
breathlessly took him in, than anything we had yet encountered.
How thoroughly I had entered into sympathy with my poor picked-up
friend, and how effectually I had associated my sensibilities
with his own, I had not suspected till, within the short five
minutes before the signal for dinner, I became aware, without his
giving me the least hint, of his placing himself on the
defensive. To neither of us was Mr. Searle sympathetic. I might
have guessed from her attitude that his sister entered into our
thoughts. A marked change had been wrought in her since the
morning; during the hour, indeed--as I read in the light of the
wondering glance he cast at her--that had elapsed since her
parting with her cousin. She had not yet recovered from some
great agitation. Her face was pale and she had clearly been
crying. These notes of trouble gave her a new and quite perverse
dignity, which was further enhanced by something complimentary
and commemorative in her dress.
Whether it was taste or whether it was accident I know not; but
the amiable creature, as she stood there half in the cool
twilight, half in the arrested glow of the fire as it spent
itself in the vastness of its marble cave, was a figure for a
painter. She was habited in some faded splendour of sea-green
crape and silk, a piece of millinery which, though it must have
witnessed a number of dull dinners, preserved still a festive
air. Over her white shoulders she wore an ancient web of the most
precious and venerable lace and about her rounded throat a single
series of large pearls. I went in with her to dinner, and Mr.
Searle, following with my friend, took his arm, as the latter
afterwards told me, and pretended jocosely to conduct him. As
dinner proceeded the feeling grew within me that a drama had
begun to be played in which the three persons before me were
actors--each of a really arduous part. The character allotted to
my friend, however, was certainly the least easy to represent
with effect, though I overflowed with the desire that he should
acquit himself to his honour. I seemed to see him urge his faded
faculties to take their cue and perform. The poor fellow tried to
do himself credit more seriously than ever in his old best days.
With Miss Searle, credulous passive and pitying, he had finally
flung aside all vanity and propriety and shown the bottom of his
fantastic heart. But with our host there might be no talking of
nonsense nor taking of liberties; there and then, if ever, sat a
consummate conservative, breathing the fumes of hereditary
privilege and security. For an hour, accordingly, I saw my poor
protege attempt, all in pain, to meet a new decorum. He set
himself the task of appearing very American, in order that his
appreciation of everything Mr. Searle represented might seem
purely disinterested. What his kinsman had expected him to be I
know not; but I made Mr. Searle out as annoyed, in spite of his
exaggerated urbanity, at finding him so harmless. Our host was
not the man to show his hand, but I think his best card had been
a certain implicit confidence that so provincial a parasite would
hardly have good manners.
He led the conversation to the country we had left; rather as if
a leash had been attached to the collar of some lumpish and half-
domesticated animal the tendency of whose movements had to be
recognised. He spoke of it indeed as of some fabled planet, alien
to the British orbit, lately proclaimed to have the admixture of
atmospheric gases required to support animal life, but not, save
under cover of a liberal afterthought, to be admitted into one's
regular conception of things. I, for my part, felt nothing but
regret that the spheric smoothness of his universe should be
disfigured by the extrusion even of such inconsiderable particles
as ourselves.
"I knew in a general way of our having somehow ramified over
there," Mr. Searle mentioned; "but had scarcely followed it more
than you pretend to pick up the fruit your long-armed pear tree
may drop, on the other side of your wall, in your neighbour's
garden. There was a man I knew at Cambridge, a very odd fellow, a
decent fellow too; he and I were rather cronies; I think he
afterwards went to the Middle States. They'll be, I suppose,
about the Mississippi? At all events, there was that great-uncle
of mine whom Sir Joshua painted. He went to America, but he never
got there. He was lost at sea. You look enough like him to make
one fancy he DID get there and that you've kept him alive by one
of those beastly processes--I think you have 'em over there: what
do you call it, 'putting up' things? If you're he you've not done
a wise thing to show yourself here. He left a bad name behind
him. There's a ghost who comes sobbing about the house every
now and then, the ghost of one to whom he did a wrong."
"Oh mercy ON us!" cried Miss Searle in simple horror.
"Of course YOU know nothing of such things," he rather dryly
allowed. "You're too sound a sleeper to hear the sobbing of
ghosts."
"I'm sure I should like immensely to hear the sobbing of a
ghost," said my friend, the light of his previous eagerness
playing up into his eyes. "Why does it sob? I feel as if that
were what we've come above all to learn."
Mr. Searle eyed his audience a moment gaugingly; he held the
balance as to measure his resources. He wished to do justice to
his theme. With the long finger-nails of his left hand nervously
playing against the tinkling crystal of his wineglass and his
conscious eyes betraying that, small and strange as he sat there,
he knew himself, to his pleasure and advantage, remarkably
impressive, he dropped into our untutored minds the sombre legend
of his house. "Mr. Clement Searle, from all I gather, was a young
man of great talents but a weak disposition. His mother was left
a widow early in life, with two sons, of whom he was the elder
and the more promising. She educated him with the greatest
affection and care. Of course when he came to manhood she wished
him to marry well. His means were quite sufficient to enable him
to overlook the want of money in his wife; and Mrs. Searle
selected a young lady who possessed, as she conceived, every good
gift save a fortune--a fine proud handsome girl, the daughter of
an old friend, an old lover I suspect, of her own. Clement,
however, as it appeared, had either chosen otherwise or was as
yet unprepared to choose. The young lady opened upon him in vain
the battery of her attractions; in vain his mother urged her
cause. Clement remained cold, insensible, inflexible. Mrs. Searle
had a character which appears to have gone out of fashion in my
family nowadays; she was a great manager, a maitresse-femme. A
proud passionate imperious woman, she had had immense cares and
ever so many law-suits; they had sharpened her temper and her
will. She suspected that her son's affections had another object,
and this object she began to hate. Irritated by his stubborn
defiance of her wishes she persisted in her purpose. The more she
watched him the more she was convinced he loved in secret. If he
loved in secret of course he loved beneath him. He went about the
place all sombre and sullen and brooding. At last, with the
rashness of an angry woman, she threatened to bring the young
lady of her choice--who, by the way, seems to have been no
shrinking blossom--to stay in the house. A stormy scene was the
result. He threatened that if she did so he would leave the
country and sail for America. She probably disbelieved him; she
knew him to be weak, but she overrated his weakness. At all
events the rejected one arrived and Clement Searle departed. On a
dark December day he took ship at Southampton. The two women,
desperate with rage and sorrow, sat alone in this big house,
mingling their tears and imprecations. A fortnight later, on
Christmas Eve, in the midst of a great snowstorm long famous in
the country, something happened that quickened their bitterness.
A young woman, battered and chilled by the storm, gained entrance
to the house and, making her way into the presence of the
mistress and her guest, poured out her tale. She was a poor
curate's daughter out of some little hole in Gloucestershire.
Clement Searle had loved her--loved her all too well! She had
been turned out in wrath from her father's house; his mother at
least might pity her--if not for herself then for the child she
was soon to bring forth. Hut the poor girl had been a second time
too trustful. The women, in scorn, in horror, with blows
possibly, drove her forth again into the storm. In the storm she
wandered and in the deep snow she died. Her lover, as you know,
perished in that hard winter weather at sea; the news came to his
mother late, but soon enough. We're haunted by the curate's
daughter!"
Mr. Searle retailed this anecdote with infinite taste and point,
the happiest art; when he ceased there was a pause of some
moments. "Ah well we may be!" Miss Searle then mournfully
murmured.
Searle blazed up into enthusiasm. "Of course, you know"--with
which he began to blush violently--"I should be sorry to claim
any identity with the poor devil my faithless namesake. But I
should be immensely gratified if the young lady's spirit,
deceived by my resemblance, were to mistake me for her cruel
lover. She's welcome to the comfort of it. What one can do in the
case I shall be glad to do. But can a ghost haunt a ghost? I AM a
ghost!"
Mr. Searle stared a moment and then had a subtle sneer. "I could
almost believe you are!"
"Oh brother--and cousin!" cried Miss Searle with the gentlest yet
most appealing dignity. "How can you talk so horribly?"
The horrible talk, however, evidently possessed a potent magic
for my friend; and his imagination, checked a while by the
influence of his kinsman, began again to lead him a dance. From
this moment he ceased to steer his frail bark, to care what he
said or how he said it, so long as he expressed his passionate
appreciation of the scene around him. As he kept up this strain I
ceased even secretly to wish he wouldn't. I have wondered since
that I shouldn't have been annoyed by the way he reverted
constantly to himself. But a great frankness, for the time, makes
its own law and a great passion its own channel. There was
moreover an irresponsible indescribable effect of beauty in
everything his lips uttered. Free alike from adulation and from
envy, the essence of his discourse was a divine apprehension, a
romantic vision free as the flight of Ariel, of the poetry of his
companions' situation and their contrasted general
irresponsiveness.
"How does the look of age come?" he suddenly broke out at
dessert. "Does it come of itself, unobserved, unrecorded,
unmeasured? Or do you woo it and set baits and traps for it, and
watch it like the dawning brownness of a meerschaum pipe, and
make it fast, when it appears, just where it peeps out, and light
a votive taper beneath it and give thanks to it daily? Or do you
forbid it and fight it and resist it, and yet feel it settling
and deepening about you as irresistible as fate?"
"What the deuce is the man talking about?" said the smile of our
host.
"I found a little grey hair this morning," Miss Searle
incoherently prosed.
"Well then I hope you paid it every respect!" cried her visitor.
"I looked at it for a long time in my hand-glass," she answered
with more presence of mind.
"Miss Searle can for many years to come afford to be amused at
grey hairs," I interposed in the hope of some greater ease.
It had its effect. "Ten years from last Thursday I shall be
forty-four," she almost comfortably smiled.
"Well, that's just what I am," said Searle. "If I had only come
here ten years ago! I should have had more time to enjoy the
feast, but I should have had less appetite. I needed first to get
famished."
"Oh why did you wait for that?" his entertainer asked. "To think
of these ten years that we might have been enjoying you!" At the
vision of which waste and loss Mr. Searle had a fine shrill
laugh.
"Well," my friend explained, "I always had a notion--a stupid
vulgar notion if there ever was one--that to come abroad properly
one had to have a pot of money. My pot was too nearly empty. At
last I came with my empty pot!"
Mr. Searle had a wait for delicacy, but he proceeded. "You're
reduced, you're--a--straitened?"
Our companion's very breath blew away the veil. "Reduced to
nothing. Straitened to the clothes on my back!"
"You don't say so!" said Mr. Searle with a large vague gasp.
"Well--well--well!" he added in a voice which might have meant
everything or nothing; and then, in his whimsical way, went on to
finish a glass of wine. His searching eye, as he drank, met mine,
and for a moment we each rather deeply sounded the other, to the
effect no doubt of a slight embarrassment. "And you," he said by
way of carrying this off--"how about YOUR wardrobe?"
"Oh his!" cried my friend; "his wardrobe's immense. He could
dress up a regiment!" He had drunk more champagne--I admit that
the champagne was good--than was from any point of view to have
been desired. He was rapidly drifting beyond any tacit dissuasion
of mine. He was feverish and rash, and all attempt to direct
would now simply irritate him. As we rose from the table he
caught my troubled look. Passing his arm for a moment into mine,
"This is the great night!" he strangely and softly said; "the
night and the crisis that will settle me."
Mr. Searle had caused the whole lower portion of the house to be
thrown open and a multitude of lights to be placed in convenient
and effective positions. Such a marshalled wealth of ancient
candlesticks and flambeaux I had never beheld. Niched against the
dusky wainscots, casting great luminous circles upon the pendent
stiffness of sombre tapestries, enhancing and completing with
admirable effect the variety and mystery of the great ancient
house, they seemed to people the wide rooms, as our little group
passed slowly from one to another, with a dim expectant presence.
We had thus, in spite of everything, a wonderful hour of it. Mr.
Searle at once assumed the part of cicerone, and--I had not
hitherto done him justice--Mr. Searle became almost agreeable.
While I lingered behind with his sister he walked in advance with
his kinsman. It was as if he had said: "Well, if you want the old
place you shall have it--so far as the impression goes!" He
spared us no thrill--I had almost said no pang--of that
experience. Carrying a tall silver candlestick in his left hand,
he raised it and lowered it and cast the light hither and
thither, upon pictures and hangings and carvings and cornices. He
knew his house to perfection. He touched upon a hundred
traditions and memories, he threw off a cloud of rich reference
to its earlier occupants. He threw off again, in his easy elegant
way, a dozen--happily lighter--anecdotes. His relative attended
with a brooding deference. Miss Searle and I meanwhile were not
wholly silent.
"I suppose that by this time you and your cousin are almost old
friends," I remarked.
She trifled a moment with her fan and then raised her kind small
eyes. "Old friends--yet at the same time strangely new! My
cousin, my cousin"--and her voice lingered on the word--"it seems
so strange to call him my cousin after thinking these many years
that I've no one in the world but my brother. But he's really so
very odd!"
"It's not so much he as--well, as his situation, that deserves
that name," I tried to reason.
"I'm so sorry for his situation. I wish I could help it in some
way. He interests me so much." She gave a sweet-sounding sigh. "I
wish I could have known him sooner--and better. He tells me he's
but the shadow of what he used to be."
I wondered if he had been consciously practising on the
sensibilities of this gentle creature. If he had I believed he
had gained his point. But his position had in fact become to my
sense so precarious that I hardly ventured to be glad. "His
better self just now seems again to be taking shape," I said.
"It will have been a good deed on your part if you help to
restore him to all he ought to be."
She met my idea blankly. "Dear me, what can I do?"
"Be a friend to him. Let him like you, let him love you. I dare
say you see in him now much to pity and to wonder at. But let him
simply enjoy a while the grateful sense of your nearness and
dearness. He'll be a better and stronger man for it, and then you
can love him, you can esteem him, without restriction."
She fairly frowned for helplessness. "It's a hard part for poor
stupid me to play!"
Her almost infantine innocence left me no choice but to be
absolutely frank. "Did you ever play any part at all?"
She blushed as if I had been reproaching her with her
insignificance. "Never! I think I've hardly lived."
"You've begun to live now perhaps. You've begun to care for
something else than your old-fashioned habits. Pardon me if I
seem rather meddlesome; you know we Americans are very rough and
ready. It's a great moment. I wish you joy!"
"I could almost believe you're laughing at me. I feel more
trouble than joy."
"Why do you feel trouble?"
She paused with her eyes fixed on our companions. "My cousin's
arrival's a great disturbance," she said at last.
"You mean you did wrong in coming to meet him? In that case the
fault's mine. He had no intention of giving you the opportunity."
"I certainly took too much on myself. But I can't find it in my
heart to regret it. I never shall regret it! I did the only thing
I COULD, heaven forgive me!"
"Heaven bless you, Miss Searle! Is any harm to come of it? I did
the evil; let me bear the brunt!"
She shook her head gravely. "You don't know my brother!"
"The sooner I master the subject the better then," I said. I
couldn't help relieving myself--at least by the tone of my voice
--of the antipathy with which, decidedly, this gentleman had
inspired me. "Not perhaps that we should get on so well
together!" After which, as she turned away, "Are you VERY much
afraid of him?" I added.
She gave me a shuddering sidelong glance. "He's looking at me!"
He was placed with his back to us, holding a large Venetian hand-
mirror, framed in chiselled silver, which he had taken from a
shelf of antiquities, just at such an angle that he caught the
reflexion of his sister's person. It was evident that I too was
under his attention, and was resolved I wouldn't be suspected
for nothing. "Miss Searle," I said with urgency, "promise me
something."
She turned upon me with a start and a look that seemed to beg me
to spare her. "Oh don't ask me--please don't!" It was as if she
were standing on the edge of a place where the ground had
suddenly fallen away, and had been called upon to make a leap. I
felt retreat was impossible, however, and that it was the greater
kindness to assist her to jump.
"Promise me," I repeated.
Still with her eyes she protested. "Oh what a dreadful day!" she
cried at last.
"Promise me to let him speak to you alone if he should ask you--
any wish you may suspect on your brother's part notwithstanding."
She coloured deeply. "You mean he has something so particular to
say?"
"Something so particular!"
"Poor cousin!"
"Well, poor cousin! But promise me."
"I promise," she said, and moved away across the long room and
out of the door.
"You're in time to hear the most delightful story," Searle began
to me as I rejoined him and his host. They were standing before
an old sombre portrait of a lady in the dress of Queen Anne's
time, whose ill-painted flesh-tints showed livid, in the candle-
light, against her dark drapery and background. "This is Mrs.
Margaret Searle--a sort of Beatrix Esmond--qui se passait ses
fantaisies. She married a paltry Frenchman, a penniless fiddler,
in the teeth of her whole family. Pretty Mrs. Margaret, you must
have been a woman of courage! Upon my word, she looks like Miss
Searle! But pray go on. What came of it all?"
Our companion watched him with an air of distaste for his
boisterous homage and of pity for his crude imagination. But he
took up the tale with an effective dryness: "I found a year ago,
in a box of very old papers, a letter from the lady in question
to a certain Cynthia Searle, her elder sister. It was dated from
Paris and dreadfully ill-spelled. It contained a most passionate
appeal for pecuniary assistance. She had just had a baby, she was
starving and dreadfully neglected by her husband--she cursed the
day she had left England. It was a most dismal production. I
never heard she found means to return."
"So much for marrying a Frenchman!" I said sententiously.
Our host had one of his waits. "This is the only lady of the
family who ever was taken in by an adventurer."
"Does Miss Searle know her history?" asked my friend with a stare
at the rounded whiteness of the heroine's cheek.
"Miss Searle knows nothing!" said our host with expression.
"She shall know at least the tale of Mrs. Margaret," their guest
returned; and he walked rapidly away in search of her.
Mr. Searle and I pursued our march through the lighted rooms.
"You've found a cousin with a vengeance," I doubtless awkwardly
enough laughed.
"Ah a vengeance?" my entertainer stiffly repeated.
"I mean that he takes as keen an interest in your annals and
possessions as yourself."
"Oh exactly so! He tells me he's a bad invalid," he added in a
moment. "I should never have supposed it."
"Within the past few hours he's a changed man. Your beautiful
house, your extreme kindness, have refreshed him immensely."
Mr. Searle uttered the vague ejaculation with which self-
conscious Britons so often betray the concussion of any especial
courtesy of speech. But he followed this by a sudden odd glare
and the sharp declaration: "I'm an honest man!" I was quite
prepared to assent; but he went on with a fury of frankness, as
if it were the first time in his life he had opened himself to
any one, as if the process were highly disagreeable and he were
hurrying through it as a task. "An honest man, mind you! I know
nothing about Mr. Clement Searle! I never expected to see him. He
has been to me a--a--!" And here he paused to select a word which
should vividly enough express what, for good or for ill, his
kinsman represented. "He has been to me an Amazement! I've no
doubt he's a most amiable man. You'll not deny, however, that
he's a very extraordinary sort of person. I'm sorry he's ill. I'm
sorry he's poor. He's my fiftieth cousin. Well and good. I'm an
honest man. He shall not have it to say that he wasn't received
at my house."
"He too, thank heaven, is an honest man!" I smiled.
"Why the devil then," cried Mr. Searle, turning almost fiercely
on me, "has he put forward this underhand claim to my property?"
The question, quite ringing out, flashed backward a gleam of
light upon the demeanour of our host and the suppressed agitation
of his sister. In an instant the jealous gentleman revealed
itself. For a moment I was so surprised and scandalised at the
directness of his attack that I lacked words to reply. As soon as
he had spoken indeed Mr. Searle appeared to feel he had been
wanting in form. "Pardon me," he began afresh, "if I speak of
this matter with heat. But I've been more disgusted than I can
say to hear, as I heard this morning from my solicitor, of the
extraordinary proceedings of Mr. Clement Searle. Gracious
goodness, sir, for what does the man take me? He pretends to the
Lord knows what fantastic admiration for my place. Let him then
show his respect for it by not taking too many liberties! Let
him, with his high-flown parade of loyalty, imagine a tithe of
what _I_ feel! I love my estate; it's my passion, my conscience,
my life! Am I to divide it up at this time of day with a beggarly
foreigner--a man without means, without appearance, without
proof, a pretender, an adventurer, a chattering mountebank? I
thought America boasted having lands for all men! Upon my soul,
sir, I've never been so shocked in my life."
I paused for some moments before speaking, to allow his passion
fully to expend itself and to flicker up again if it chose; for
so far as I was concerned in the whole awkward matter I but
wanted to deal with him discreetly. "Your apprehensions, sir," I
said at last, "your not unnatural surprise, perhaps, at the
candour of our interest, have acted too much on your nerves.
You're attacking a man of straw, a creature of unworthy illusion;
though I'm sadly afraid you've wounded a man of spirit and
conscience. Either my friend has no valid claim on your estate,
in which case your agitation is superfluous; or he HAS a valid
claim--"
Mr. Searle seized my arm and glared at me; his pale face paler
still with the horror of my suggestion, his great eyes of alarm
glowing and his strange red hair erect and quivering. "A valid
claim!" he shouted. "Let him try it--let him bring it into
court!"
We had emerged into the great hall and stood facing the main
doorway. The door was open into the portico, through the stone
archway of which I saw the garden glitter in the blue light of a
full moon. As the master of the house uttered the words I have
just repeated my companion came slowly up into the porch from
without, bareheaded, bright in the outer moonlight, dark in the
shadow of the archway, and bright again in the lamplight at the
entrance of the hall. As he crossed the threshold the butler made
an appearance at the head of the staircase on our left, faltering
visibly a moment at sight of Mr. Searle; after which, noting my
friend, he gravely descended. He bore in his hand a small silver
tray. On the tray, gleaming in the light of the suspended lamp,
lay a folded note. Clement Searle came forward, staring a little
and startled, I think, by some quick nervous prevision of a
catastrophe. The butler applied the match to the train. He
advanced to my fellow visitor, all solemnly, with the offer of
his missive. Mr. Searle made a movement as if to spring forward,
but controlled himself. "Tottenham!" he called in a strident
voice.
"Yes, sir!" said Tottenham, halting.
"Stand where you are. For whom is that note?"
"For Mr. Clement Searle," said the butler, staring straight
before him and dissociating himself from everything.
"Who gave it to you?"
"Mrs. Horridge, sir." This personage, I afterwards learned, was
our friend the housekeeper.
"Who gave it Mrs. Horridge?"
There was on Tottenham's part just an infinitesimal pause before
replying.
"My dear sir," broke in Searle, his equilibrium, his ancient
ease, completely restored by the crisis, "isn't that rather my
business?"
"What happens in my house is my business, and detestable things
seem to be happening." Our host, it was clear, now so furiously
detested them that I was afraid he would snatch the bone of
contention without more ceremony. "Bring me that thing!" he
cried; on which Tottenham stiffly moved to obey.
"Really this is too much!" broke out my companion, affronted and
helpless.
So indeed it struck me, and before Mr. Searle had time to take
the note I possessed myself of it. "If you've no consideration
for your sister let a stranger at least act for her." And I tore
the disputed object into a dozen pieces.
"In the name of decency, what does this horrid business mean?" my
companion quavered.
Mr. Searle was about to open fire on him, but at that moment our
hostess appeared on the staircase, summoned evidently by our
high-pitched contentious voices. She had exchanged her dinner-
dress for a dark wrapper, removed her ornaments and begun to
disarrange her hair, a thick tress of which escaped from the
comb. She hurried down with a pale questioning face. Feeling
distinctly that, for ourselves, immediate departure was in the
air, and divining Mr. Tottenham to be a person of a few deep-
seated instincts and of much latent energy, I seized the
opportunity to request him, sotto voce, to send a carriage to the
door without delay. "And put up our things," I added.
Our host rushed at his sister and grabbed the white wrist that
escaped from the loose sleeve of her dress. "What was in that
note?" he quite hissed at her.
Miss Searle looked first at its scattered fragments and then at
her cousin. "Did you read it?"
"No, but I thank you for it!" said Searle.
Her eyes, for an instant, communicated with his own as I think
they had never, never communicated with any other source of
meaning; then she transferred them to her brother's face, where
the sense went out of them, only to leave a dull sad patience.
But there was something even in this flat humility that seemed to
him to mock him, so that he flushed crimson with rage and spite
and flung her away. "You always were an idiot! Go to bed."
In poor Searle's face as well the gathered serenity had been by
this time all blighted and distorted and the reflected brightness
of his happy day turned to blank confusion. "Have I been dealing
these three hours with a madman?" he woefully cried.
"A madman, yes, if you will! A man mad with the love of his home
and the sense of its stability. I've held my tongue till now, but
you've been too much for me. Who the devil are you, and what and
why and whence?" the terrible little man continued. "From what
paradise of fools do you come that you fancy I shall make over to
you, for the asking, a part of my property and my life? I'm
forsooth, you ridiculous person, to go shares with you? Prove
your preposterous claim! There isn't THAT in it!" And he kicked
one of the bits of paper on the floor.
Searle received this broadside gaping. Then turning away he went
and seated himself on a bench against the wall and rubbed his
forehead amazedly. I looked at my watch and listened for the
wheels of our carriage.
But his kinsman was too launched to pull himself up. "Wasn't it
enough that you should have plotted against my rights? Need you
have come into my very house to intrigue with my sister?"
My friend put his two hands to his face. "Oh, oh, oh!" he groaned
while Miss Searle crossed rapidly and dropped on her knees at his
side.
"Go to bed, you fool!" shrieked her brother.
"Dear cousin," she said, "it's cruel you're to have so to think
of us!"
"Oh I shall think of YOU as you'd like!" He laid a hand on her
head.
"I believe you've done nothing wrong," she brought bravely out.
"I've done what I could," Mr. Searle went on--"but it's arrant
folly to pretend to friendship when this abomination lies between
us. You were welcome to my meat and my wine, but I wonder you
could swallow them. The sight spoiled MY appetite!" cried the
master of Lackley with a laugh. "Proceed with your trumpery case!
My people in London are instructed and prepared."
"I shouldn't wonder if your case had improved a good deal since
you gave it up," I was moved to observe to Searle.
"Oho! you don't feign ignorance then?" and our insane entertainer
shook his shining head at me. "It's very kind of you to give it
up! Perhaps you'll also give up my sister!"
Searle sat staring in distress at his adversary. "Ah miserable
man--I thought we had become such beautiful friends."
"Boh, you hypocrite!" screamed our host.
Searle seemed not to hear him. "Am I seriously expected," he
slowly and painfully pursued, "to defend myself against the
accusation of any real indelicacy--to prove I've done nothing
underhand or impudent? Think what you please!" And he rose, with
an effort, to his feet. "I know what YOU think!" he added to Miss
Searle.
The wheels of the carriage resounded on the gravel, and at the
same moment a footman descended with our two portmanteaux. Mr.
Tottenham followed him with our hats and coats.
"Good God," our host broke out again, "you're not going away?"--
an ejaculation that, after all that had happened, had the
grandest comicality. "Bless my soul," he then remarked as
artlessly, "of course you're going!"
"It's perhaps well," said Miss Searle with a great effort,
inexpressibly touching in one for whom great efforts were visibly
new and strange, "that I should tell you what my poor little note
contained."
"That matter of your note, madam," her brother interrupted, "you
and I will settle together!"
"Let me imagine all sorts of kind things!" Searle beautifully
pleaded.
"Ah too much has been imagined!" she answered simply. "It was
only a word of warning. It was to tell you to go. I knew
something painful was coming."
He took his hat. "The pains and the pleasures of this day," he
said to his kinsman, "I shall equally never forget. Knowing you,"
and he offered his hand to Miss Searle, "has been the pleasure of
pleasures. I hoped something more might have come of it."
"A monstrous deal too much has come of it!" Mr. Searle
irrepressibly declared.
His departing guest looked at him mildly, almost benignantly,
from head to foot, and then with closed eyes and some collapse of
strength, "I'm afraid so, I can't stand more," he went on. I gave
him my arm and we crossed the threshold. As we passed out I heard
Miss Searle break into loud weeping.
"We shall hear from each other yet, I take it!" her brother
pursued, harassing our retreat.
My friend stopped, turning round on him fiercely. "You very
impossible man!" he cried in his face.
"Do you mean to say you'll not prosecute?" Mr. Searle kept it up.
"I shall force you to prosecute! I shall drag you into court, and
you shall be beaten--beaten--beaten!" Which grim reiteration
followed us on our course.
We drove of course to the little wayside inn from which we had
departed in the morning so unencumbered, in all broad England,
either with enemies or friends. My companion, as the carriage
rolled along, seemed overwhelmed and exhausted. "What a beautiful
horrible dream!" he confusedly wailed. "What a strange awakening!
What a long long day! What a hideous scene! Poor me! Poor woman!"
When we had resumed possession of our two little neighbouring
rooms I asked him whether Miss Searle's note had been the result
of anything that had passed between them on his going to rejoin
her. "I found her on the terrace," he said, "walking restlessly
up and down in the moonlight. I was greatly excited--I hardly
know what I said. I asked her, I think, if she knew the story of
Margaret Searle. She seemed frightened and troubled, and she used
just the words her brother had used--'I know nothing.' For the
moment, somehow, I felt as a man drunk. I stood before her and
told her, with great emphasis, how poor Margaret had married a
beggarly foreigner--all in obedience to her heart and in defiance
to her family. As I talked the sheeted moonlight seemed to close
about us, so that we stood there in a dream, in a world quite
detached. She grew younger, prettier, more attractive--I found
myself talking all kinds of nonsense. Before I knew it I had gone
very far. I was taking her hand and calling her 'Margaret, dear
Margaret!' She had said it was impossible, that she could do
nothing, that she was a fool, a child, a slave. Then with a
sudden sense--it was odd how it came over me there--of the
reality of my connexion with the place, I spoke of my claim
against the estate. 'It exists,' I declared, 'but I've given it
up. Be generous! Pay me for my sacrifice.' For an instant her
face was radiant. 'If I marry you,' she asked, 'will it make
everything right?' Of that I at once assured her--in our marriage
the whole difficulty would melt away like a rain-drop in the
great sea. 'Our marriage!' she repeated in wonder; and the deep
ring of her voice seemed to wake us up and show us our folly. 'I
love you, but I shall never see you again,' she cried; and she
hurried away with her face in her hands. I walked up and down the
terrace for some moments, and then came in and met you. That's
the only witchcraft I've used!"
The poor man was at once so roused and so shaken by the day's
events that I believed he would get little sleep. Conscious on my
own part that I shouldn't close my eyes, I but partly undressed,
stirred my fire and sat down to do some writing. I heard the
great clock in the little parlour below strike twelve, one, half-
past one. Just as the vibration of this last stroke was dying on
the air the door of communication with Searle's room was flung
open and my companion stood on the threshold, pale as a corpse,
in his nightshirt, shining like a phantom against the darkness
behind him. "Look well at me!" he intensely gasped; "touch me,
embrace me, revere me! You see a man who has seen a ghost!"
"Gracious goodness, what do you mean?"
"Write it down!" he went on. "There, take your pen. Put it into
dreadful words. How do I look? Am I human? Am I pale? Am I red?
Am I speaking English? A ghost, sir! Do you understand?"
I confess there came upon me by contact a kind of supernatural
shock. I shall always feel by the whole communication of it that
I too have seen a ghost. My first movement--I can smile at it now
--was to spring to the door, close it quickly and turn the key
upon the gaping blackness from which Searle had emerged. I seized
his two hands; they were wet with perspiration. I pushed my chair
to the fire and forced him to sit down in it; then I got on my
knees and held his hands as firmly as possible. They trembled and
quivered; his eyes were fixed save that the pupil dilated and
contracted with extraordinary force. I asked no questions, but
waited there, very curious for what he would say. At last he
spoke. "I'm not frightened, but I'm--oh excited! This is life!
This is living! My nerves--my heart--my brain! They're throbbing
--don't you feel it? Do you tingle? Are you hot? Are you cold?
Hold me tight--tight--tight! I shall tremble away into waves--
into surges--and know all the secrets of things and all the
reasons and all the mysteries!" He paused a moment and then went
on: "A woman--as clear as that candle: no, far clearer! In a blue
dress, with a black mantle on her head and a little black muff.
Young and wonderfully pretty, pale and ill; with the sadness of
all the women who ever loved and suffered pleading and accusing
in her wet-looking eyes. God knows I never did any such thing!
But she took me for my elder, for the other Clement. She came to
me here as she would have come to me there. She wrung her hands
and she spoke to me 'marry me!' she moaned; 'marry me and put an
end to my shame!' I sat up in bed, just as I sit here, looked at
her, heard her--heard her voice melt away, watched her figure
fade away. Bless us and save us! Here I be!"
I made no attempt either to explain or to criticise this
extraordinary passage. It's enough that I yielded for the hour to
the strange force of my friend's emotion. On the whole I think my
own vision was the more interesting of the two. He beheld but the
transient irresponsible spectre--I beheld the human subject hot
from the spectral presence. Yet I soon recovered my judgement
sufficiently to be moved again to try to guard him against the
results of excitement and exposure. It was easily agreed that he
was not for the night to return to his room, and I made him
fairly comfortable in his place by my fire. Wishing above all to
preserve him from a chill I removed my bedding and wrapped him in
the blankets and counterpane. I had no nerves either for writing
or for sleep; so I put out my lights, renewed the fuel and sat
down on the opposite side of the hearth. I found it a great and
high solemnity just to watch my companion. Silent, swathed and
muffled to his chin, he sat rigid and erect with the dignity of
his adventure. For the most part his eyes were closed; though
from time to time he would open them with a steady expansion and
stare, never blinking, into the flame, as if he again beheld
without terror the image of the little woman with the muff. His
cadaverous emaciated face, his tragic wrinkles intensified by the
upward glow from the hearth, his distorted moustache, his
extraordinary gravity and a certain fantastical air as the red
light flickered over him, all re-enforced his fine likeness to
the vision-haunted knight of La Mancha when laid up after some
grand exploit. The night passed wholly without speech. Toward its
close I slept for half an hour. When I awoke the awakened birds
had begun to twitter and Searle, unperturbed, sat staring at me.
We exchanged a long look, and I felt with a pang that his
glittering eyes had tasted their last of natural sleep. "How is
it? Are you comfortable?" I nevertheless asked.
He fixed me for a long time without replying and then spoke with
a weak extravagance and with such pauses between his words as
might have represented the slow prompting of an inner voice. "You
asked me when you first knew me what I was. 'Nothing,' I said,
'nothing of any consequence.' Nothing I've always supposed myself
to be. But I've wronged myself--I'm a great exception. I'm a
haunted man!"
If sleep had passed out of his eyes I felt with even a deeper
pang that sanity had abandoned his spirit. From this moment I was
prepared for the worst. There were in my friend, however, such
confirmed habits of mildness that I found myself not in the least
fearing he would prove unmanageable. As morning began fully to
dawn upon us I brought our curious vigil to a close. Searle was
so enfeebled that I gave him my hands to help him out of his
chair, and he retained them for some moments after rising to his
feet, unable as he seemed to keep his balance. "Well," he said,"
I've been once favoured, but don't think I shall be favoured
again. I shall soon be myself as fit to 'appear' as any of them.
I shall haunt the master of Lackley! It can only mean one thing--
that they're getting ready for me on the other side of the
grave."
When I touched the question of breakfast he replied that he had
his breakfast in his pocket; and he drew from his travelling-bag
a phial of morphine. He took a strong dose and went to bed. At
noon I found him on foot again, dressed, shaved, much refreshed.
"Poor fellow," he said, "you've got more than you bargained for--
not only a man with a grievance but a man with a ghost. Well, it
won't be for long!" It had of course promptly become a question
whither we should now direct our steps. "As I've so little time,"
he argued for this, "I should like to see the best, the best
alone." I answered that either for time or eternity I had always
supposed Oxford to represent the English maximum, and for Oxford
in the course of an hour we accordingly departed.
